Visit from Alastair Driver, Director Rewilding Britain

We were excited to have Alastair Driver with us recently for a morning with local landowners.  Alastair is a Director of Rewilding Britain and is one of the best-known names in British conservation, rewilding and environmental policy.

Alastair has had a long career in conservation including 14 years with the Environment Agency, latterly as National Conservation Manager.  In that role he came to realise that, despite the best intentions and hard work of many conservationists and a great number of valuable projects around the country, we are not winning the battle and that we have to adopt a more ambitious approach if we are to halt and reverse the loss of nature.  Alastair spoke about how rewilding at a landscape scale is required if we are to help nature recover in the UK.

Much of Alastair’s time is spent with large projects where he can add greatest value – the larger the site the greater the opportunity to allow natural processes to shape outcomes and he has recently returned to the UK from visiting projects in North America that are on a different scale to UK efforts.  The small farm landscape of the Welsh Borders does not lend itself to large scale rewilding but there was still much that Alastair could share that was of great interest and relevance to the audience and he remarked upon how much he enjoyed talking to such an enthusiastic and knowledgeable group.

Alastair’s enthusiasm and optimism was encouraging for local landowners, wherever they are on the wilding spectrum and a reminder of the importance of collaboration to achieve connectivity and impact at a landscape scale.