Britain is dotted with isolated islands of habitat. They cling to myriad slopes and precipices often in the most inaccessible spots in the country away from the hungry mouths of herbivores. The country’s long-standing obsession with agriculture and tradition has left its mark, reducing a once ecologically rich land to one that is impoverished. These ageing habitats are either stuck in stasis, or a downward spiral of degradation with no new growth around to catalyse regeneration and expansion. Left in neutral or reverse thanks to the omnipresence of sheep, deer and an anachronistic and anthropocentric model of land use.
Rewilding the land can kickstart ecological processes once again across these barren lands containing pockets of hope, back on the road towards Nature being self-willed once again – joining up the precious fragments along the way before it’s too late. In such a heavily managed and controlled land where we’re still having to rewire our brains to allow Nature to lead, wilderness remains a quixotic notion to many. So, connectivity is key.
Connect these dots of remnant and refugia up, and we will be rewarded with something bigger and better. Something we as a nation can be proud of, as we relieve some of the pressure from the stranglehold that we have allowed Nature to endure for too many generations. Something wild will emerge again, as the land’s memory is far better than ours. Its ability to repair itself given a bit of space and time away from anthropogenic pressures is astonishing and wondrous.
It will be something to nourish the soul, reinvigorate the mind and give us more glimpses of what an ecologically literate future looks like for our country. Loss, degraded, denuded and simplified will be replaced by abundance – species in densities large enough to fully fulfil their ecological functions – and a complexity that is the hallmark of healthy, self-regulating ecosystems. Spectacle, scale, grandeur and wonder will follow. A re-enchantment and reconnection with the natural world that comes from adopting a more ecocentric approach. Rewilding is at its heart, a powerful carrier of ecocentrism – an ancient mode of thought that has been absent from our collective cultural memories for far too long.
Our ancestors lived more ecocentric lives. They lived off the land, but this was intertwined with a deep respect for it. They were immersed in it, not detached from it; and crucially, did not see themselves as more important than Nature. We need to rediscover what that means to be human. We evolved out of Nature and we still have a distant kinship with it, whether we realise it or not. From our eyes meeting unexpectedly with a badger in woodland, to being surrounded by a shoal of fish above a coral reef – these moments reawaken something primordial within us all.
Ecocentrism holds the key to unlocking a future in which we better protect wildlife, habitats and protected areas because more and more of us will view ourselves as guardians of Nature – and not as somehow being above, ‘better’, or more important than it. That anthropocentric sense of having an entitled domination over Nature has destroyed so much, and created little in return. Ecocentrism seeks to redress this, reminding us that to truly protect and rewild, we first have to show some humility. We unpick natural processes at our peril.
Ecocentrism is about seeing intrinsic value in every plant, animal, ecosystem and natural landscape in the world. It is the most inclusive, forward-thinking and enlightened worldview that I’m aware of, and the only one I can see that puts us onto a path towards true sustainability. It is vital from an ecological, ethical and practical sense. After all, we all depend on Nature – it is our life-support system in countless ways. We depend on its interconnectedness, and for that, we need healthy and – ideally fully functioning – ecosystems.
Seeing Nature for its intrinsic value, as opposed to a resource that we can abuse and commodify, is a change in collective consciousness that needs to happen, if we are to form an ecologically richer and truly sustainable future for our planet. Putting a price tag on Nature is a slippery slope back to exploitation. Nature just needs to be given the space to let it ‘be’. It asks for nothing but to be left alone.
I believe ecocentrism begins with giving nature space. Space to move, space to unfold at Nature’s pace. We need landscape permeability to become the norm, so that – much like we depend on road networks – we build Nature networks too. That means protected habitat corridors the length and breadth of the country, connected by cores of protected habitat. It is this connectivity that will future-proof our fragile wildlife populations and ecosystems from the ramping up of climate breakdown events such as fires and storms, and disease outbreaks – while promoting the genetic viability of animal populations through free movement.
From forming this closer relationship with Nature, with humility, we can enrich our lives, knowing that we are doing something that is not selfish, but morally right. The riches to be gained from a rewilding of the land are not just ecological, but ethical and spiritual too. And you can’t put a price tag on that.