Beasts of the Devon Wild

In 1773, the writer Samuel Johnson embarked on an adventure with his companion James Boswell to that mythical land known as the Scottish Highlands. In Johnson’s account of their travels, there’s a moment when, near the southern end of Loch Ness, he turns his restless gaze to the surrounding hills, remarking:

“They exhibit very little variety; being almost wholly covered with dark heath [...] What is not heath is nakedness [...] An eye accustomed to flowery pastures and waving harvests is astonished and repelled by this wide extent of hopeless sterility.” [1]

Johnson’s decidedly unimpressed reaction to the Scottish scenery can seem puzzling to modern readers who might view the same landscape as majestic, awe-inspiring, or even sublime. Yet maybe Johnson’s peculiar, pre-Romantic viewpoint isn’t as outdated as it first appears. Read in light of the growing field of rewilding, Johnson’s observations start to feel relevant again – where are the trees? Where is the variety? Where is the life? However, while Johnson remained convinced that this denuded landscape was simply the unfortunate “face of nature”, a rewilding perspective makes one view this state not as natural but shaped by human activity – trees felled, vegetation over-grazed, and species lost: not a natural landscape but a haunted one. A landscape haunted by the ghosts of animals like aurochs, wolves, boar, and beavers, all of which by this point had been driven to extinction in Britain; their absence felt not just in the loss of their physical presence, but in the loss of their life processes – their moving, feeding, shitting, decomposing – which would have helped shape the land into something very different to that “extent of hopeless sterility” that Johnson experienced in 1773.

Fast forward roughly 250 years, through increased enclosure, farming intensification, climate change, and a damning 2019 State of Nature Report [2] , and I find myself lying in a damp tent in Devon. A sudden summer downpour has resulted in pools of rainwater amassing inside. As I lie, dampness encroaching, my attention shifts to the outside: something is clattering through the trees behind me; on a lower register are the grunts of something snuffling in the grass; if I were to move closer to the nearby stream, I might just hear the sound of wet wood being methodically chewed. Are the ghosts coming back?

The haunted forest

I’m camping at Coombeshead farm in Devon, a rewilding project set up by conservationist Derek Gow on former pastureland. Rewilding has many meanings; from passive rewilding where abandoned sites are spontaneously recolonised by wildlife, as has occurred in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone and, less dramatically, at the Undercliff Reserve near Lyme Regis [3], to ambitious, human-directed projects such as Pleistocene Park in Siberia where there are aspirations to recreate an Ice Age Mammoth-Steppe ecosystem [4]. Coombeshead lies somewhere between these polarities and stands as a small-scale example (currently 150 acres [5] ) of trophic rewilding, which, as biologist Jens-Christina Svenning says, “uses species introductions to restore top-down trophic interactions […] to promote self-regulating and biodiverse ecosystems” [6] . Trophic rewilding is a type of conservation which counteracts what’s known as shifting baseline syndrome: where every new generation redefines what is ‘natural’ based on their own early experiences. In a world suffering continual losses of biodiversity, this shifting of baselines gradually causes, as ecologist Frans Vera says, “a degraded state of nature to be accepted and considered as the normal thing” [7] .

To address this waning ecological expectation, trophic rewilding often looks to prehistoric reference points for biodiversity (circa. 11,700BP) [8] . A vision of what this prehistoric habitat might have looked like in Western Europe was put forward by Frans Vera in his controversial, yet paradigm-shifting, wood pasture model which challenged the assumption that closed, high-canopy forest was the dominant ecology. Vera’s hypothesis instead postulated that the grazing and disturbances caused by herds of now-extinct animals, such as the tarpan (wild horse), auroch (wild cow) and wisent (bison), would have helped to halt the succession of trees, creating a landscape closer to what is known as wood pasture, characterised by, “a spiny, thorny, shrubby transition between grazed grassland and trees and groves” [9]. This ever-shifting mosaic of habitats would have hosted higher levels of biomass and species diversity than what has traditionally been thought of as ‘natural’ to Europe.

Though the Vera model remains contested, the broad thinking behind it is gaining acceptance [10] and has become part of a wider shift in ecological thinking that has witnessed, as environmental geographer Jamie Lorimer says, “increased importance […] afforded top-down regulation” provided by “a strongly interactive group of keystone species” [11]. Without these species, even if all detrimental human activity ceases, an ecosystem cannot restore its former diversity; they remain trophically downgraded or ‘haunted’ by these species’ absence.

