Woodland has spent centuries being protected from animals like the European bison. So it seemed a curious idea to release them into a Kent woodland with the hope that they would make a terrible mess of the place.
That, it turned out, was precisely the point.
I recently watched a documentary about the Wilder Blean project in Kent, where a small herd of European bison has been introduced into ancient woodland. At first glance it seemed almost absurd. Here were conservationists standing back and watching Europe’s largest land mammal strip bark from trees, snap branches, churn the ground into mud and force its way through dense undergrowth. Every instinct tells us this is destruction. Yet the more the bison behaved like bison, the more delighted everyone seemed to become. It was a wonderful paradox.
For generations we have managed woodland by protecting it from disturbance. Fallen trees were cleared away. Grazing was controlled. Dead timber removed. Woodland became something to be looked after, almost like a carefully tended garden. Then along comes an animal whose entire purpose is to ignore our careful plans.
The destruction is a beginning
The remarkable thing is that what appears to be destruction is actually creation. A tree pushed over allows sunlight to reach the woodland floor for the first time in decades. Dormant seeds germinate. Wildflowers appear. Insects arrive to feed upon them. Birds follow the insects. Dead wood, so often seen as untidy, becomes home to fungi, beetles and countless microscopic organisms quietly recycling life back into the soil. The woodland doesn’t become poorer. It becomes more complicated.
Perhaps that is the point.
For reasons I can’t quite explain, we have become rather attached to tidy landscapes. We mow verges before wildflowers have finished blooming. We clear leaves because they look neglected. We remove fallen trees because they appear unhealthy. We dredge rivers that naturally want to twist and meander. Even our parks often resemble outdoor sitting rooms, every shrub clipped into polite obedience.
We seem happiest when nature behaves itself. Yet nature has never shown the slightest interest in being tidy.
Nature is naturally untidy
Walk through an ancient woodland that has been left largely to its own devices and it can feel almost chaotic. Branches lie where they have fallen. Moss slowly consumes rotting trunks. Brambles surge into clearings before giving way to young trees. Nothing appears organised. Nothing appears efficient. Everything, however, is busy. Life thrives in the apparent disorder.
Watching those bison, I found myself wondering whether we’ve confused neatness with health, and the more I thought about it, the more examples began to appear.
For centuries they disappeared from Britain altogether. Their return has been celebrated because they do something engineers have struggled to imitate successfully for generations. They slow water. Their dams create wetlands, filter pollution, provide habitat for fish, amphibians, dragonflies and birds, and even reduce flooding further downstream.
To an ecologist, they are extraordinary. To a farmer whose field has unexpectedly become part of a pond, they may be rather less welcome – both views can be true.
Then there are wild boar.
If you’ve never encountered the aftermath of a family of boar searching for food, imagine lending your lawn to an enthusiastic rotavator overnight. Village greens have been rooted over. Gardens carefully tended for years have been transformed into muddy excavations. Golf courses have required repair. Their determined snouts seem capable of finding bulbs, roots and grubs hidden beneath almost any surface. They are wonderfully efficient. Just not always where we’d like them to be.
Yet ecologists speak of wild boar in remarkably similar terms to European bison. They disturb the soil. They expose dormant seeds. They create tiny habitats for insects and wildflowers. Their apparent vandalism becomes tomorrow’s biodiversity. The difference isn’t what they do. It’s where they do it.
A bison making a glorious mess inside a managed rewilding project becomes a conservation success. A wild boar making exactly the same glorious mess on the village cricket pitch quickly becomes tomorrow’s parish council agenda – perhaps that says as much about us as it does about the animals.
The same pattern repeats itself elsewhere. White-tailed eagles soaring once more over parts of Scotland have become symbols of successful conservation, attracting visitors from across the country. Yet some shepherds look up at exactly the same bird with rather less enthusiasm, concerned about the welfare of young lambs.
Pine martens are helping red squirrel populations recover by suppressing grey squirrels, but poultry keepers occasionally take a different view.
Rewilding, it seems, depends very much on where you’re standing.
Evolution rewards function
The more I considered these stories, the less I found myself thinking about ecology and the more I found myself thinking about people.
We are surprisingly selective in the wildlife we choose to admire. Some animals seem to possess an almost effortless public appeal. Otters slide gracefully through rivers. Red squirrels dart delicately among pine branches. Barn owls drift silently across twilight fields. They appear on greetings cards, calendars and children’s books with reassuring regularity.
Others face a steeper climb. The wild boar, with its coarse bristles, determined snout and a face only a mother could love, struggles to compete in the popularity stakes.
Yet nature couldn’t care less. Evolution has never rewarded charm. It rewards function.
A beetle recycling dead timber is every bit as important as a kingfisher flashing electric blue across a stream. Fungi quietly dissolving fallen branches are no less remarkable because they fail to appear on biscuit tins or Christmas cards. Entire ecosystems depend upon creatures most of us never notice.
Perhaps conservation sometimes suffers from the same weakness. We don’t always protect what is most important. We often protect what captures our imagination. That isn’t a criticism, it’s simply human nature; stories have always moved us more deeply than statistics.
A magnificent bison emerging from the trees stirs something ancient within us. It reminds us that Britain was once home to creatures that have long since disappeared. Wolves shaped deer populations. Wild boar rooted through forests. Beavers transformed rivers. Even the mighty aurochs, ancestors of modern cattle, once wandered these islands before vanishing forever.
When we speak of reintroducing species, perhaps what we are really doing is reopening a conversation with landscapes that has been silent for centuries, but these conversations require compromise.
For thousands of years civilisation has largely been a story of control. We straightened rivers, drained marshes, cleared forests, built walls, marked boundaries. Every generation inherited a slightly more organised landscape than the one before it. Order brought safety, brought food, built villages, towns and eventually cities. It is hardly surprising that we instinctively trust neatness. Disorder feels risky.
Nature’s creativity lies in disturbance
Yet nature has always worked differently. Its creativity lies in disturbance. Storms reshape coastlines. Rivers burst their banks. Trees fall. Fires clear ground. Animals graze, browse, dig and trample. From that apparent chaos comes renewal.
Perhaps the European bison is simply reminding us of something we had forgotten. The documentary began as a story about conservation. It ended somewhere rather different. It became a story about expectations. About the curious belief that healthy landscapes should somehow remain permanently composed, every tree in its place, every hedge neatly trimmed, every path swept clear. Perhaps we’ve been expecting the wrong thing all along.
Maybe a truly healthy woodland shouldn’t always look peaceful. Maybe it should occasionally look as though something enormous has wandered through it with absolutely no concern for appearances.
Because the woodland isn’t trying to impress us. It isn’t trying to look beautiful, it isn’t trying to be tidy – it is simply trying to stay alive.
And perhaps the greatest challenge facing conservation isn’t persuading wild animals to return. Nature, given half a chance, is remarkably good at that. The real challenge may be persuading ourselves that a living landscape was never meant to behave like a well-kept garden.
Maybe, just maybe, we have spent so long taming the countryside that we’ve forgotten what wild actually looks like.
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