Restoring the Ecology

Despite the best efforts of the managers there are still lots of us who have resisted the determined propaganda campaigns waged by those telling us that our landscapes simply must be managed and there’s no place in the UK for anything resembling wildness. Refusing to be brainwashed and trusting our eyes and our own judgement we still believe that there is value for us as humans in having areas of land free from the economy, whether it be extractive industries, the farming industry or the conservation economy, such land following its own determination beyond any exploitation agenda of modern man. Things would be bleak for us if we were not so lucky to have Mark Fisher to refer to on all matters related to landscape and wildlife. His commitment and work rate are astonishing: every month a new article from him appears on his website. I’ve seen nothing else anything like the accumulated wisdom  so available and accessible heartening to all those who care about really natural land as a counter to the over-diluted conservation pap we’re fed by the publicity machines of the conservation bureaucracies. 

Each article explores a new aspect of wilderness and each one has enough in it to keep one thinking hard until the next appears. Each is suffused not just with wisdom but also heart and soul, from someone who loves not just wild life and wild land but the poetry of those people who have creatively engaged in it over the centuries. I once heard him described by a local conservation worker as ‘a romantic’. Predictably this came from someone who considered the remark dismissive, one who, incidentally,  gave no indication at any time of being able to respond to, or be inspired by, natural beauty for its own sake – a conservation industry Gradgrind if there ever was one.

Mark is wary of the term ‘rewilding’ partly because numerous people and groups have defined and interpreted it in their own ways, which he himself is unhappy with. He prefers to use the term ‘ecological restoration’ (although even this and alternatives are always prone to the corruption and reinterpretation by interest groups).

Mark’s latest article is here:

 http://www.self-willed-land.org.uk/articles/malady.htm

People may find it diverting to read, towards the end of the piece, of his engagement with Yorkshire Wildlife Trust.

For me the most thought-provoking of the recent articles  was the previous one on substituting the ecological function of wolves.