Prehistory by proxy

Yet, re-animating a prehistoric ecosystem in modern Western Europe is not particularly practical, especially when the composition of that past ecosystem remains contested [12]. Consequently, trophic rewilding projects are often pragmatic operations, balancing the pursuit of functioning, autonomous ecosystems with practical constraints. The next morning at Coombeshead I’m seeing what this experimentation looks like as I watch five water buffalo serenely graze their way across one of the rewilded fields. They are examples of proxy animals – animals that are either domesticated versions of extinct animals, or animals that were never native, but are brought in to create some of the desired disturbance. Indeed, though water buffalo would not have likely been part of Britain’s prehistoric fauna [13], they should help at Coombeshead by dispersing seeds [14] and helping to open out some of the young woodland on-site. It’s fascinating to watch this herd interact with the landscape, whether they’re rubbing against trees, grazing open fields, or lying neck deep in a wallowing hole. Beyond the buffalo are more proxies – a small flock of mouflon (wild sheep) and a group of what look like wild boar at the margins of the field. These are iron age pigs – crosses between Tamworth pigs and wild boar which perform the same rootling (which exposes seeds) and wallowing (which creates small pools for aquatic life) as ‘pure’ boar would, but don’t come with the same licensing and security issues [15].

Just do it!

Although many of these animals are known to be beneficial to ecosystems, exactly how they all will interact with one another in this specific context is unknown. Coombeshead, like all trophic rewilding projects, is a novel ecosystem. Lorimer describes such projects as ‘wild experiments’ which, in contrast to standard scientific practice, favour a more hands-off, reactive approach, where knowledge is gained from in situ experimentation and improvisation, rather than the controlled testing of hypotheses. Such open-ended projects are “capable of generating surprises and putting accepted knowledge at risk” [16], which can include discovering novel behaviour as domestic animals interact with wilder surroundings, or in rare wild species unexpectedly moving into the project, as has recently happened with the appearance of otters at Coombeshead. This is not to say that measurements and rigour are abandoned; as project manager and ecologist Emma Hankinson tells me, at Coombeshead they are “currently collating a baseline database of species" to measure the changing biodiversity and are also in the midst of collecting data on what dormant seed banks might be lurking under the surface of their soils. Nonetheless, there is a distinct element of DIY ecology; of trying things and seeing what works.

On a guided tour of the rewilding area that morning, we see the impacts of perhaps the most significant wild experiment at Coombeshead. We’re being led through the area of woodland, dense with scrubby vegetation. It’s getting increasingly damp underfoot. It feels a little like entering ‘the zone’ of Tarkovsky’s Stalker (1979) or ‘the shimmer’ of Alex Garland’s Annihilation (2018), a sense only heightened when our tour leader can’t remember the right way, so quickly do the paths change in this mutable mosaic. Soon, however, we reach our desired location – a clearing of gnawed tree stumps and a patchwork of deep pools held back by seemingly impossible constructions of dead wood, mud, and leaves. This is the work of beavers who, after an absence of some 400 years [17] , are back in the Devonshire countryside. Indeed, Coombeshead owner Derek Gow is a man so entwined with the story of returning beavers to Britain that he literally wrote the book on it, chronicling the pan-European effort against bureaucratic inertia to return these rodents to Britain [18] . These collective actions have made possible the announcement on 25th August that the UK government plans to officially release beavers back into the wild in England, with a public consultation (which anyone can fill in) expiring on 17th November. Back at Coombeshead, it’s easy to see why Emma refers to them as “the most important species on the land”. They have created their own wet and woody wonderland, a semi-aquatic habitat beneficial to innumerable birds, insects, and amphibians. It’s an impressive sight, and hopefully one that will become increasingly common across England in the years to come.

Missing pieces

However, despite the constant hum of activity, Coombeshead still seems to be exhibiting some signs of a haunted land: for instance, there’s talk that the water buffalo are grazing too much in the open fields, rather than venturing into the more covered areas; meanwhile, it’s mentioned that some of the introduced herbivores at Coombeshead are all deliberately single sex, thereby limiting their population growth. These can be seen as consequences of the absence of any large apex predators at Coombeshead. Apex predators – like wolves and lynx – help to control the numbers of large herbivores which, at high densities, can start to negatively impact the biodiversity of an ecosystem [19]. Just as important as their direct predation, is how these predators can create what’s known as an ‘ecology of fear’, where their presence in the landscape changes the behaviour and grazing patterns of herbivores, for instance, by causing them to avoid open areas which in turn allows plants to regenerate [20]. With such carnivores currently absent across Britain, projects often have to come up with novel ways to simulate their effects such as having single-sex herds of herbivores or through killing some animals for meat.

