Rewilding for a Wilder Derbyshire

We calculate that restoring and protecting native woodland, peat bogs, heaths and species-rich grasslands over six million hectares could sequester 47 million tonnes of CO2 per year. This is more than a tenth of current UK greenhouse gas emissions.

Rewilding key areas and connecting them through a mosaic of nature-rich habitats will allow wildlife to move and habitats to adapt as climate zones shift north. This has the potential to save a significant number of species from climate-driven decline or extinction

Rewilding marks a change in direction, moving from continued managed decline to restoring the abundance of Britain’s wildlife and its missing species. We know nature will bounce back on land and in seas, rivers and lakes, but only if we take the right actions to help it.

Rewilding has the potential to help rural and coastal communities prosper through nature based enterprises, production and employment opportunities. This won’t just happen by itself but will take imagination and coordinated local action to realise.

More nature is better for all of us, providing clean water, flood defences, food, healthy soils, breathable air, and good health. It’s important that we work to ensure everyone has access to wilder nature, even in our urban areas.

This is not true! Yes, scrub is usually heavily controlled in a labour intensive process, over the years this has led in the decline of scrub habitats and the loss of species like turtledoves, nightingales and whitethroats. But, rewilding is all about letting the right habitat exist in the right place, so often rewilding will include the introduction of big hairy cows which don't mind eating the scrub and creating a clearer environment for wildflower meadows, or woodland clearings. This mimics a natural landscape made up of different, unique habitats.

Rewilding is rebalancing our natural ecosystems and sometimes that means reintroducing lost species, but only when we have the wild space to properly support them! We have laws protecting us from dangerous animals, but there are many species such as beavers or pine martens that are missing from the Peaks and could act as ‘ecosystem engineers’ in their natural niches, creating healthier habitats without human intervention. Big predators do have a natural role in the environment but the Peak District does not have the space to sustain them safely just yet, so humans will continue filling in their role for now.

Rewilding is just the restoration of natural processes. This can be an act as small as planting native wildflowers in your window-box to create a feed-stop for wild bees. It can also be a huge project like the bog restoration in the uplands and tree-planting down into the valleys which would hold water and prevent flooding. We are starting to recognise more natural processes as we rewild our nature reserves, but we hope that as we share our learning other land-mangers will be encouraged to do so too.

We have bountiful reservoirs of wildlife right across the Peak District, our nature reserves hold rare species and habitats that we can’t wait to see spill out into the surrounding landscapes! Yes, the Peak District is currently a nature-depleted landscape and we see continuing declines in species and habitats, but with the uptake of rewilding across the region, we are beginning to see nature guide its own recovery.

Grazing animals have been shaping our landscapes for thousands of years, large herbivores such as Auroch, Elk, Wild horse, Wild boar, Red deer and Bison roamed Derbyshire’s landscape. While their grazing may not have looked like any more than the average feeding time for these creatures, their actions were fundamental to the natural development of diverse and dynamic habitats within a complex, healthy and functioning ecosystem. Grazing was, and remains, the most natural and effective way of managing many habitats, shaping the land in ways that human interventions and machinery simply cannot replicate.