What the Spring 2026 UK elections mean for rewilding

Recent elections across Britain have ushered in a shake up to our political landscape, reshaping how decisions will be made in England, Scotland and Wales. For anyone who cares about the future of nature recovery, it’s important to pay close attention to these shifts in power.

We asked, you acted 

Before we dive into what the elections mean for rewilding, we’d like to say a huge thank you to you, our incredible supporters. Many of you wrote to your Scottish and Welsh election candidates or your Member of Parliament (MP) calling for a wilder future. We know your voices made a difference, and it’s been inspiring to see some of your political representatives’ replies and offers to champion rewilding. 

But looking at the election results and thinking about where we go from here, a stark reality remains. Nature is our life support system. Our health, our livelihoods, our future food production and our climate resilience, including mitigating the extreme heat we’ve recently experienced, all depend on thriving, healthy ecosystems. 

By all rights, the climate and nature emergencies should have been at the heart of these elections. Sadly they weren’t. All too often, politicians dodged the difficult topics and refused to make commitments. But the public’s demand for real nature recovery hasn’t faded. Across Britain, people like you want to see a wilder, healthier future. We must keep the pressure on, making our collective voice for rewilding heard and ensuring bold, urgent nature recovery is impossible to ignore. 

In Scotland, the Scottish National Party (SNP) has returned to power in Holyrood. As is typical for Scotland’s proportional system, they don’t hold an outright majority, meaning they will need to collaborate with other parties to pass laws. For nature recovery to succeed, we will work with Scottish Rewilding Alliance allies to grow broad support across all political parties. Scotland could and should become the world’s first Rewilding Nation.

There are pitfalls ahead. Scotland currently has no dedicated nature minister, a major oversight and something we’re campaigning with allies to address. With major policy pieces like the Natural Environment Act and the new Biodiversity Strategy taking up a lot of energy and focus to get right, there’s a very real danger that support for practical, on-the-ground rewilding and nature restoration projects will be sidelined. Scotland’s landscapes and seascapes are crying out for strong leadership, but it remains an open question whether this new administration will deliver it.

We know the potential is there. In the lead-up to the election, on World Rewilding Day, we helped host the first-ever rewilding hustings as part of the Scottish Rewilding Alliance. Members of the public were given the chance to question representatives from the major political parties. The response was telling: every single party in attendance, including the SNP, Scottish Labour, Scottish Greens, Liberal Democrats and Reform UK, said they supported rewilding. 

Support alone, however, is not enough. We need a government that views urgent, large-scale nature recovery at land and sea as a core pillar of health, economy and community restoration.

Rewilding can do just that, with the power to reverse biodiversity loss, mitigate climate change, buffer communities against devastating floods and droughts, restore our soils, and boost our wellbeing. Crucially, rewilding can repair the broken pieces of our ecosystems while supporting struggling rural areas with thriving, sustainable economies. This vision requires political courage, a definitive plan and clear targets for policy and legal changes. We will continue to work with the Scottish Rewilding Alliance to make this happen.

In England, the recent local elections delivered a major shake up, particularly for the Labour Party, which lost almost 1500 seats, mainly to Reform and the Greens. These losses have intensified political pressure on Prime Minister Keir Starmer. With a leadership election anticipated in the coming months, new policy ideas and a possible reshuffle, including the ministers responsible for nature and the environment, may well follow. When environmental leadership is in flux, our role becomes even more critical, and we must make sure nature recovery rises in the government’s priorities. 

While central government shifts, the local election results open up a powerful new opportunity for nature recovery. Local administrations across England that are strapped for cash should take a look at their public landholdings. Not to sell them, but to find cost effective management solutions like rewilding. Working with other local land managers, councils can facilitate and deliver large-scale rewilding in rural and coastal areas. This is an opportunity for action.

We don’t have to look far for rewilding inspiration at a local government level. The Mayor of London’s Rewilding Fund is a stellar example of progressive local action, restoring missing species and enhancing green and blue spaces. If a sprawling metropolis like London can back rewilding to bring wild nature back, councils across the rest of England certainly can.

Finally, we must push local authorities to connect the dots better between people and access to wilder nature. Despite the financial strain facing local government budgets, we will continue to advocate for public transport solutions that give urban communities more opportunities to experience wilder landscapes. True nature recovery means the benefits of wild nature aren’t a privilege for the few, but a right for everyone.

For the first time since devolution came to Wales in 1999, Labour is not leading the Welsh Government. The new largest party, Plaid Cymru, has a big task ahead and will need to collaborate closely with other parties to make decisions. Most Members of the Senedd are completely new to their roles. So this is a big opportunity for rewilding — we have a fresh canvas to educate new decision-makers on the benefits that a wilder, nature-rich Wales can bring for people and nature.

Our approach in Wales will be for Wales and by Wales, deeply respecting local culture, community roots and the Welsh language. We’re proud to have helped start the Welsh Rewilding Alliance to lead the charge. Looking closely at Plaid Cymru’s manifesto, we see a mix of welcome steps forward and some significant gaps to be filled:

Marine protection: Plaid’s manifesto acknowledges the urgent need to complete Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) a welcome and necessary move. It specifically mentions phasing out destructive bottom trawling, which will be a great step forward, but leaves us in the dark on timescales or the creation of highly protected No Take Zones. More detail and action is now needed.

Climate and Nature Action Plan: A commitment to update this plan within their first 100 days is extremely important and sets a good tone and direction. But the detail must be far more ambitious than the current focus, which is almost entirely on protecting existing nature-rich areas. Just 12% of Wales land is protected for nature. We need to be creating new wild spaces, and connecting and expanding existing ones. If Wales is to meet its vital target of protecting 30% of its land and sea for nature by 2030, we must expand the areas where we support land managers to deliver nature recovery as the primary focus. Wales isn’t short of plans, but we need to see a clear pathway to support change, such as the continued development of the Sustainable Farming Scheme to support natural process-led restoration. 

National Seagrass Plan: Promising to continue this plan is an excellent commitment, as seagrass is one of Wales’s most efficient carbon-storing habitats. Sadly, other vital marine restoration projects, like restoring native oyster reefs, are missing. We’ll be pushing for this to be looked at. And there’s no indication of whether the marine licensing system will be updated, to make it easier for communities to engage in positive restoration of the ocean. 

Rural development: Recognising that rural areas need dedicated economic, cultural, and social growth strategies is welcome, offering opportunities to deliver nature recovery, which creates much-coveted jobs, and provides opportunities for young people to stay in their communities. The commitment to a ​“community right-to-buy” for local assets, including land, is a real positive. Communities and local action must be at the heart of nature recovery here in Wales. Supporting agroforestry (the ​“right tree in the right place”) will help shift perceptions of trees and scrub in farming landscapes. While helpful for farmers already rewilding, this policy alone won’t expand wild ecosystems at scale, so again more action needed.

Notably the manifesto contains no mention of rewilding. It also stops short of supporting core rewilding principles like restoring natural processes and includes no commitments to bringing back vital keystone species like the beaver.