Project Wolf in Scotland, meanwhile, is exploring how humans might mimic the ‘landscape of fear’, by having volunteers noisily patrol the forest at night to scare deer and change their browsing behavior. At Coombeshead I’m told that there aren't currently any such interventions planned. That said, about 400 yards outside the Coombeshead rewilding area, in a tightly fenced enclosure, do exist three lynxes, which, were regulation to change, one day could once again roam free in Britain. Re-introduced lynx would help manage deer numbers and at Coombeshead could even, Emma informs me, influence the grazing of larger animals like the water buffalo. For now, however, these lynxes are not functioning in the project’s ecosystem, instead serving more as an imaginative prompt to visitors of what could be.

Visiting Coombeshead has been a revelation; to see a rewilding project in action, even at this small scale, and witness charismatic animals and blooming biodiversity has been something quite special. Yet, returning to Samuel Johnson’s disappointment with Scotland’s scenery in 1773: though he was not conscious of the effects lost species were having on the landscape, there was one ghost he was acutely aware of – the growing absence of people. Writing at the beginning of what became known as the Highland Clearances, Johnson lamented the “epidemic of emigrations” as the old clan system broke down and people were forced to move out of the Highlands. With Johnson’s concerns in mind, though contemporary rewilding projects are often popular with visitors, there remains a danger that this becomes narrowed to a particular type of visitor. Indeed, many new rewilding sites are set up by private landowning estates and gain revenue by charging for exclusive access to their biodiversity through activities like camping, glamping and safaris [21] . Coombeshead itself is not free and charges for tours that give access to their rewilding area. There is of course nothing wrong with this as a way to fund new, experimental projects. However, as rewilding projects in Britain continue to grow, it’s essential that they become more widely accessible. This is particularly imperative given the current political climate where an estimated 92% of England remains inaccessible to the public [22]. Meanwhile, new trespass laws proposed in the government’s Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, if passed, will criminalise trespassing activities (currently only civil offences), particularly affecting Gypsy, Roma and travelling communities [23]. There is a need to ensure that rewilding efforts are not complicit with this culture of exclusion, and, moreover, that the novel forms of value created by rewilding – ecosystem services, nature-connectedness, wildlife encounters – do not simply become, in Lorimer’s words, “a new frontier for wealth accumulation” [24]. Fortunately, the very praxis of rewilding – of ceding control to unruly non-humans and the need for corridors and connectivity between habitats – would seem to challenge the easy enclosure of areas into marketable assets. Emma at Coombeshead, for instance, has no desire for Coombeshead to remain an isolated bubble and is working on ways to get access to land outside the project to allow the migration of Coombeshead’s species into other habitats.

There will always remain a need to think critically about rewilding, especially on the global scale where fears remain about the links between increased opportunities for rewilding in Europe and North America and the continued de-wilding of (sub)tropical regions for global food production and resource extraction [25]. Such concerns help to highlight the limits of rewilding if it is decoupled from linked problems like global warming, intensive farming, and global habitat destruction. That said, by resetting people’s ecological expectations and involving publics first-hand in the excitement and surprises of ecosystem recovery, rewilding projects might just have the power to cultivate in people that more-than-human sensibility that will be needed to address these broader problems of the Anthropocene. Such a sensibility can help alter lifestyles and inspire us to demand broader political action so that rewilding becomes not just another elite leisure activity but part of a genuine global resurgence for wildlife.

Back at Coombeshead, it’s my last night and I’m awake again in my damp tent. Clearly, I’m in no pristine wilderness; there are proxy animals, fences, and a compost toilet 200 yards away, yet soon that symphony starts again – the crashing, the rootling, the hooting – and I fall asleep to these discordant, yet oddly comforting, sounds. The sounds of a landscape, alive again.

Many thanks to Emma and the Coombeshead team.

If you’re interested in reading about and adding your views to the government’s beaver consultation before Nov 17 the website is:
https://consult.defra.gov.uk/natural-environment-policy/beaver-reintroduction-and-management/

Fred Warren is a writer and filmmaker. He spent university immersed in the new field of post-humanities, though some think he should have spent more time thinking about post-uni life than post-human life.

Endnotes

1. Boswell, James, and Samuel Johnson. A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland and the Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides. Penguin Classics, 1984, p.60

2. The report states that 41% of species in Britain are in decline while 15% are threatened with extinction, see:
   https://nbn.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/State-of-Nature-2019-UK-full-report.pdf

3. This is now managed by The Jurassic Coast Trust and Natural England

4. See Anderson, Ross, ‘WELCOME TO PLEISTOCENE PARK’ The Atlantic, 2017.

5. Though Emma informs me that this winter they plan to rewild the other 150 hectares of the farm, doubling the project’s size.

