Rewilding Takes Flight

Hans Hoffman wild boar piglet illustration

The conservation charity Rewilding Britain launched last week. In the emotive brouhaha I fleetingly imagined savage animals let loose to take revenge on us. With one swipe of fangs or claws they'd get us back. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth for the systemic extinctions we leave in our wake. Then I remembered this famous You Tube sensation. (PLAY)

Narrating the story of 'trophic cascade' George Monbiot tells us what happens when a keystone species is given the chance to fit comfortably into a new habitat, creating a rapid positive effect on the whole ecosystem. Springwatch told the same tale this year, this time with English beavers.

Rewilding Britain gives some UK examples on the website, and a blog entry by Martin Harper talks about conservation in action at the RSPB. Even in intensively farmed East Anglia there are success stories, such as Lakenheath RSPB's cranes. In 2007 these birds returned and bred successfully (the first time in England in four hundred years). The Great Crane Project website points out that these are wild birds, discerning individuals who chose a good spot where the RSPB are able to provide extra protection. They are not part of a reintroduction project.

Next week I'll be far away from my East Anglian flatlands. I'll be in South Wales and near the Forest of Dean. One of these days in their garden my relatives might find wild boar rootling, an adder basking or a goshawk flashing through with outstretched talons. And might there be a lynx or a wolf in my niece and nephew's lifetime? Time will tell.

Meanwhile following the first conclusive sighting of a pine marten in England in over 100 years Shropshire lad Paul Evans referred us to his interesting article about ‘the weasley outlaw in the shadows’. Amateur wildlife recorder Dave Pearce took two photographs in a wood in Shropshire last week and Evan’s interesting article points out that the animals thought to be extinct from England may have been present all along. But Cambridge? Really? We have so few trees. There’s a Cambridge near Stroud in Gloucestershire too isn’t there? That would make more sense. But Northampton is mentioned too. Keep your eyes peeled (and that includes roadkill)...

Sounds Like Summer

Oystercatcher egg, Norfolk coast - Photo by Jo Sinclair

There's a place I go to. This place and I have history. I've just scheduled a social walk there and it occurs to me it might feel a little odd to lead a string of people into the place that is the nearest I have ever got to going to church. It's a place I go to disappear. I trespass the quiet places dog walkers and runners don't reach. I observe a secret natural world. I observe myself.

I visited this place a few days ago. It's an oasis of ancient woodland surrounded by intensive agriculture. There are dappled rides where hunting platforms are rigged. These constructions make me slightly uneasy (I watched Walt Disney's Bambi at an impressionable age). I could see fresh bootprints and Landrover tracks and hoped the hunter or gamekeeper had been and gone. Watery ruts and puddles were surrounded by deer, badger, fox and bird prints. I noticed something else. This time my senses seemed wired slightly differently. I was tuning into details I may have missed before. I found myself listening to the tiniest sounds. The slowly receding puddles were emitting kissing sounds. Rafts of flies upset the viscous calm as they buzzed and skated and pierced the surface of the water with proboscises. Grass flowers emitted tiny puffs of pollen - I wonder what those might sound like? I imagined a multitude of sound layers beyond the obvious bumblebees, barking muntjac, coughing pheasants, pleading parties of tit chicks and garden warbler, blackbird, woodpigeon and blackcap song.

A benefit of walking alone is hearing the birds, and the wind in the trees. Last night I went on a cross-country bike ride and missed all these nuances as I laboured noisily up hills, skidding on grass and flint. All I heard when I stopped for a rest was bird song and my own breath.

Soundscapes, sound ecology and sound art are inspiring me at the moment, so experiencing the environment has a new dimension to it. There's a Cambridgeshire musician who's in his element when recording sound in the natural world. Simon Scott appeared on Springwatch recently. Introduced by Chris Packham as 'sonic artist extraordinaire',  the Cambridge born Fenlander describes what being a sound ecologist is all about. Packham introduces him as a lifelong nature boy and indie rock star. Nature's orchestra is the inspiration to his composition Below Sea Level (see his website, with links to the show).

Sound artists are excited by accessing what our ears don't or can't usually hear. With equipment such as hydrophones that reach below water into previously undiscovered worlds they make scientific discoveries as well as art.

The Sounds Of Our Shores project is a collaboration between the National Trust and British Library. They are appealing to the public to record the sounds of the British seaside this summer using smartphones, tablets or sound recorders. As the heatwave advances I'm imagining squealing kids, white horses, the rush of pebbles and oystercatchers. Dream on.