This month there is a global pow-wow with nearly every country on the planet seeking to stop the continuing destruction of nature. We know that we are the cause of this destruction and yet we persist. Perhaps more accurately we should recognise that certain sections of humanity are vastly more responsible for the destruction than others and that this section is largely in a minority, driven by greed in the pursuit of self enrichment and power.
These Conventions on Biological Diversity (CBD) are held every two years and rarely receive the same attention as the Climate Cop. This year’s meeting in Armenia’s capital, Yerevan, between the 19th and 30th October will be the 17th time.
In 2022 nationwide governments reached an ambitious deal to better protect the natural world recognising that the planet faced the largest loss of life since the end of the Cretaceous period 65 million years ago. One might imagine that this would would be an almighty cause for widespread concern and yet governments have never met a single UN target on nature since the first CBD was created in Rio back in 1992.
If we consider ourselves to be a part of the natural world, which we most certainly are. and are entirely dependent on it for our own well-being. it would seem to be utter madness not to act.
Just recently I was attempting to be organise my ever growing heap of paperwork when I came across a piece of work I had completed back in 1979 in my final year of my degree at Wye College, a B.Sc in Rural Environment Studies. It was a Special Study, or thesis, titled A Case For The More Active Conservation Of Mammals in Great Britain. Using AI I was able to convert a typed manuscript into a pdf and it provided the following summary:
“A Case for the More Active Conservation of Mammals in Great Britain” is a 1979 special study report by T. Veall (Wye College), arguing that British nature conservation has neglected mammals and should embrace reintroduction and introduction of species as active management tools.
The core argument: Britain’s mammal fauna is naturally impoverished (54 species versus 184 in Western Europe generally), partly due to the English Channel cutting the islands off during postglacial recolonisation, and partly due to habitat fragmentation since the Neolithic agricultural revolution. Species with large range requirements — wolf, bear, lynx, wild boar, elk, beaver, and others — were lost largely through habitat loss and direct persecution, with the wolf surviving in Scotland until the 1740s.
Structural critique: The report examines Britain’s conservation institutions, noting a gap between the Countryside Commission (focused on recreation and access) and the Nature Conservancy Council (focused on scientific site protection), which voluntary bodies like the RSPB have partly filled. It criticizes the influential 1977 Nature Conservation Review for undervaluing mammals relative to birds and butterflies, and for basing site selection criteria on largely subjective, sometimes vague principles.
Reintroduction as conservation strategy: Drawing on island biogeography theory (MacArthur & Wilson) and work by researchers like Nevard, Penfold, and Picton, the author argues that most existing British nature reserves (averaging just 30.5 hectares) are far too small to sustain viable mammal populations, especially large predators — citing estimates that a wolf population might need 10,000+ hectares. The paper highlights an ambitious proposal to use the Isle of Rhum National Nature Reserve (11,000 ha) as a reintroduction site for a fuller suite of native mammal and bird species, potentially creating one of Europe’s most complex conservation experiments.
Addressing objections: The report systematically rebuts common arguments against reintroduction — that introduced species cause extinctions (evidence is weak at a national level), that lost habitat can’t support returning species (contradicted by successful reintroductions elsewhere in Europe, e.g. beavers in Switzerland), that conservation should focus only on existing species, and that new introductions risk disease (manageable via quarantine). It reviews historical and accidental introductions (Table 2 lists species such as grey squirrel, coypu, mink, and Chinese muntjac, most introduced accidentally with varying ecological impact) versus deliberate reintroductions.
Policy proposal: The paper endorses Pinder’s (1978) proposed framework requiring reintroduction/introduction proposals to be submitted to a unified wildlife authority, with the burden of proof placed on objectors rather than proponents — intended to enable more democratic, transparent decision-making than the current fragmented, legally inconsistent system (spanning the Animals Act 1971, Deer Act 1963, and Badgers Act 1973).
Broader case for value: Beyond ecological restoration, the author argues reintroduction could deliver economic benefits through tourism (citing Kenya’s wildlife-driven tourism revenue as a model), public enjoyment (surveys showing visitors most want to see large mammals like deer and badgers), and ecosystem function (e.g., sea otters restoring kelp forest diversity in the Pacific).
Conclusion: The report closes by arguing that mammals were the first group to suffer from human land-use intensification due to their large range needs, yet remain the most neglected in British conservation strategy — a “pity” given their potential role in already heavily human-modified landscapes. It calls for actively conserving mammals rather than passively protecting existing habitat and hoping species persist on their own.
