IT’S LONG been appreciated that simple contact with an
animal brings with it many benefits.
An animal that is relaxed in our presence makes us feel that all is well in the world; the fact that a fellow creature is content and not alarmed and is non-judgemental puts us at rest too – this original context of ‘happy’ could well hark back to an ingrained survival mechanism, similar to the sound of birdsong in contrast to alarm calls. This is possibly part of the reason pets make us feel good.
Animal-assisted therapy – in this case, using domesticated or captive species – is well known and long practised. Early records of the benefits of close animal contact go back to the late 1700s with the Quaker Society of Friends Retreat in York and the rather better-known Florence Nightingale; both recognised the value of animals in treating the infirm. Right up to date, everything from dogs, cats, guinea pigs, various reptiles and parrots have all been used in homes, hospices, hospitals and prisons. Our need for animals is undisputed. While this kind of contact is very controlled, a kind of domesticated, stylised human-adapted version of wild, there are rawer, more true-to-roots forms of the same idea, simply promoting contact with nature. Like my robin.
Feeding the birds in the garden is a hobby for some fifty-five million people in the US, and in Britain it has been declared a national pastime for over half the adult population. Not surprisingly, it has frequently been adopted by many serving time with long prison sentences. Birds are symbolic of freedom, they are a distraction from the reality of life behind bars and a reminder that not everything in the world beyond the walls is denied them – those same therapeutic benefits of connection are in play again. The same goes for gardening and bee keeping; it’s all about the same archaic stimulations that deliver a dose of hormones to create a deep sense of satisfaction that we can only get from nature.
I was rather pleased to discover that in 2016, the UK governmental advisory body on the protection of the environment, Natural England, published A review of nature-based interventions for mental health care. The fact that mental illness is on the rise, I suspect, may well be a symptom of the stresses and pressures of modern life. What better salve than the antidote of nature – my robin and my badgers sprang to mind simultaneously when I read the report.
Reading it reinforces what I’ve always known: simply being in nature reorders things, puts our own troubles into context, and gives us a rock to hang on to. When we take ourselves out for a walk in nature, our ancestral heritage whispers in our ears and fills our senses with what we are designed to be able to cope with; we feel valid again, part of the bigger process of life and, with that, we have a genuine reason to be alive. Solvitur ambulando, it is all solved with a walk.
Our National Nature Reserves in the UK are flagships – they were conceived to protect valuable habitats, either for their rare wildlife and biodiversity value or for their unique geology. Time is proving them to be a very sound investment; their value is appreciating and the dividends they return are way beyond those originally envisaged, and while their purpose to save species hasn’t met with a perfect track record, the fact that we are still losing our wildlife, and the overall trend is worsening, bears witness to the need for them. They are still vital repositories of species from which, if we get our future priorities right, the bigger landscape can be seeded, something known as landscape scale conservation – a joining-up and reconnecting. In a way, something that could be defined as a kind of rewilding – somewhere between a lynx and a scruffy lawn – a sentiment very much like that expressed by those subscribers to North America’s Yellowstone to Yukon initiative.
Despite the dysfunctionality of the bigger countryside, when you pass into a protected area, you immediately feel it; the contrast with the outside is becoming greater, the difference is stark.
Many of us have come to know nature reserves and appreciate the ‘hidden’ value of wild that is so evident in these places. However, only when this value becomes the prescription does it make it to the mainstream.
Recognised by the health services, it makes its way onto political agendas and we have started to slowly take note. These nature reserves are undoubtedly important in conservation terms and it goes without saying that they are excellent places to experience nature in all of its wonderfully stimulating forms, and indeed to practise much of what this book has covered. But there is a change, an undercurrent of appreciation that has until now been missing. A number of reserves are hosting health initiatives such as Greencare and Ecotherapy, in realisation of the benefits that just being outside can bring to mental and physical wellbeing. In America, the identification of the negative health consequences of a lack of green space has led to the coining of the phrase ‘Nature Deficit Disorder’, something that is very real and for which the evidence is stacking up.
The current generation of young people is experiencing the highest levels of mental health and obesity issues to date. This creates a huge burden on the health system and, saddest of all, some say they are the first ever generation whose life expectancy falls short of their parents’. This is a real problem that isn’t going away any time soon and it has been demonstrated beyond doubt that the quality of life of all is improved when we are given access to nature and green spaces.
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It’s not too much of a leap into the unknown to take this a step further. If nature is good for you, however you choose to experience it, why limit it to nature reserves? Why restrict your experiences to these parcels of paradise, which, fenced and gated, can sometime feel like commodities? ‘Get your car keys, we’re off to see some nature’ isn’t integration. It doesn’t take that much of a paradigm shift to take it home with you. If nature is a medicine, don’t just go and see the doctor, bring back home the drugs.
