BRX0065

Written evidence submitted by Rewilding Britain

1. Executive Summary

1.1.            Rewilding Britain is a charity with a wild vision – to help restore natural ecological processes and enable key species to return to at least one million hectares of Britain’s land and 30% of our territorial waters over the next 100 years.

1.2.            There is a need to advance and expand natural environment policy to move beyond protection to ecosystem restoration.

1.3.            Rewilding puts nature’s processes, structures and species back into our landscapes to enable them to become more self-sustaining, biologically richer and better able to support society and the economy.

1.4.            Rewilding projects have demonstrated societal and economic benefits including flood alleviation, reduced soil erosion, improved water quality, carbon sequestration, new nature-based economies and enhanced human health and wellbeing. Evidence suggests that rewilding could be a cost-efficient way to restore and maintain natural areas at scale.

1.5.            Rewilding is in a design and innovation phase. We believe an innovation fund is needed to provide competitive finance that incentivises the formation of entrepreneurial rewilding partnerships in different regions, and at a range of scales, where new approaches can be developed and tested.

1.6.            We support proposals to move away from a subsidy-based approach to agri-environment policy to a new system based on payment for ecosystem services (public goods).

2. What are the implications for UK biodiversity of leaving the EU, in particular the Common Agricultural Policy? To what extent do initiatives to support biodiversity in the UK depend on CAP-related payments? What risks and opportunities could developing our own agri-environment policy and funding present?

2.1.            Over the last 50 years, 60 per cent of species have declined in the UK and 31 per cent have strongly declined. Wildlife habitats have been lost, soils have become depleted, natural fertility impoverished and flood and drought impacts have increased. This has happened in large part due to the industrialised farming methods incentivised by successive funding regimes since the Second World War, primarily through the Common Agricultural Policy.

2.2.            We want to see a system that delivers a healthy, natural environment rich in wildlife and resilient to environmental change. We believe that exit from the European Union and the Common Agricultural Policy provides an opportunity to develop a more progressive land management policy based on public payment for delivery of public benefit.

3. How should future support for UK agriculture be structured in order to ensure there are incentives for environmentally-friendly land management? What are the positives/negatives of current schemes that should be retained/avoided?

3.1.            Future support should be structured to best support land managers to deliver public benefit. There is a need to remove the perverse incentives within the current system, such the designation of a range of wildlife habitats, including woodland, dense scrub, ponds, reedbeds, and wide streams, as “permanent ineligible features” which reduce the area of land eligible for farm payments.

3.2.            There is also a need to review the requirement for land to be maintained in Good Agricultural and Environmental Condition (GAEC), whether it is bring used to produce food or not. This requires landowners to control natural regeneration and keep land bare. We believe future support should allow habitat restoration and provision of ecosystem services to be rewarded rather than punished.

4. How should future UK agri-environment support be administered, and what outcomes should it focus on?

4.1.            We believe future support should be based on the delivery of public benefit. Land managers should be supported to restore natural processes and the increase in natural capital this will secure.

5. What are the future risks and opportunities to innovative land practices, such as managed rewilding?

5.1.            In the UK, most land has been or continues to be heavily managed. Large areas have been de-forested, burned, grazed, fertilized and polluted. Most large wild mammals have been exterminated. As a result, most ecosystems are largely dysfunctional for nature and people, being no longer able to provide their full range of ‘services’ such as clean water, reducing run-off and flooding, locking in carbon etc. Nature conservation has been confined to relatively small, isolated areas which are largely degraded semi-natural habitats or vestiges of historic managed landscapes. In the uplands in particular these are dominated by sheep, grouse or deer with low ecological and natural value. Rewilding has the potential to reverse these impacts.

5.2.            Rewilding is the restoration of ecosystems and natural processes. Rewilding has the following aims:

• To restore large core area wild areas, particularly to reverse the loss of biodiversity;
• To restore wild areas at any scale in urban and productive landscapes and help reconnect society with nature;
• To restore ecosystems to a functional and resilient state;
• To help alleviate problems facing society associated with land-use, such as flooding, water quality, pollination and climate change;
• To integrate society and nature for mutual benefit.

What role can rewilding play in conservation and restoration of habitats and wildlife?

