After centuries of preened hedgerows and manicured gardens, Britons are looking to return their landscape to its rugged roots. Among those driving the trend: a disproportionate number of people who work with computers
LONDON “You see there, where all the earth has been disturbed?” asks Tracy Pepler, pointing to a patch of soil at the base of a grove of chestnut trees. “That was made by wild boar. We haven’t seen them yet, but we know they’re here. Maybe if we’re lucky we’ll see one today.”
She continues up the trail, along the border of a small woodland in East Sussex, England. The sun is shining, the ground mossy and moist, and the air hovering around a balmy 12 degrees Celsius. It’s a two-hour train ride from London but an entire world away.
Tracy and her husband, Mike, aren’t just out for a weekend stroll – they own this wood, having bought eight acres for about $80,000 last May from the private forest dealership, woodlands.co.uk. Their plot is part of a much larger forest that has been broken up into a patchwork of small, privately owned plots.
“When we inherited a bit of money from my husband’s grandmother, we thought, well, we could put a deposit down on a house and take on a debt of 200,000 GBP ($400,000) – or we could put the money into something outright,” she says.
So instead of a townhouse in the city, the Peplers bought 3.2 hectares of chestnut trees (with the odd oak). They even relocated from Oxford so they could live nearby and visit every weekend. And not just to enjoy the peace and quiet; Mike has been busy all day chopping down trees, clearing away brambles, and stacking twigs for a fire.
Before the Peplers bought their slice, the entire wood was owned by a London-based consortium, which – like many owners of wood decades ago – held the area for tax reasons and neglected the trees for decades. So there is a lot of work to be done to restore its glory: clearing and restoring the old foot and bridle paths, removing invasive species like rhododendron, and coppicing the trees – a traditional method of forest harvesting, quite different from the more Canadian method of clear felling, which involves cutting trees (usually hazel or chestnut) down to the base so that new shoots can grow continuously from the same roots.
Sweat is pouring from Mike’s forehead. It’s a lot of work, but he’s enjoying every second of it. “It’s wonderful to be outdoors,” he says. “And, as Christians, we believe that God wants us to look after a little corner of His world.”
This might seem like an eccentric way to use their surplus time and money, but the Peplers are not unique. All over Britain, people are spending their hard-earned cash – anywhere from $20,000 to $160,000 – to conserve a bit of England’s remaining wilderness.
What’s more, they’re doing so after signingcontracts to never build permanent structures, pipelines or roads, or even to permit activities such as dirt-bike racing.
Martin Chapman bought 2.4 hectares of forest from woodlands.co.uk last November, for $77,000.
“You know those times when you think about life and what you’re going to achieve? I thought about being 80 years old and looking back: What would I be proud of? I thought, it would be great if I could look after a piece of our countryside and improve it myself, so I’d leave something behind in better condition than when I found it,” he says. “And it’s also just a wonderful place to chill out and get away from the house – there’s only so much joy you can get out of sitting within the same four walls.”
The number of people looking to buy woods has doubled in the last three years, says Angus Hanton of woodlands.co.uk, which purchases larger forests from private owners and sells them off in smaller plots. In 2007 they sold 110 plots, up from 70 in 2006 and just six in 1988.
He pegs the increase to three factors: “One, an increase in interest in the outside world. Two, people feeling that this is something practical they can do to help with the environmental problems the world faces. And, three, with the increased stress of modern life, people like to get away from their desks. One thing that has surprised us is the disproportionate number of customers who work with computers – it’s as if owning woodland is an antidote to the modern way of life.”
The rush to own woodland is just one part of a much larger trend in the U.K. They call it “rewilding:” restoring the British landscape – birthplace of preened hedgerows and manicured country gardens – to its rugged roots.
For decades European governments have spent millions on preserving their artistic and architectural history. Now they’re turning their attention to their ecological heritage.
The forests, which Britons began clearing thousands of years ago, are being replanted. While less than five per cent of the U.K. was covered in forest in 1905, today that figure has risen to almost 12 per cent, and continues to rise every year. “Brownfields,” old industrial sites, are being converted to meadows and glades. Wetlands are being restored. In Essex, for example, the government plans to spend $24 million puncturing old sea defences and allowing the ocean to reclaim 730 hectares of farmland for marshes and mudflats, reversing 500 years of coastal draining.
