Rewilding is not just for private landowners

Like many others around the world, British photographer Jo Metson Scott had been experiencing “very present worries about the environment” combined with a disheartening feeling of helplessness. “The reality is that most of us aren’t able to change our day-to-day lives. Or we could,” she says, “but it would be a very dramatic thing to do.”

This was the starting point and impetus behind her latest work, People in Rewilding, a series of landscape photographs and portraits of individuals ranging from ecologists and project managers at some of the UK’s most prominent rewilding projects to a pair of teenage amphibian breeders based in a Staffordshire market town. The result is a visual record as rich and diverse as the wildlife these people help to nurture.

Metson Scott was inspired by Isabella Tree’s 2018 book Wilding: The Return of Nature to a British Farm, a bestselling account of rewilding the Knepp Estate in West Sussex, and she watched with interest as rewilding projects began to flourish around the UK in recent years. And yet, for all her sense of wonder, the photographer felt a frustrating sense of detachment.

The term “rewilding” is now widely used, to the point, some would argue, of meaninglessness: there are even books offering advice on how to “rewild your life”. But the concept itself, which was developed in the 1980s and 1990s, is undeniably complex. In contrast with conventional conservation efforts, which focus on a protectionist approach, rewilding is, broadly speaking, a process that seeks to restore natural ecosystems through the (re)introduction of certain species. Its ultimate aim is to allow nature to take care of itself.

Early rewilding projects, such as the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone National Park in the US in 1995, were vast in scale and ambition, and subsequent schemes have tended to be the preserve of large landowners, private or otherwise. The charity Rewilding Britain now has a network of more than 130 rewilding projects of 1,000 acres or more, across the country. “I’m not a farmer and I don’t have any land, so it’s not something that I have a tangible link to,” says Metson Scott. “It set me thinking, who is rewilding? Maybe I should focus on the people who don’t own the land, but are still involved in this idea.”

The first individuals she photographed were also the most surprising. Teenagers Harvey Tweats and Tom Whitehurst are friends whose shared interest in amphibians led them to develop a breeding project in their parents’ gardens while studying for their GCSEs. Last year, the pair established their own company, Celtic Reptile & Amphibian, with an aim to supply species, including moor frogs and European pond turtles, that were once native to Britain, for reintroduction to rewilding projects. Metson Scott says they’re part of a “very different demographic to other people [involved in rewilding] who have done amazing things, but who may be landowners.”

I ask how she made contact with her subjects. “Once you talk to one person, they recommend another,” she says. “Like with all different groups within society, there’s this big movement of people working within rewilding, so there was this network.”

I don’t have any land, so it’s not something that I have a tangible link to. It set me thinking, who is rewilding? Maybe I should focus on the people who don’t own the land, but are still involved

Some of the most inspiring projects, she says, were those involving the collaboration of experts from different fields, so to speak. Wild Ken Hill is a 4,000-acre estate in Norfolk that combines rewilding (25 per cent of the site is now “managed” by herbivores, including ponies and pigs, and wild beavers) with traditional conservation methods and sustainable farming. The project, which provides the location for BBC Two’s upcoming Winterwatch series, brings together ecologists, agricultural and outdoor education specialists.

While the idea of rewilding has become more widely acceptable in recent years — fashionable, even: last month, the singer Ed Sheeran expressed his desire “to rewild as much of the UK as I can” — its practical and political implications can still prove controversial. Some objectors are concerned that rewilding threatens to erase cultural heritage, especially that associated with traditional agriculture. Others believe it will damage local economies.

In choosing to focus on the people on the ground — the employees, the enthusiasts — Metson Scott is making a point about what she sees as the great potential for rewilding to provide a sense of purpose to a particular region.

Last month, the singer Ed Sheeran expressed his desire ‘to rewild as much of the UK as I can’

Yearn Stane, a community and rewilding project near Glasgow, began in 2018 as a partnership between two organisations, Eadha and Starling Learning, with the ambition not simply of restoring wildlife to this depleted landscape but of improving the lives and livelihoods of local people too. “It’s very much a grassroots project, within the community,” says Metson Scott. “They’re working with a local farmer, who’s into regenerative farming, and looking to rewild the land and organise for nurseries and school groups to make visits.”

The photographer’s travels took her the length and breadth of the country, from Yearn Stane in the north to Devon in the south-west. Here she met Peter Cooper who works on the Derek Gow estate, a rewilding and beaver reintroduction project, but who also breeds glow worms and harvest mice at his own house.

Perhaps best known among the projects she visited is the Knepp Estate, where Isabella Tree and Charlie Burrell have slowly rewilded their once intensively cultivated 3,500-acre farm. Among their most notable successes is the reintroduction of white storks, a programme that has resulted in the first breeding pairs in the UK for more than 600 years.

The initiative is a partnership between Knepp Estate and the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust, and Metson Scott’s guide for her visit was its Project Officer Lucy Groves. Looking at the resulting photographs — a striking portrait of Groves, yes, but also the atmospheric scenes dotted with these strange and mysterious birds — I wonder if she was not ever tempted to train her lens on the white storks themselves?

“My partner is a wildlife photographer,” Metson Scott replies. “I definitely wasn’t interested in doing wildlife photography. I know my limits,” she laughs. “I’m a portrait and landscape and documentary photographer.” After all, “it wasn’t really about that, it was about the people and their journeys within their landscapes.” 

Laura Battle is the FT’s deputy books editor

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