It’s what my robin is to me. In fact, anything in my modest back garden that has come to be there without me buying it or putting it there directly constitutes my daily medicine and more. It is my sustenance, not directly, as it once was, although I’m not averse to a bit of foraging, but it is nutrition of sorts: just sitting out on a bright spring morning and watching the bee flies bowing to the flowers of lungwort, the unravelling of the ferns’ fiddle heads, that ultraviolet shard of summer in a common blue damselfly… it’s a pharmacy of countless coloured pills with all their natural uplifting powers. They’re not mine and they’re not yours; they’re wild and they’re free in every sense. Take as many as you can, you can’t overdose on nature.
This is just a garden; imagine what it would be like if we started to join up a few more of the green dots on the landscape, linking the nature reserves, these repositories of the wild, with new ones, recreating a new future, schools, gardens, community, bit by bit. This realisation is to me the very beginning of rewilding at a level we can all take part in.
If the underlying concept of what is often referred to as ecological rewilding is about recreating fully functional ecosystems, then self-rewilding is about creating fully functional humans, free from ignorance and ecological prejudice, able to engage with the wild world and each other in a better, more compassionate way.
While we consider releasing long-missing beasts into our countryside in an effort to replace essential machinery in broken-down ecology, we are looking to rewild to recreate a better-functioning whole. We can also do with a similar human rehabilitation, for that is really what it’s all about. The liberation of our own inner beast, recognising what it needs, our own essential requirements, space to unwind, rest, relax, reflect and forage, to heal and be inspired – these are factors that give us all a better quality of life and that is without considering the various other ecological services these places provide: flood-mitigation, clean water, shelter, breathable air, pollination – the list is literally endless, for we are not separate from this nature but part of it, and always have been.
I like to think of a future where this connection is taught: imagine an education system which makes outdoor time and environmental learning part of the national curriculum. This would be part of a human rewilding concept, a metaphorical Yellowstone wolf, about to create a cascade of positive change in our everyday life and culture. One that will have as much positive influence on its environment, and on our more ecologically functional future. One individual step at a time.
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We all could do with feeling the difference nature can make, falling in love with it and finding a personal connection and discovering these positives. By becoming more aware of other life forms we develop a compassion for all. This liberating of old ideas and establishing of long-lost natural functions of our own bodies is rewilding too. Just as nature needs a coherent network of habitat connections through which to move, so does our inner wild; we need to reconnect to establish a different relationship with nature and the wild spaces we have left. In order to have any kind of a future this re-evaluation of the natural world and our place in it needs to happen very soon, before it is too late.
It is very subtle and it starts with personal awareness. It can be daunting to suddenly be expected to have an informed opinion on ecological rewilding, if you don’t understand what’s happening in your own window box, garden or park. How can you conceivably tolerate wolves at large in the landscape if you can’t do your own thing by creating a space and habitat for a wolf spider?
We need to rewild from the bottom up, but also from the inside out. I would love to see a future in which we have understood the importance of, and are willing as a species to tolerate the concept of the reintroduction of, some of those keystone species, like lynx and beaver. It will happen (it’s already happening), I’m sure, at some level. But in the meantime, the process of rewilding starts with us, our attitude to, and how we value, nature; we need to create or re-create those relationships, those intimacies, those feelings of respect that can only come from a better understanding of our environment. Because unless we rewild ourselves from within and find a profound connection between ourselves and nature and become re-enchanted with our world, no matter how hard we try, conservation efforts to date will be to no avail. It’s time for us all to become more eco-savvy and, what’s more, it’s a lot easier than you might think.
Look up ‘wild’, and alongside it in the dictionary is a collection of not particularly inspiring synonyms; none of them seem that positive, do they? Who would want these words associated with them? If you’re wild, you might be: undomesticated, untamed, ferocious, barbarian, unbroken, savage, tempestuous (OK, we all like a bit of that), turbulent, frenzied, self-willed, riotous, wayward, uncontrollable, reckless, rash, grotesque, bizarre, strange, unkempt.
The truth is that as a species, as soon as we could, we’ve tried to get away, control and manipulate the wild – and that includes these definitions. It’s no wonder we have such an antagonistic relationship with much of wildlife on earth. Wild is not inherently bad; personally, I like to own many of these qualities. We need to embrace these words and make them our own in their original sense. If we dig into the words and their origins, we find other definitions and roots that temper the initial modern definitions. We start to find treasure.
This is a trove that is closer than you might think. The wild is a treasure that is priceless, yet we can all own it. It is to be found everywhere you can turn a leaf, dig the dirt, see the sky and dip into the water. But we need to fast re-evaluate its stocks and shares, and realise its worth. This is the underpinning ideal behind rewilding in all its definitions – we need to treasure wild and all of its delicious unpredictability and experiences, and to do this we need to re-find what we’ve long lost, and make progress along a different path – and it all starts with you, right now.