In the world of conservation, language is critical, and as I’m sitting down to write this blog, I’m reminded of a conversation around the title of Goal 1 of our Wilder Kent 2030 Strategy.
The discussion centred on the role of Wildlife Trust’s and how that has changed in the past decades – 65 years in our case. Is Wildlife Trust even the right name for organisations driving such an important agenda against the backdrop of a nature and climate crises, given the critical impact of restoring nature and adopting Nature-based Solutions in tackling climate change? A debate for a different day but the same applies to what we do as organisations and the ambition, willingness to challenge, to lead and to use our voice we bring to the work we do.
So combinations of words were debated, protect (as we have always done), preserve, save, reconnect, return, etc etc. Then we had the unprecedented political challenge of Autumn 2022, when the need to defend nature against some of the most damaging and harmful political rhetoric any of us can remember was an absolute priority. Nature was suddenly anti-growth – the very key to our life-support system presented as a barrier to sustainable growth and prosperity.
So defend it was and still is.
Defend
Now more than ever we need to defend nature and our natural spaces, not only through the 4000ha of nature reserves we manage but through the many landowners we support and advise, through the community groups, the wild gardeners, the schools and everything in between.
Taking just one, core element of that list – our nature reserves – KWT manage c80 sites, covering 4000ha, of which we own c3600ha – making us not an insignificant landowner in Kent and one of the biggest in the Wildlife Trust movement. How we manage that land is essential and we are challenging ourselves in leading new approaches to our conservation management. Kent is at the forefront of the impacts of climate change, we have had our first 40 degree temperatures in the summer of 2022, our wetlands and rivers are being impacted by drought, our grasslands are drying out, our woodlands becoming more susceptible to fire, oak trees are struggling in hotter, dryer woodlands and our seasons are blurring, impacting invertebrates. Add the challenge of pathogens and pests such as ash dieback and we can already see the changes in the landscapes around us.
This is where wilding approaches come in.
Many of us are prescriptively trained conservationists – we grow wildlife in much the same way a farmer grows crops – but these approaches are demonstrably not working, we can no longer continue to protect and micro-manage small areas of land in the hope of retaining a few key species. We must focus on scale and on bio-abundance as much as biodiversity. To achieve this we need to think about climate resilience on our nature reserves and in our landscapes. This means moving back from prescriptive management where we can, moving to managing larger areas more naturally. The answer to much of that lies in our Wilding Grazing strategy, using lower numbers of more mixed grazing animals across larger areas, providing the conditions for wildlife to adapt and respond to the climate change impacts it is exposed to.
And this is not just about bison; KWT own in excess of 600 head of grazing animals, cattle, ponies, sheep, goats and pigs – all fulfilling different niches and providing different impacts in their landscapes. This move to recreating as natural as possible grazing assemblages is a long-term project and will this year be additionally supported by our first PhD collaboration with the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology, aimed at measuring the impact of these approaches on our nature reserves.
Ecosystem engineer species are essential to the wilding concept and approach, species which by their very presence impact and engineer the habitats they live in. Bison in Blean Woods and beavers throughout the Stour catchment are already fulfilling that function, but more is needed.
Which brings us to restore.
Restore
Simply defending nature is not enough. The need to restore nature, and to do so at scale, is vital. The weight of scientific evidence globally shows that having 30% of any given land or sea area in thriving, functioning ecological condition goes a significant way to mitigating the worst impacts of climate change. A cheap, replicable, natural solution, sequestering carbon, providing clean water, flood mitigation and, equally importantly, experiences of nature and wildness we are missing as a species ourselves. Who would not want to see chough in their skies and pine marten or red squirrel in their woodlands - we need to embrace the art of the possible.
KWT have long recognised the need to restore and reconnect land at scale, applying the Lawton Principles – bigger, better, more and joined up as the solution to reversing nature’s decline.
For the first time we have to tools that allow us to do this in a new, sustainable, replicable way. The financing offered by Nature-based Solutions – payment for ecosystem services – is rapidly accelerating. For the first time landowners have options to make a truly sustainable income from the restoration of nature. Couple that with our understanding and acceptance of the role of ecosystem engineer species, the adoption of wilding principles and the emerging national and local Nature Recovery Networks (which KWT heavily supports KCC in delivering) and for the first time we have the ingredients for an exciting future.
So, completing the trajectory from the importance of language to the restoration of nature; nature is not a nice to have, it is critical to our survival as a species. These are the most challenging times any of us in conservation can remember but also the most exciting, positive and dynamic - we need to seize every opportunity.
P.S. If anyone has a suggestion for renaming the Wildlife Trusts – answers on a postcard please!