The document includes two data tables (habitat classifications of European mammals, and a catalogue of introduced mammal species with dates, methods and impacts) and an extensive reference list drawing on 1960s–70s conservation biology literature.
I then asked AI, Claude, whether this could be viewed as an early call for “rewilding”, before the term and its subsequent development became more widespread in the public sphere. It responded with the following:
Yes, I think that’s a fair and interesting reading — with some important caveats about what the paper does and doesn’t share with the modern rewilding concept.
Where it clearly anticipates rewilding:
- Trophic restoration logic. The paper explicitly invokes what’s now called trophic cascade thinking — citing Paine’s (1969) work on keystone predation and the sea otter/kelp forest example, and speculating that the absence of large carnivores and ungulates in Britain has let herbivore populations run unchecked, suppressing woodland regeneration. That’s structurally identical to the ecological reasoning behind modern rewilding (think wolves and Yellowstone, a case popularized decades later).
- Reintroducing missing megafauna to restore function, not just numbers. The Rhum proposal — treating an 11,000 ha reserve as a site to reconstruct something closer to a functioning pre-persecution ecosystem, including predators — is very close to the “core, corridor, carnivore” logic often associated with rewilding. Table 1’s “wild conditions” category (bear, wolf, lynx, bison, aurochs, ibex) reads almost like a modern rewilding species wish-list.
- Explicit dissatisfaction with pure preservationism. The paper frames existing British conservation as passive — protecting what’s left rather than actively recreating lost ecological complexity — and argues for a more interventionist, “creative conservation” approach (citing Bradshaw 1976 on restoration/recreation as conservation goals). That’s the same philosophical shift rewilding later made central: from managing decline to actively restoring dynamism and wildness.
- Minimum area/viability thinking. The concern with reserve size, island biogeography, and the area needed to sustain viable large-predator populations mirrors present-day rewilding’s emphasis on scale — that meaningful restoration requires much larger, connected land areas than typical nature reserves.
Where it differs from rewilding as the term came to be used (from the 1990s, via Soulé & Noss and others):
- No emphasis on self-willed land or minimal management. Rewilding as later formalized emphasizes reducing human control and letting natural processes (including disturbance, succession, and predation) run with minimal intervention. Veall’s paper is more managerial — closer to a “wildlife management” and land-use-optimization framing, complete with proposed bureaucratic approval processes for introductions.
- Motivated partly by amenity/economic case-making. A good chunk of the argument leans on tourism revenue and public enjoyment (citing Kenya’s wildlife tourism, visitor surveys wanting to see deer and badgers) — a more utilitarian, human-benefit framing than the ecocentric ethos most associated with rewilding.
- No corridor/connectivity network vision. Modern rewilding (e.g., Rewilding Europe, Yellowstone-to-Yukon) emphasizes large-scale connected landscapes across multiple reserves. Veall’s paper is essentially proposing a single flagship site (Rhum), not a network.
So: it’s a genuine conceptual precursor — the ecological reasoning (trophic restoration, keystone species, minimum viable area, moving beyond static preservation) is recognizably proto-rewilding, articulated a good 15+ years before “rewilding” became a coined term in conservation biology (usually credited to Soulé and Noss’s 1998 paper). But it lacks the wilderness-ethic and minimal-intervention philosophy that later became central to the concept, and reads more as an argument for strategic, managed reintroduction within Britain’s existing conservation bureaucracy than a call for hands-off wilderness restoration.
Its hard to realise that I wrote this nearly 50 years ago, and it was at a time when research involved physical travelling to find libraries that kept the books and papers that might have been relevant in trying to gain an understanding. In other words it was a much more time- and- effort-consuming process, but one that remains in my memory. I have to wonder if I had simply been able to sit at a keyboard looking at a computer screen, doing Google searches, whether it would have been a completely different experience and one that lacked the same meaning for me and perhaps erased from my own memory today.
It is even harder to realise that despite some conservation success stories the overriding one is of destruction and decline at a rate unprecedented in the previous five mass extinctions. So whilst there are some who may consider that our future can be handed over to AI and its delusional billionaire owners, we will all live in a far healthier world if we pay far more attention to the living world and show that we care with our actions
We created the destruction and we need to sort it out. And we need to start doing it yesterday.