Old species that had been hunted or crowded off the isles centuries ago are returning – sometimes invited back by the restoration of their natural habitats, such as spoonbills and stilts lured back by new wetlands, and sometimes actively reintroduced through expensive breeding programs.
In the past 20 years, the populations of Britain’s rarest birds have increased by between 50 and 75 per cent. Majestic birds of prey like sea eagles, ospreys and red kites are once again flying in British skies after centuries of persecution by farmers and poachers.
Boar, escaped from commercial herds, have reasserted their place in British woods. And conservationists have even more ambitious hopes to reintroduce lynx, elk, and – possibly – wolves to the U.K.
It is not without controversy. Farmers and walking groups are not especially keen to share their country once again with wolves and eagles. But it’s clear that the nation is trying to return to its roots.
It’s important to preserve and restore Britain’s wilderness for economic reasons as well as environmental and psychological, says Nick Collinson, head of conservation policy for The Woodland Trust, a national charity.
For example, a landscape with more forests and wetlands is more resilient to extreme weather. The summer of 2007 saw thousands of people driven from their homes, billions of pounds in damages, and a dozen people killed by flooding.
And a central tenet of ecology holds that the more diverse the species in a landscape, the more resilient the ecosystem is. This is particularly important, says Collinson, in light of climate change. Without a doubt the British landscape is going to change, and in order to cope it needs a broader diversity of habitats and species. And the wild fragments across the country will need to be joined up by wildlife “corridors” – long, narrow stretches of woodland – so that species will be able to move around with the shifting climate.
“But I don’t think we will ever see a big shift back to a truly wild landscape,” he adds. “In Canada you have real unspoiled wilderness. We have nothing like what you have. In some respects, all of the United Kingdom is suburbia. We might think of it as countryside, but nobody really lives in the sticks here. You’re never more than a few kilometres from a road.”
“Our landscape has been highly manipulated over many millennia. So much of what we regard as our ‘natural’ biodiversity is closely related to how we managed the landscape in the past,” says Collinson.
A prime example is the practice of coppicing: cutting trees down to the base every few years, as both the Peplers and the Chapmans are doing. To actively preen the trees might seem, to Canadian eyes, like an odd way to promote biodiversity. But many British woods have been tended in this way for centuries. Some coppices date to the 1200s.
To try and return these forests to a more “wild,” unmanaged state would actually be detrimental to some of the animals and plants that have adapted to the status quo. Coppiced woods allow more light to reach the forest floor, which in truly wild forests would happen when old trees die and fall.
So by speeding up the process, coppicing can – counterintuitively – foster a greater diversity of habitats and hence greater biodiversity.
The Peplers for example hope that by returning their chestnut glades to their former, well-tended state, they will see nightingales and other songbirds return.
“Conservation isn’t just about science, it’s more like art and music,” says Collinson. “There is some black and white, but there is a hell of a lot of grey.”
Tending a wood with the best of intentions is all well and good, “but we’re not especially keen on larger woodlands being split up and sold off into smaller units,” cautions Paul Bunton, community project manager for The Woodland Trust. “If they want to own a bit of the countryside for the right reasons, it’s fantastic, but one of the downsides is that in the long term, if these units aren’t managed in the same way, putting them back together can be difficult. Fragmented ownership can be a real headache.”
He cites Bredhurst, in Kent. The local wood, which was owned in plots by more than 100 people (most of whom hadn’t even visited their wood in decades), had become filled with garbage and frequented by destructive dirt bikers. The local parish council had to band together, raise tens of thousands of pounds, and painstakingly obtain the consent of the private owners in order to clear away the trash (more than 100 tonnes of it) and restore the wood to its former state.
Although it was a lot of work, “there have been knock-on effects for the community,” says Vanessa Jones, chair of the Bredhurst Woodland Action Group. “It brought people together. We’re really pleased. We didn’t think that would happen when we started. We thought it was just about clearing the trash away.”
Economics and climate change aside, for most wood owners, the psychological and spiritual benefits of owning and tending a wood are by far the most rewarding. But, all things considered, the question begs to be asked: Doesn’t it seem a little odd to spend $80,000 on a few hectares of woodland, instead of on, say, a down payment on a house?
“People are brought up to believe that they belong on the property ladder,” says Tracy, “but we’re comfortable in our rented flat, and we saw no reason to go into debt. Yes, some of our friends thought we were a bit crazy – but frankly, I think they’re just jealous.”