Sara King’s Post

Thanks to Wildwood Trust for letting me see your Wildcat breeding facilities this morning. Captive breeding programmes will be incredibly important for planned reintroductions in England and Wales, and research undertaken will also inform Scotland reintroduction works. Fantastic to see such a successful breeding year! Also an opportunity to see some of the other native species, including the magnificent elk!

Catching up with Helen Pitman and some of the wider Kent Wildlife Trust team yesterday looking for wild beavers and hearing all the fantastic work and progress on the Wilder Blean work. The Wilder Blean project is funded through our #Rewilding Challenge Fund and aims to #ThinkBigActWild by scaling up rewilding through engaging with communities and landowners. Yesterday was World Mental Health day as well, so a great reminder of how important connecting with nature is for our own wellbeing!

It's great to be supporting Trees for Life on this project For me, tauros being an opportunity to show semi-wild cattle exhibiting natural behaviours. This will bring the ecological benefits mimicking the extinct aurochs, but also something that visitors can recognise as being different to domestic cattle. Many rewilding projects are also using native breeds to mimic aurochs, which can achieve the same ecological benefits. But I worry that they will continued to be viewed as livestock by visitors and treated as such. This project provides an opportunity to dial up the wild a little and see how that impacts the landscape around Dundreggan. I can't wait to see these wild beasts roaming the Highlands, and learning about their impacts along the way. https://lnkd.in/ebDq4Tim Rewilding Britain

As with the State of Nature Report, this report from Natural England makes for pretty depressing reading. Nature continues to decline and most ecosystems in England are at risk It highlights the need to not just act urgently but to also have a significant step change in our approach. We can't tinker at the edges, we need to think about scale and changing our approach to nature recovery. #Rewilding offers us the opportunity to accelerate the restoration of whole ecosystems, improving resilience and reducing overall risk of collapse. We have several projects across Britain who are successfully rewilding land and showing the multiple benefits from this approach. Combined with farming that works with nature, we could see the system change we need for large scale nature recovery. As the report says "Society has taken nature and its benefits for granted. This results in decisions that cause damage to nature and increases risks for the economy and society....We need to make natural capital central to decision making. Even where the decisions aren’t specifically about natural capital." #ThinkBigActWild

Absolutely love this episode from the Wilder Podcast expertly hosted by Tom Constable and Chloe Constable. Simon Roper shared his insights into the role of technology in #rewilding and future developments, from AI to drones and camera traps. I particularly love the point about also making sure we are connecting with nature without the tech - a very important thing to remember! https://lnkd.in/emxmicFS

We've got a long way to go to hit the nature recovery at scale needed in Britain The amount of land that is protected for nature in England has fallen to just 2.93%, despite government promises to conserve 30% of it by 2030 We know how we can restore nature at the landscape and seascape scale. #Rewilding focuses on restoring natural processes across large areas, supporting functioning ecosystems. We need to focus on removing barriers and providing financial support for areas where nature recovery is most suitable. We can accelerate efforts, but we need to act fast and #ThinkBigActWild https://lnkd.in/egfZdGfK