Wild ideas to rewild Britain

Public Imagination:

With Kim Somerville, Rewilding Britain

How do we inspire broad, diverse and mass public support for rewilding?

• Put young people in the lead — empower schools, youth groups and influencers to be the champions of rewilding.
• Make rewilding part of our everyday — normalise wilder gardens, parks and public spaces as part of community life.
• Launch a wild doorstep campaign – connect people directly with the nature around them, from urban parks to riversides and coastlines.
• Grow local champions – train and support visible community leaders who can inspire and mobilise their neighbours.
• Show benefits simply – use quick wins (local species returns and wilder urban spaces) to win hearts and minds.

Policy Levers: 

With Matt Browne, The Wildlife Trusts

What policy shifts would unlock rewilding at scale?

• Create a National Nature Service — a new civic institution mobilising people, skills and resources for large-scale rewilding.
• Shine a light on land ownership — deliver full public transparency on who owns land, to open debate and drive accountability.
• National Estate for Nature — set aside areas for nature in the same way land was requisitioned for airfields during the war
• Explore transformative ownership models — from community ownership to public custodianship, shift power over how land is used.
• Tie policy to land management — ensure subsidies, tax breaks and regulation directly reward rewilding outcomes.

Scaling up rewilding: 

With Kevin Cumming, Rewilding Britain

How can we turbocharge locally-led large scale rewilding across Britain?

• Launch Nature Recovery Clusters — locally led, landscape-scale projects working together to accelerate rewilding across regions.
• Connect people, not just places — embed access to rewilded areas into planning, with public transport links and affordable routes for everyone.
• Make rewilding part of learning — bring nature recovery into the school curriculum so every child grows up connected to wilder places.
• Rewild grey corridors — transform linear infrastructure like road verges, railways and riverbanks into thriving wildlife networks that link landscapes.

Future of Land Use: 

With Martin Lines, Nature Friendly Farming Network & Bev Nichols, Forestry England

How can rewilding work hand-in-hand with other land uses i.e. food and timber production? 

• Plan multi-use land smartly — use spatial allocation to balance rewilding with food, timber and community needs, focusing on priority areas agreed locally.
• Make rewilding financially viable — ensure economic viability through grants, subsidies, incentives and standardisation/​marketing of nature-friendly produce.
• Reframe farming for the future — attract young people into farming as land stewards and nature managers, building pride and livelihoods in regenerative practices.
• Build trust from the ground up — create locally accepted champions, transparent communication and consensus-driven decision-making to win community confidence.
• Tell a new land story — shift the language and narrative around land use to break barriers, highlight shared benefits and foster cooperation between farmers, foresters, and rewilders as land managers.

Urban Wilding: 

With Beth Collier, Wild in the City

What could large-scale rewilding look like across our towns and cities?

• Build rewilding into every plan — make rewilding a mandatory consideration in all new developments, with requirements for wild spaces, ponds, swift bricks and hedgehog highways.
• Empower communities — give local residents real decision-making power, community-set rewilding goals (e.g. ​“two trees per household”) and support to care for and champion nearby wild places.
• Shift urban culture — run education and awareness campaigns that explain why rewilded spaces look ​“messy,” celebrate them through maps, signage and events, and embed nature connection in schools.
• Design for people and wildlife together — improve lighting, access visibility and safety in urban wild spaces so everyone feels welcome, while ensuring habitats remain rich and functional.
• Invest in local nature stewards — move from traditional ​“tidy gardening” to training habitat managers who can nurture dynamic, wilder urban ecosystems.

Marine rewilding: 

With Caitlin Turner

How can we move to the large-scale regeneration of our MPAs?

• Empower coastal communities — create funds for communities to establish and enforce their own MPAs and No-Take Zones.
• Support a just transition for fishers — provide financial incentives to shift from destructive practices to low-impact fishing.
• Ban bottom trawling and dredging across MPAs — outlaw these most damaging practices to allow marine life to bounce back.
• End ocean bargaining politics — stop treating the sea as a trade-off in negotiations; recognise it as a vital, finite life source to be safeguarded.
• Launch a public ocean campaign — from TV spots to billboards, build mass awareness and pride in restoring Britain’s seas.

Green growth: 

With James MacGregor, The Lifescape Project

Rewilding as a driver of local green growth — how do we ensure nature’s comeback powers community renewal?

• Create a National Green Service — government and employers fund paid time for people to work in nature, boosting skills, pride and local renewal.
• Prescribe nature for health and productivity — expand social prescribing so time in rewilded landscapes supports wellbeing and reduces NHS pressure.
• Grow green jobs — invest in rewilding-linked employment, from land and marine management to eco-tourism and new local nature based enterprises.