The good old ways: nature’s best chance of recovery

Britain is one of the most nature-depleted places on Earth. The consequences for human wellbeing and resilience, as well as for non-human life, are grave. Conservationists and others say it doesn’t have to be this way. But when it comes to recovery, what should we aim for? How much can we know about what was once present? How much is it practicable or sensible to restore? What does recovery, let alone ‘rewilding’, really mean in a rapidly heating world? Sophie Yeo does not have the answers to all of these questions. Nobody does. What she does offer in Nature’s Ghosts are insights that could help shape a better informed and more constructive debate.

One of the first stops in Yeo’s explorations around Britain, and places in Europe that may offer lessons for Britain, is the Carrifran Wildwood in southern Scotland. Here, half a million or more trees of diverse indigenous species have been planted since the late 1990s in a glen formerly given over to grazing by sheep. In addition to the regrowth of the woodland itself, this has resulted in a spectacular increase in animal and bird life, including willow warblers, chaffinches and other woodland and scrubland birds, as well as mammals. But one of the most remarkable changes has been in floral diversity, with the recovery and spread of plants such as sea campion, which is usually associated with coastal landscapes.

As a rewilding project created through deliberate replanting, Carrifran may seem to present a paradox. There’s nothing wrong with this, say Yeo and her interlocutors. The idea of a ‘great wood of Caledon’ – a vast pine forest covering most of Scotland – is partly myth: the forest was never as extensive or as long-lasting as is often supposed.