All this – which relied on grass, flowers, trees dropping their leaves and neglected areas - has pretty much gone from London gardens, replaced instead by lifeless outside spaces. ![]() The London I grew up in still had flocks of sparrows in the privet hedges, hedgehogs in back gardens, bats and moths flitting around on summer evenings and sometimes even owls calling. ‘Gardens’ are now treated as outside rooms and sterilised in the same way as houses, with the result that tiles, decking, and artificial grass have all but wiped out urban wildlife. This extinction mentality extends even more damagingly to outside space. House spiders are feared and commonly killed, but are part of Britain’s wider ecology. Moths should be ‘bombed’, ants poisoned and if a mouse pops in, as they often do in autumn, then it’s time to call pest controllers. My local ‘NextDoor’ group regularly has exchanges between people panicked by the appearance of ants, spiders, moths, mice and their neighbours suggesting extreme methods of killing them. Any creature that appears indoors these days is greeted with fear, hysteria and calls for extermination. Where once our houses and gardens provided a home to species other than ourselves, we now want to live in sterile zones. This time, it’s not the fault of rapacious farmers and developers but our own. Nearer home – at home in fact – we have presided over a similar ecocide. As well as the bison, beavers and stork, white tailed eagles have been reintroduced on the Isle of Wight and there are hopes for lynxes in the Scottish highlands.īut it isn’t just the countryside that has been tragically depleted. Now instead of trying to protect what little is left after 40 years of eco-vandalism, the new emphasis is on nature restoration, restoring not only lost numbers but also lost species. The experiment has inspired other landlords and even some Wildlife Trusts. ![]() Knepp, a 3500 acre estate in Sussex, has led the way with extraordinary successes rebuilding numbers of threatened species like turtle doves, nightingales, and purple emperor butterflies. But so far rewilding has been the preserve of big projects - farmland, nature reserves, and private estates. ![]() Few ideas have captured the public imagination as rewilding.
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