Although afflicted by more than a few problems – such as over-grazing and browsing – few conservationists would, I think, turn down the opportunity to create a couple more New Forest type landscapes.
In my mind’s eye, at least, the New Forest probably resembles very imperfectly the sort dynamic, semi-open, wild landscape maintained by herds of aurochs, wild horse and boar, kept on their toes by wolves, brown bears and lynx.
Today, the New Forest is a haven for people, too, and supports numerous nature and landscape-dependent enterprises, from local cafes and restaurants to private camp sites and hotels. And it’s a great place to live.
This is what some parts of some rewilding landscapes might offer and look like. Not all parts of all such places – we’ll need vast, quiet sanctuary areas, and some landowners will wish to maintain solitude on their land.
Spreading space for people
One lesson Covid-19 has attempted to teach us is that international holiday making isn’t without its problems, and we might need a bit of a renascence in UK holiday making. But simply making existing popular holiday places even more busy is unlikely to do the trick alone.
We need to create much more ‘spreading space’ for people, and some parts of these New Forest style Natural Areas would be superb for this. They can relieve pressure on existing destinations and enable people to escape the crowds in beautiful natural landscapes.
Some of our more urbanised southern heathlands, and popular places like the New Forest itself, are suffering from over-use. A response to this is to create new, but rather small, alternative natural open spaces for people. If we scaled this idea up massively – by creating a few more largely open access New Forest type landscapes, we can reduce pressure by increasing options for visitors.
Big is beautiful
I suggest such New Forest type Natural Areas should be large – around 100,000ha each. They could be centred on existing large areas of publicly-owned land – Thetford Forest being one example – with new funding incentivising adjacent private land owners to enrol land into the Natural Area, and land trusts created to acquire any suitable land that comes on the market. Thetford Forest itself could come to resemble the New Forest, with much more open Brecks heath and more broadleaved woodlands.
A wet example might be the East Anglian Fens. Here, the lowest lying areas might be purchased by a land trust and flooded, creating multi-functional meres, some quiet, for wildlife, some used for low-key boating and angling, many used to store water and replenish aquifers. Great Fen is a good start, as is the expanding Ouse Fen. Let’s have a 100,000ha wet fen with dense trail networks and water-based recreational opportunities.
Under natural management
The aim of such Natural Areas would be minimal intervention once all the lost parts and processes are put back. So wild boar would be key (and these sites should be big enough to accommodate genuine wild boar without the need for Tamworths). Herds of wild-behaving water buffalo, suitable cattle (as a surrogate for aurochs), and European bison. With, say, eighty percent woodland, such places should be large enough to support lynx and wildcat, and open enough for wolves. Having rebuilt the communities of wilded keystone species and ecosystem engineers, we should stand back and simply enjoy these places. Probably largely without dogs other than within small zones on the periphery of each Natural Area…. Some level of bushmeat hunting probably ought to be possible within some Natural Areas, or perhaps in fringing buffer zones.
Fencing should be largely avoided throughout the interior of these places: they should be open to wide-ranging large mammals. But some fencing will likely be required at the edges, along highways and to safeguard any key agricultural land adjacent to the Natural Areas.
I’d suggest that these not be automatically positioned with National Parks, which are really designed to maintain the status quo. Rather, perhaps local consortia of public-private partners could bid into a challenge fund, able to finance the creation of, say, a first set of four, 100,000ha+ New Forests.
A pipe dream? Well, Costa Rica has a few already. Cambodia too. And if the densely populated Java can manage to maintain space for Javan rhinos and move towards creating a second large natural area for that species, I’m sure we can learn from them and give it a go.
Natural Areas 