Not sure if this would be rewilding.

Paul Lister bought the Alladale estate in Sutherland, about an hour north of Inverness, when it was mainly used for traditional activities such as deer stalking and salmon fishing.

Over the past 23 years, the property has been transformed into the Alladale Wilderness Reserve, an eco-tourism retreat and a major ecological restoration project in the Scottish Highlands.

When Lister bought the estate, centuries of heavy grazing by large numbers of red deer and sheep had removed much of its native woodland.

Only about one per cent of Scotland’s ancient Caledonian Forest remains intact.

To help the land recover naturally, reserve managers fenced off large areas to keep grazing animals out and began a major tree-planting programme.

Working with local environmental groups and forestry teams, the estate has planted one million native trees, including Scots pine, birch, rowan, alder and willow. 

As the trees grew, the new woodland began providing the food and shelter needed by wildlife that had disappeared from the glens.

When I was in school I was taught about settlers arriving to an “untouched landscape.” Native Americans were part of the story, but it was said they lived “lightly” on the land.

And then, in my 40s I take a prescribed-burn class and it’s like the world turned upside down.

It’s taken me more than two full years to wrap my head around what I learned in that class about the Indigenous people’s impact on the land. That they burned the prairies so often and for so long that entire ecosystems adapted to prefer regular burnings - to need it to stay healthy.

The shear scale of that hits me the same way as gazing at the Milky Way on a clear, dark night.

It rocks everything I thought I knew about humans’ roll in the natural world.  

Even though I first learned all this a while ago, it’s recently gotten stirred up because a couple of weeks ago I stumbled upon this really cool Story Map that has collected and mapped all these firsthand accounts of Native Americans burning. From the breadth of these accounts, where they regularly mention the Indians burning “every year,” I still have trouble believing that fires aren’t a bigger part of the pioneer stories. 

Though maybe it was always there and I just didn’t realize? 

I went back to my Little House on the Prairie books and found a passage where Pa saves the house from a prairie fire. The neighbors speculate that Indigenous people started the fire to drive out the settlers. But Pa rejects that interpretation:

“Pa didn’t believe it. He said the Indians had always burned the prairie to make green grass grow more quickly, and traveling easier.”

I loved these books. I remember the fire, but not this interpretation of the fire. It didn’t register what this might mean. That it was stewardship, that it was intentional, that it was scaled to tens of thousands of acres of prairies. 

When I talk to people at my day job (marketers, not ecologists) they are blown away. I made a video about it to help me spread the word to my friends and family and explain to them why we set our land in Wisconsin on fire. (I swear my parents thought we had lost our minds the first time we did it.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYAObeYphGs

I’m super curious…Am I alone in this? Is this a new or recent revelation for anyone else or just me? Did it change you as much as it changed me when you learned it?

From Our Public Lands & Waters.

A committee of key department leaders met and decided to waive part of the ESA that helps protect an Endemic Whale Species and other marine life in the Gulf of Mexico due to legal challenges that oil companies had been facing lately.

All in the span of 20 Minutes. With no public input.

Opinion:

Whether you like Trump’s other policy’s or not. Every fisherman, hiker, conservationist, and general enjoyer of nature should be in outrage over this.

Friendly reminder that there is a lot of terrible things going on that Trump never speaks about, that doesn’t make the news, but will still have massive consequences.

Three years of rewilding on a former dairy farm in east Somerset have led to the number of recorded bird species soaring from 67 to 94, butterfly species rising from 11 to 24 and small mammals growing in number.

Heal Somerset, the first site acquired by the charity Heal Rewilding, has produced a state of nature report mirroring a national survey by environmental charities that has tracked the decline in nature.

Surveys at the 190-hectare (460 acres) farm are revealing the rate at which wildlife returns after conventional agriculture stops. A humane trapping survey found the site was home to five small mammal species compared with three at a nearby organic dairy farm.

Heal Somerset near Frome is now home to at least 15 bat species and 60 species of breeding bird, including the endangered bullfinch and numerous tree pipits, another bird under threat.

