Out Come the Wolves

Picture taken from the Wildlife Trust Myself and other environmental-leftist thinkers will have been cornered into a strange position in the previous few months; agreeing with a proposal that infamous tory politician Michael Gove has put backing behind. Indeed, as environmental secretary, he has been saying many of the ‘right things’ when it comes to environment, sustainability & their future in Britain. Gove has recently given his backing to the proposal for the reintroduction of  beavers to the Forest of Dean where they have been absent for four hundred years.             Elsewhere in the West country, the Devon Wildlife trust has been conducting a heavily monitored trial release of beavers in the River Otter since 2015. These are just a few of the voices clamouring for beaver reintroduction to the united kingdom, amidst calls for other reintroductions, many of them much less timid creatures as the beaver...

While in my master’s year at the University of Sussex, I had the sudden benefit of a garden- we’d had one before, but then it was all concreted, paved patio, with a few fallow corners teeming with hardy bushes and weeds. I attempted creating a small bed for at least a flower of some sort but it was so shady that I was confined to growing inside (often unsuccessfully.)             The garden was similar to the previous one, but with a few meagre beds lining the walls. Though small and strewn with litter such as chicken bones and splintered fruit crates, and underlying plants such as a grape vine and daffodils that flourished suddenly in spring, this small space offered me an opportunity to grow things on my back doorstep, a chance I had not had yet.             In these small concreted beds I planted many vegetables and plants, with quite some small (but nonetheless warmin...

All pictures are taken from the Sussex Roots facebook group (link at bottom) and so may not be my own. Sussex Roots is a society at the University of Sussex; we have always attempted to act as a co-operative as much as Student Union society limits will let us. Basically, it is an allotment for all to get involved in, learn about DIY gardening for the purpose of food, learn about interacting with the environment, experiment with sustainability and socialise outside of an academic space. The original allotment site- we grew almost everything in raised beds outside. I first heard of Roots from a group of my neighbours from East Slope, the now condemned student halls at Sussex, that were about to head out to the site. It suddenly dawned on me that this would be the first time I could make decisions and be more active in growing food. Before, when working on family member's plots, I was merely clueless labour; now, I was part of a team, all of us clueless, welcoming to more c...

Originally posted on my other blog featuring a broader range of written work at  miragesofleavesinspring.blogspot.com   Near Horsham in West Sussex is a castle estate called ‘Knepp Estate,’ which, alongside farming, has let a great deal of the estate return to the wild. Medium-sized herbivores such as longhorn cattle, roe and fallow deer, Exmoor ponies and pigs roam freely on the estate. So far, these rewilding techniques have regenerated the soil’s nutrient quality, making farming once again viable near the site, whereas traditional intensive farming had rendered the soil unworkable without large quantities of chemical fertiliser; farming is finally profitable once again in the area.             The benefits of rewilding are numerous; vastly increased biodiversity and carbon sequestration, as well as social benefits such as those George Monbiot wrote about in  Feral;  the sense of adventure and wonde...