5.3.            Rewilding can be transformative for nature, by increasing connectivity, creating diversity and making room for species to move through landscapes as they adapt to environmental change.

5.4.            We believe that rewilding should form an essential component of the UK’s approach to natural resource management, both on land and at sea. The need for large well-connected core areas to sustain biodiversity is supported by established ecological theory and was advocated by Lawton et al. in the seminal Making Space for Nature report[1]. As opposed to the current nature reserves approach to conservation - in which managers try to preserve a particular assemblage of species and habitats through intensive management - rewilded ecosystems provide more natural successional processes. In return, these rewilded ecosystems are likely to be more resilient in the face of environmental change[2]. 

5.5.            There is growing evidence to demonstrate the positive impact that rewilding can have on biodiversity. For example, the restoration of the Carrifran Wildwood in the Scottish Borders has created an emerging and inspiring sea of woodland in an otherwise bare and ecologically impoverished landscape. The project has planted over half a million trees in the lower valley and thousands of shrubs and trees in the high hanging valleys to recreate montane scrub and natural tree line. As a result, the valley is now home to many different species of woodland birds that had been lost to the area, including Blackcap, Lesser Redpoll, Dunnock, Garden Warbler, Siskin, Mistle Thrush, Tree Pipit, Great Tit, Robin, Blackbird, Woodcock and Song Thrush. The total number of all woodland birds recorded increased consistently from 4 individuals in 2007 to 262 in 2015[3].

5.6.            Academic studies show that rewilding provides a net benefit for biodiversity, for example beavers are reported to facilitate whole-communities of water birds[4], provide support for frogs throughout their life-cycle[5], and support a higher diversity of dragonflies and damselflies, molluscs and caddis flies[6].

What evidence is there to support the incentivising of such schemes in any new land management policies?  

5.7.            There is a significant and growing evidence base which demonstrates the benefits of rewilding. This includes both environmental and direct socio-economic benefits, as follows.

5.8.            Flood alleviation - There is significant evidence that demonstrates the impact rewilding techniques can have in alleviating flood risk. This is summarised in our new report “How rewilding reduces flood risk”. Tree planting and natural regeneration of trees and scrub, in particular, can significantly reduce flooding, soil erosion and water pollution.[7] Studies of the Pontbren Project[8] in mid-Wales, where shelter belts of trees covering just 5% of the land were planted across slopes in sheep pastures, discovered that water infiltrated into the soil under the trees up to 67 times the rate at which it infiltrated into the soil under the pasture. One research paper[9] estimates that reforesting just 5% of the upland landscape reduces flood peaks by around 29%, while full reforestation would reduce them by some 50%. A study for the National Trust[10] concluded that at a small catchment scale (less than 100 km2) – which applies to 97% of England and Wales – land management has a quantitative impact upon run-off and can be used as part of an integrated approach to flood risk management.

5.9.            One low-cost solution to reducing flooding is to allow beavers to return to our rivers. The dams they build and woody debris they place in watercourses can have a powerful influence in slowing the flow. Following the reintroduction of beavers to Belgium, one study[11] found a significant lowering of peak flow downstream of dams, and an increase in the interval between major floods. Natural England’s study in 2009 on the feasibility of reintroducing beavers to Britain[12] found that beavers regulate river flows and reduce flood peak levels downstream. Results from a University of Exeter study of a new colony of beavers in Devon show that as well as helping to regulate water flow, beaver dams can clean water and boost fish populations.[13] Whilst beavers will not help in every catchment, as part of a package of measures on smaller scale catchments they could be a cost-effective part of flood prevention.

5.10.        Water quality - Research by the Environment Agency suggests returning England’s water bodies to a good ecological condition could generate benefits worth £21 billion over a 37-year period, for a cost of £16 billion[14]. These benefits could be achieved by self-restoring ecosystems where succession delivered more woodland, beavers restored wetlands, and drainage blocking and moss community re-seeding restored peatlands[15]. Beaver dams also act as a filter capturing pollutants such as agricultural fertilisers[16].