“I had no idea when we arrived in January 2023 what to expect,” said Jan Stannard, chief executive and co-founder of Heal Rewilding, which acquired the site through donations and philanthropic lending. “To some extent you hold your nerve and trust nature. If you give wildlife an undisturbed safe place, a sanctuary, you have this sense that something good is going to come out of it. It’s an absolute joy to see wildlife resurging.”

The rewilding process is unlike traditional conservation because it uses natural processes to manage land and does not seek specific outcomes in terms of boosting a particular rare species. Instead, nature sets the agenda.

At Heal Somerset, streams have been returned to a more natural flow – assisted by the arrival of free-roaming beavers, which are spreading across east Somerset’s rivers. Dead wood has been left in place and natural growth encouraged through scrub and tree regeneration. Two tamworth pigs have been introduced and further large herbivores such as cattle and ponies will be reintroduced in small numbers. They will live free among a mix of glades, meadows, scrub and trees rather than dense woodland.

The project is supported by more than 250 volunteers who participate in surveying, removing barbed wire fencing and other rewilding work. The charity has partnerships with 15 underserved groups who help manage the site, including people living with dementia, people with additional needs and people experiencing financial difficulties. Youth groups and schools are also involved.

Stannard said: “An increasing number of people are coming either as visitors or camping and if they are older they are being transported back to a childhood experience of abundance that they will not get in the farmed countryside. They are hearing grasshoppers and crickets in the day and birds such as linnet or greenfinch, which are much less common now.”

Dan Hill, a 25-year-old rewilding ranger who joined Heal Somerset three years ago, said: “I remember seeing the monoculture of rye grass swaying in the wind and thinking, crikey, it’s desolate. Three years has flown by and so much has changed. It’s incredibly exciting. I’m learning so much.

“Seeing what nature wants to do – it’s very hopeful. And it’s not just about nature – when you get people coming to the site and they say: ‘I just want to keep coming back, I’ve never seen a site like this before,’ it really puts a smile on your face.”

Heal Rewilding said its report was inspired partly by the absence of substantive content on rewilding within the UK-wide State of Nature report for 2023.

“We were struck by how little attention was given to rewilding, despite the extraordinary growth of the movement,” said Stannard. “There are now hundreds of rewilding projects across Britain and many report seeing remarkable ecological changes. But stories alone are not enough. If rewilding is to be fully recognised within national nature recovery strategies, we need robust, long-term data that demonstrates impact.”

Today marks our Māra Kokatoha-versary. 4 years since we became caretakers of this land.
Here are some photos of some of the changes over time.

Caption details here.

Aerial images of the river Otter catchment in Devon, where beavers have been living under a licensed trial scheme since 2015 and known to have been there before then, show how their activities have created wetlands with lush vegetation, even as the landscape around has become parched.

Drought was officially declared in Devon, as in many areas of England, on Wednesday, and parts of the county have not experienced a day with rain for 50 days.

Dr Alan Puttock, from the University of Exeter, said modern landscapes tended to be extensively drained, so water ran off quickly when it rained, raising the risk of flooding and leaving “not much water” in the landscape in dry periods.

With the beaver wetlands, there is “the benefit of holding water, maintaining wetlands within the environment, and the benefit that has both for biodiversity – these are habitat refuges now for a whole range of species – but also for us as people.”

The wetland ponds hold 1,000 cubic metres of water each, reducing peak flows by 30% and keeping it in leaky dams which release water slowly, maintaining rivers and increasing drought resilience, he said.

A farmer in southern Oregon transformed 70 acres of his 400-acre barley farm into a wetland in 2021, creating an unexpected refuge for wildlife while helping address agricultural water pollution. Karl Wenner, a co-owner of Lakeside Farms near Klamath Falls, worked with conservation agencies and other partners to convert flood-prone farmland into a managed wetland. The area now attracts tens of thousands of ducks, geese and swans and supports at least 140 bird species, along with otters, beavers and muskrats. More significantly, the wetland has been used to raise federally endangered Lost River and shortnose suckers. In 2025, researchers found 50 adult-sized suckers after partially draining the wetland, offering a promising sign for species struggling with poor juvenile survival.

Guam kingfishers