6. Svenning, ‘Future Megafaunas’. Arts of living on a damaged planet: Ghosts and monsters of the Anthropocene. U of Minnesota Press, 2017. p.78

7. Vera, Frans. "Can’t see the trees for the forest." Trees, Forested Landscapes and Grazing Animals. Routledge, 2013.

8. See Lorimer, Jamie. The probiotic planet: using life to manage life. Vol. 59. U of Minnesota Press, 2020. p.171

9. Vera, Frans. "Can’t see the trees for the forest." Trees, Forested Landscapes and Grazing Animals. Routledge, 2013. p104

10. As environmental geographer Ian D. Rotherham writes, “our vision now is not one of wall-to-wall forest, but of plains or savannah that are more open with a rich diversity of other landscapes and patches [...] of more dense closed canopy forest”.
    Trees, Forested Landscapes and Grazing Animals. Routledge, 2013. p5

11. Lorimer, Jamie. The probiotic planet: using life to manage life. Vol. 59. U of Minnesota Press, 2020 p.59

12. Some palaeoecologists have questioned whether the pollen record supports the idea that large herbivores really flattened the closed canopy forest of primeval Europe. For example, see:

    Mitchell, Fraser JG. "How open were European primeval forests? Hypothesis testing using palaeoecological data." Journal of Ecology 93.1 (2005): 168-177,
    Newton, Adrian C., Elena Cantarello, and Alexander Lovegrove. "The influence of grazing animals on tree regeneration and woodland dynamics in the New Forest, England." Trees, Forested Landscapes and Grazing Animals. Routledge, 2013. 179-195.

13. Though in the Pleistocene, there was a now-extinct European species (Bubalus murrensis) present in Europe,

14. According to some estimates water buffalo can transfer more that 200 plant species in their fur and digestive systems (https://rewildingeurope.com/news/water-buffalo-release-boosts-natural-dynamics-in-the-danube-delta/)

15. See: O’Mahony, Kieran. "Blurring Boundaries." Conservation & Society 18.2 (2020): 114-125.

16. Lorimer, Jamie. Wildlife in the Anthropocene: conservation after nature. U of Minnesota Press, 2015. P.109

17. Dates of the exact extinction are debated, but most sources seem to point 17th Century (Lorimer The probiotic planet p.32).  Though there are reports of beavers clinging on in some places later (see Gow Bringing Back the Beaver pp.30-32).

18. The efforts of these beaver enthusiasts ranged from transporting them from Bavaria to Britain and organising trials, to supporting efforts to retain beavers when they turned up in the River Otter in Devon (See Gow Bringing Back the Beaver)

19. Perino, Andrea, et al. "Rewilding complex ecosystems." Science 364.6438 (2019).

20. This was shown to happen with elk after the reintroduction of wolves at Yellowstone which caused the elk to “change their grazing patterns; [meaning] they mp longer venture into deep thickets and open areas out of fear of being attack” (Lorimer, The probiotic planet: p.35)

21. For instance: Wild Ken Hill in Norfolk offers a number of paid for experiences (https://wildkenhill.co.uk/guided-tours/?) , Knepp charges for safaris, glamping, and offers high-end venue hire (https://www.kneppsafaris.co.uk/information/venue-hire);  the recently rewilded farm at Mapperton Estates offers glamping (https://mappertoncamps.com/); the newly rewilded area at Elmore Court plans to “build a number of beautiful treehouses for weddings and other stays” (https://www.elmorecourt.com/environment/). It should be noted that many of these places are not completely off limits to the public and have access via pre-existing public footpaths and, in the case of Knepp atleast, also have a number of permissive paths.

22. See Guy Shrubsole’s interview with Walk magazine: https://www.ramblers.org.uk/news/walk-magazine/current-issue/2021/february/spring-2021/guy-shrubsole.aspx and his book Who Owns England.

23. See section 4 of the current version of the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill (https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/2839). For a perspective on how the bill may effect effect Gypsy, Roma and travelling communities see:
    https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/jul/05/the-police-bill-is-wiping-out-a-culture-new-travellers-take-a-stand

24. Lorimer, The probiotic planet: p.205

25. For instance, as Jame Lorimer observes: “The sparing of land in temperate regions has been enabled by the conversation and intensification of farming in (sub)tropical regions. It remains to be seen whether rewilding leads to net gains in the space set aside for wildlife, or whether it merely accelerates its poleward redistribution” (Lorimer, The probiotic planet: p.157-8).