What is Rewilding?
Rewilding: “The planned reintroduction of a species into a habitat from which it has disappeared in an effort to increase biodiversity and restore the health of an ecosystem” Merriam - Webster dictionary definition
We recognise now that mass industrialisation and mass agriculture has caused huge problems for the land and sea. Species have disappeared. Soil has become depleted. Pollution has been shown to have devastating consequences. The effects of climate change are starting to become tangible.
What has happened to the land, the species and the soil acts as a mirror for us. The land and the sea needs rewilding. What has happened to children, to young people and to adults is similarly devastating.
Rewilding is a way of supporting the land and sea to return to a better sense of balance, of giving space for the land to recover, of standing back and letting nature heal itself. Rewilding is a way of relinquishing human control, of repositioning humans so that we are a part of – and not apart from – nature. Rewilding is a way to help nature to thrive.
Rewilders understand how ecosystems have been damaged and they are proactive in finding ways to help nature to thrive again. Their actions - such as reintroducing wolves – are sometimes controversial but they have been shown to have dramatic impacts.
What are we doing?
We feel passionately that we need rewilding in much the same way, our Education needs rewilding in similarly dramatic ways. We must step back, reconnect with the land, with one another and with our own true wild nature.
Simply learning about the state of our planet from the TV or in books can only go so far. We want to help people remember, to feel their own deep connection with nature first hand. Once we feel that connection fully then we will care, we will protect and love our natural world because we will know that we are nature, there is no separation.
“It’s about remembering, remembering that we are part of the natural world and not separate from it”
-Luke Funnell - Project Rewild founder.
What is Nature Connection? Click here
Follow Project Rewild Director Dr Daniel Ford and his work to Rewild Education here: Rewilding Education - Our education system is deeply flawed