Big Butterfly Count -July

With such sunny weather this will be a great thing to do. The records enable the butterfly conservation to develop an accurate record of what is happening. We look forward to doing this at Blackwater Carr and comparing the count to last year's results.

Last week in London we heard a talk about Rewilding by Stewart McIlroy.

Stewart had long held a dream to rewild his own corner of the planet. Such that he had even drawn his perfect plot.

When an inheritance finally made it possible, the 40 acres of arable and 3 acres of woodland that he bought in West Norfolk was an uncanny replica of his ideal. It was clearly meant to be.

His land is part of a much bigger picture managed by the WNNN, and involves a 33k acre site, of which 12k acres will be fully rewilded, with the balance used for regenerative farming.

The rewilded area will be carefully managed, with mapped land corridors, for those critical free roaming herbivores, and several river catchments. So, Stewart’s first job will be to take down any fencing and make gaps in hedges to facilitate this natural migration of animals.

He will then seed his ‘field’, as he modestly calls it, with good quality wildflower mixes taken from old meadows across the UK, which will make way for less pretty but hugely biodiverse scrubland in around three years’ time.

He’ll also be making time to relax in his planned glamping tree house and hot tub!

Excitingly, the bigger WNNN plan is to link up with other such projects across the UK, potentially by building wildlife bridges and incorporating more land, to fill in the gaps.

Because scale is crucial to attract the full range of ruminants, to share and reduce the costs, to maximise the biodiversity and the carbon capture and to reach the critical mass required for the reintroduction of species like beavers, lynx, bison and more.

But the benefits don’t stop there, as Stewart pointed out. Rewilding naturally mitigates against wildfires and flooding, and provides more jobs than farming, as the Knepp Estate’s successful move into eco-tourism and wild range meat illustrates.

Stewart's vision is remarkably like ours, road access,a river, woodlands. We didn't consider our work is rewilding as the process had already been started by the previous owner, Mark Cocker.

Look at some of these useful resources, kindly selected by Stewart McIlroy:

Useful books …

Wilding – Isabella Tree (the return of nature to a British farm (Knepp))

The Book of Wilding – Isabella Tree & Charlie Burrell (a practical guide to rewilding big and small)

Rewilding – Paul Jepson & Cain Blythe (the radical new science of ecological recovery)

Feral – George Monbiot (searching for enchantment on the frontiers of rewilding)

How To Rewild – Jonathan Thomson (a practical manual from Underhill Wood Nature Reserve for One to Fifty Acres)

Bringing Back the Beaver – Derek Gow (the story of one man’s quest to rewild Britain’s waterways)

Rewilding – David Woodfall (real life stories of returning British & Irish wildlife to balance)

Handy websites …

Rewilding Britain – https://www.rewildingbritain.org.uk/

Rewilding Europe – https://www.rewildingeurope.com

Wild East – https://www.wildeast.co.uk