I posted under this topic and someone suggested doing a separate post on it, and disclaimer again, I work for the following company I mention.
Rewilding, or restoring natural ecosystems, is becoming a growing area at the moment, with even the mighty Attenborough putting his voice behind it (e.g. in Life on our Planet, or the new documentary about affects lockdowns have had on nature.)
I’m working for a company called Mossy Earth who run rewilding and reforestation projects, and we have a YouTube channel where we’ve started producing content about the area, including one about the return of nature to Chernobyl after the devastating nuclear accident.
I’d be curious to hear people’s thoughts on the subject, or experiences they’ve noticed over the last year.
If you’re interested, we have a membership (personal and business) to help fund rewilding and reforestation projects to have a positive impact on our planet.
Feel free to ask me any questions about rewilding or the company itself, or whether the slight plug for the company is inappropriate.
Oh, and it’s on my medium/ long-term list to see if we could do an integration with Monzo in some way! e.g. we currently have a carbon footprint calculator on the site but would be interesting to open it up as an API, and so could automatically calculate carbon for flights etc.
Forgive me but I’m not really sure what you’re asking from people.
Thoughts are it’s great, I can’t see anyone being against what you’re doing however what experiences are you after? I have zero experience in this and I can’t see many others having a background in this either.
Are you asking for examples of reforestation that I’ve seen? Areas that I think need doing?
Anarchist
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Yeah fair, the order of my sections was probably a little off.
I meant people’s thoughts on rewilding more generally, not specifically Mossy Earth, and any experiences they’ve had in the last year of nature returning more around them as human activity has been reduced. Or just general thoughts on returning more of the planet to nature. Although yeah, I do forget sometimes that the term rewilding isn’t widely known.
For example, wider projects that get talked about, the returning of large grazers to land to maintain it in a more natural way e.g. bison being returned to places. Or the possible re-introduction of “large” carnivores like lynx to help restore balance to ecosystems - the huge increase in deer numbers has a detrimental affect on ecosystems and forest regeneration.
I guess more broadly, how do people feel about living in a more wild world where we have more of a connection to nature.
I wasn’t specifically asking anything from people, was more just to start a discussion.
Haha, unfortunately I don’t work with animals that closely myself, although we do have two biologists that do do things along those lines.
I’m working mostly on the tech side of things - so currently website stuff, including the account page where members can get updates on their impact, and project pages more generally, but with scope for some slightly larger things further down the line.
Yeah, it was mentioned in the Attenborough interview I linked to in first post (although I did link a lot…). Unfortunately I don’t have Apple TV+, although I might use 7 day trial to watch it
Yeah, George Monbiot can be a little polarising generally, but is a huge proponent of Rewilding (he wrote a book about it called Feral - Rewilding the land, sea and human life) and in that I definitely agree with him. Particularly his points on it being a positive thing for humans (not just for climate change, or because we should give nature space), and that a greater connection to nature again is good for our mental health.
I should also add, it isn’t just about reintroducing species, but more fundamentally that it’s a complex system and that nature knows better than us, we can’t micro-manage it, but that we just need to give it space and a helping nudge to reverse some of the detrimental impact we’ve had.
Although for an example of reintroducing what they call a keystone species and the knock on affects it can have (or trophic cascades), see the wolf reintroduction to Yellowstone park and the extent of impact. I will say that some of the re-introductions aren’t without their controversy, and needs to be done in partnership with local communities.
I used to live about 10 mins away from Knepp, it’s a spectacular place. In fact the whole area round there is. Vineyards everywhere round there too which gives you the feeling you’re not in dreary West Sussex.
I’ve been exploring this, mostly in my head, over the last year or two and had a few discussions with a friend who works in this area.
Honestly, it’s fascinating and there is so much land available which could easily be used for rewilding projects - big or small. It’s just convincing landowners that it’s something worthwhile doing.
I love working at Monzo, but I’d jump ship in a heartbeat for an opportunity getting dirty on the ground.
People can make smaller differences in their own gardens and there are initiatives such as no mow may which have been gaining traction over the last few years.
I sectioned off part of my garden last year to just grow wild, and this year I’m letting the whole garden go to meadow. I’m also growing some native wildflowers to get the process kicked off - focusing on yellow rattle and wild poppies this year.
At the moment the garden just looks messy, but come summer hopefully it’ll be a haven for butterflies, bees and other wildlife.
Ah cool, I hadn’t heard of this place before but looks great, a great place for a camping trip and not actually that far away from London. My grandparents were around that area and I had no idea about it. Alladale estate in Scotland is one we do quite a lot of work with.
Yeah, that would be really cool, and something we’d love to do as a company and with members at some point. Brewdog have actually just bought a large part of land in Scotland to rewild.
Haha, what career/ business are in you if you don’t mind me asking? We tend to have a bunch of opportunities for people to get involved with us if you’re ever interested at all, I started out as a pro-bono dev with them at the beginning of the year.
Yeah, I’ve been inspired after being at Mossy Earth to do exactly the same, and have got 150 plugs of wild flowers (50 for bees, 50 for butterflies, 50 for birds) plus some seed, to put out once the ground stops frosting overnight! Any water source, especially any size of pond, is also a great addition.
Was a little surprised whilst browsing the website to see they sell meat from the animals too. (Clearly rewilding doesn’t = veganism but caught me off guard for sure in an overall eco/earth loving pitch)
Haha yeah, we’ve got a bunch of articles/ guides on different things. There definitely seems to be more of a trend to think about these things these days…
I did have a vegetable patch in my garden, but I didn’t actually make that much use of it myself, so felt that nature could make much more use out of the space.
Yeah, arguably some sources of meat would actually be of benefit to the environment e.g. deer are a huge problem with natural regeneration of places, as they don’t have any predators to keep the numbers under control, and keep them moving so they don’t overgraze areas. If you are having to cull them anyway, then the meat shouldn’t be wasted. You just have to make sure that they are actually wild catches and not farmed deer for example.
Funny you should say that, an app is on the cards to rollout…
More seriously though, if you do want to get involved at all then drop us a message through the site (and maybe mention the chat here for context) and we can set up a chat, we currently have people helping out with all sorts of roles from a couple of hours a week+, it’s pretty flexible. There is also the ability to book a call with someone on the team through the site to generally chat about what we do, we’re a small company at the moment.
Ah cool! Yeah, Scotland is one of our hubs as that is where one of our biologists is based
