Lorne Scott grows wheat and oats, but sees just as much value in grassland preservation

Following several years of preparation, the Rewilding Oder Delta team are now taking the next step in marine rewilding. This summer, the first pilot seagrass meadows are being planted on Germany’s Baltic coast, testing an innovative approach that could help revive one of Europe’s most valuable underwater habitats.

Rewilding is not land abandonment; it requires carefully considered action to restore natural processes and functions. We must learn from the complex habitat mosaics that once characterised Britain’s uplands, while preparing them for a climate with no historical equivalent.

The task is to manage short-term transition risks while allowing ecosystems to reorganise into functional, climate-resilient states. Here are a few suggestions:

1. Bring back the bog

This starts by making fire-prone landscapes much wetter. Blocking drains, covering bare peat and restoring Sphagnum keeps water in the ground and reduces deep peat combustion. 

1. Restore wet riverscapes and ponds

Upland headwaters and valleys have been drained and straightened, speeding water out of these landscapes. Emerging science suggests that re-meandering streams, reconnecting floodplains and recovering wetlands can act as firebreaks. During dry weather, wetter and more varied river corridors could interrupt continuous fuels and provide refuges for wildlife.

1. Bring back missing giants

Cattle, horses, deer and bison create patchier vegetation by grazing, browsing and trampling in different ways. Instead of continuous areas of flammable vegetation, they produce a landscape with natural breaks that slow the spread of fire.

1. Recover broadleaf woodland

Evidence from more than 26,000 wildfires in Spain shows broadleaf woodland had the lowest ignition risk, while pine and shrublands were among the most fire-prone habitats. Even under extreme fire weather modelling, broadleaf woodland reduced fire intensity fivefold.

1. Rewild with people

Our research shows rewilding must include support from communities learning to coexist with more unpredictable landscapes. In the short term, prevention, intensified monitoring, early detection and professional response must manage the risks of transition. Better warnings, rapid reporting and early detection can make visitors and residents part of the defence.

THE VIEW SAYS IT ALL !!

Cinereous vulture chicks have hatched in Spain’s Iberian Highlands for the first time in around a century. With the species also breeding again in Bulgaria’s Rhodope Mountains following a 30-year absence, these twin milestones show how long-term rewilding efforts are effectively restoring one of Europe’s largest birds of prey across its former range.

When I was in school I was taught about settlers arriving to an “untouched landscape.” Native Americans were part of the story, but it was said they lived “lightly” on the land.

And then, in my 40s I take a prescribed-burn class and it’s like the world turned upside down.

It’s taken me more than two full years to wrap my head around what I learned in that class about the Indigenous people’s impact on the land. That they burned the prairies so often and for so long that entire ecosystems adapted to prefer regular burnings - to need it to stay healthy.

The shear scale of that hits me the same way as gazing at the Milky Way on a clear, dark night.

It rocks everything I thought I knew about humans’ roll in the natural world.  

Even though I first learned all this a while ago, it’s recently gotten stirred up because a couple of weeks ago I stumbled upon this really cool Story Map that has collected and mapped all these firsthand accounts of Native Americans burning. From the breadth of these accounts, where they regularly mention the Indians burning “every year,” I still have trouble believing that fires aren’t a bigger part of the pioneer stories. 

Though maybe it was always there and I just didn’t realize? 

I went back to my Little House on the Prairie books and found a passage where Pa saves the house from a prairie fire. The neighbors speculate that Indigenous people started the fire to drive out the settlers. But Pa rejects that interpretation:

“Pa didn’t believe it. He said the Indians had always burned the prairie to make green grass grow more quickly, and traveling easier.”

I loved these books. I remember the fire, but not this interpretation of the fire. It didn’t register what this might mean. That it was stewardship, that it was intentional, that it was scaled to tens of thousands of acres of prairies. 

When I talk to people at my day job (marketers, not ecologists) they are blown away. I made a video about it to help me spread the word to my friends and family and explain to them why we set our land in Wisconsin on fire. (I swear my parents thought we had lost our minds the first time we did it.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYAObeYphGs

I’m super curious…Am I alone in this? Is this a new or recent revelation for anyone else or just me? Did it change you as much as it changed me when you learned it?

Welcome to r/Ecoregion6.

Announcing a new sub originated as a home for Ecologists, Restoration Practitioners, Indigenous knowledge holders and scientists to share research, discuss projects, methodology, procedures, concepts, etc. with the theme of finding connections, collaboration and solutions. Exploring the diverse ecosystems in the Northern Rocky Mountains, generally in Ecoregion 6 but in any other associated Ecoregion as well.  

Janzen is one of the most influential tropical ecologists of his generation. He helped change how scientists understand tropical forests, especially the intricate relationships among plants, insects, predators, pathogens, and seeds. He also helped change what conservation means. 

Paul Lister bought the Alladale estate in Sutherland, about an hour north of Inverness, when it was mainly used for traditional activities such as deer stalking and salmon fishing.

Over the past 23 years, the property has been transformed into the Alladale Wilderness Reserve, an eco-tourism retreat and a major ecological restoration project in the Scottish Highlands.

When Lister bought the estate, centuries of heavy grazing by large numbers of red deer and sheep had removed much of its native woodland.

Only about one per cent of Scotland’s ancient Caledonian Forest remains intact.

To help the land recover naturally, reserve managers fenced off large areas to keep grazing animals out and began a major tree-planting programme.

Working with local environmental groups and forestry teams, the estate has planted one million native trees, including Scots pine, birch, rowan, alder and willow. 

As the trees grew, the new woodland began providing the food and shelter needed by wildlife that had disappeared from the glens.