5.11.        Carbon sequestration/emissions - It has been proposed that rewilding will result in the sequestration of carbon dioxide, particularly as a result of woodland regeneration on ex-farmland[17]. Analysis reported by the Natural Capital Committee indicates that planting 250,000 ha of woodland near to urban areas in each of England, Scotland and Wales on mineral soils would deliver a net economic benefit of nearly £550 million when accounting for recreation and carbon sequestration benefits[18]. Creating the conditions that allow natural tree regeneration through rewilding could make this even more cost effective[19].

5.12.        Soil protection - Globally, it is estimated that over a third of the world’s soils have been degraded. If rates continue on the current trajectory the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates the world on average has just 60 more years of growing crops[20].  And this soil degradation is releasing billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, contributing to climate change and increasing pressure on already fragile systems. Soil degradation is estimated to be costing England and Wales £1.2 billion per year[21]. The causes include: erosion, compaction, loss of organic matter, loss of soil biodiversity, and diffuse contamination.

5.13.        At the same time, world population and food demand are increasing. We’re approaching the limits of our oil and water supply. Climate change is already having an impact on the world’s major food-producing regions, particularly through reduced water availability. Food prices are fluctuating in response to a variety of factors. The response has been a widespread concern about food security and an assumption that our top priority here in Britain will be to produce more food than we do now. Yet 50% of food produced globally is wasted[22], with the UK wastage the highest in Europe[23]. As pressures on land use rise further, there is a danger of making false choices between producing food, developing land and caring for the environment. It’s clear that our long-term food security, indeed our long term survival, is entirely dependent on the health of the natural environment and the natural resources which arise from it.

5.14.        In less than a decade the soils at the Knepp rewilding project[24] are coming back to life – mycorrhizal fungi, lob worms and other soil fauna are returning at a rate far greater than predicted, showing the potential for rewilding to restore degraded soils.

5.15.        Management efficiency - Intensive management of ecosystems, whether to preserve biodiversity or deliver ecosystem services, is often expensive and perpetual. Restoring ecological processes and natural systems can create the ecological conditions that support species, and balance the delivery of ecosystem services so that management can be minimised[25]. For example, the restoration of the degraded Wicken Fen, England, has saved an estimated £1014/ha/year in management costs. Even after accounting for the loss of agricultural income, a valuation of the ecosystem services restored shows a net gain of £152/ha/year[26]. Elsewhere, beavers are reported to be a more cost-effective approach to creating deadwood than human management[27]. It has been suggested that wolf reintroduction to Scotland would save Highland estates costs of culling the deer herd[28].

5.16.        Tourism The UN World Tourism Organisation (www.unwto.org) states that tourism is one of the largest and fastest growing economic sectors in the world. It presently contributes 9 per cent to global GDP, accounts for one in 11 jobs worldwide, and represents 6 per cent of global exports. Recent research carried out by UNWTO has shown that 8% of all trips currently sold worldwide can be described as ecotourism, with a potential grow to 15%.  Analysis of these statistics suggests that ecotourism is growing at between 6 and 8 times the rate of normal tourism.  The Confederation of British Industry report on wildlife watching in Europe[29] highlights the following examples of species-focused tourism:

• Scotland: €6 – 9.6 million is spent annually by tourists viewing white-tailed eagles on the Isle of Mull alone.
• Finland: Bear watching generated €6 million in total economic output during the last survey in 2012.
• Sweden: Nature based tourism is valued at approximately € 390 million per annum.
• Spain: The average earnings per tourism operator focusing on wolf watching are €17,600 per annum.

Rewilding offers an opportunity to grow domestic tourism by tapping into this growing market, and to revitalise rural communities. A World Bank report[30] cites numerous studies that show nature-based tourism as a substantial source of employment and income in rural areas. Nature-based tourism enterprises can also have a national influence on employment creation and economic development through the creation of jobs in related economic sectors such as transport and construction. Nature-based tourism can also bring other direct economic benefits in the form of profit sharing schemes, compensation agreements and land leases, and indirect benefits through public investment in infrastructure, training and public services, such as schools and health centres.

5.17.        Health – Time in nature has been widely shown to benefit both mental and physical health. It is estimated that “if every household in England were provided with good access to quality green space it could save an estimated £2.1 billion in healthcare costs”[31]. Wild nature and increased opportunity to see exciting wildlife could diversify the types of outdoor experience available in Britain and inspire additional people to get outside more regularly to help realise the associated healthcare benefits.

September 2016

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