Impact story: Yorkshire Rewilding Network

“Rewilding can be quite lonely, and you can doubt yourself,” says Sarah, speaking both as the Yorkshire Rewilding Network’s Chair of Trustees and rewilder of her own garden. ​“We want to create a supportive network where people can connect with each other and not feel alone, as well as find practical advice and share tools, resources and knowledge.”

The aim of the Yorkshire Rewilding Network is to create a movement of rewilders across Yorkshire so that anyone rewilding at any scale can find the confidence, skills and support they need. ​“We come at rewilding from a people perspective,” she says. ​“We’re all about supporting people, sharing stories, inspiring people and helping them to feel confident.”

The Network’s vision is of a county-wide web of rewilders working at all different scales, a supportive ecosystem connected to Yorkshire and national networks. Seeing a gap in their capacity to connect people at a hyper-local level, the Network applied to our Rewilding Innovation Fund to finance a pilot project to create their own set of Community Rewilding Hubs. We spoke to Sarah about engaging a fresh community of rewilders, what this has achieved and what the future holds.

What’s the idea behind Community Rewilding Hubs?

Because Yorkshire is so big and varied, we wanted to explore how we could take our model and what we do down to a more local level. We recognised our limitations in working at a regional scale; we either needed to expand massively or get others to build networks too. 

We wanted to see how we could support really different locations to create their own Community Rewilding Hubs, and then how everything would cascade down from Rewilding Britain and through us. We wanted a movement of rewilders all connected in an ecosystem, so we can advocate for the same messages, and communications can flow around the country. 

To do that we wanted to go into communities and start building energy and momentum, get processes going and then gradually step back, offering moral and practical support when needed. This would also recognise the huge value of meeting in person, which we’ve learned from our Rewilding Festival activities and rewilding site visits.

What has the Fund enabled?

It’s allowed us to build a year-long project to see what a local hub might look like. We focussed on two communities where we had good contacts, in contrasting landscapes: an urban area in North Leeds, and Whitby and the Esk Valley, a more rural area in North Yorkshire. We employed a Rewilding Hubs Officer, Claire, for 10 hours a week for a year, in a community engagement capacity. Yorkshire Rewilding Network volunteers supported her, probably equalling her hours. Claire went into the communities and met with every nature-related organisation in the area. She asked: what do you think you need? Would this work in your community?

Then she organised events to bring people together. We had music events, a film screening of Wilding, wild verge planting, big community events with presentations and panel discussions… a mix of practical, creative and information events to generate interest. Afterwards, Claire met with people who’d registered interest, then worked with the communities to create the core volunteer groups that would become the hubs.

We coached the volunteers on the skills they need to set up and run the hubs, giving them practical advice such as legalities, insurance, engaging volunteers, things that have worked well for us and what to avoid. All the behind-the-scenes stuff, and moral support 

What impact have you seen so far?

The biggest thing is that we’ve now got a sustainable, volunteer-based, scalable model for extending reach significantly across Yorkshire and building the rewilding movement. 

I think the hubs have been really excited by being part of something bigger. That keeps motivation going – the moral support people need to feel they’re not alone. We’ve had some lovely feedback: people reported that they understand rewilding more; they feel more confident to talk about rewilding; and they’re more confident to give it a go. 

They’ve also said their wellbeing has improved by being more connected and part of a rewilding community. It’s hopeful, I think that’s the key. If you feel like you’re part of something good and hopeful, it counters a lot of the negativity around.

Community centres and local businesses see it as an opportunity for their local area, so they’ve been really supportive, offering rooms and things for free. 

We get excited when we see impact, see the hubs start to come to life, little flickers of something being created. Seeing that we could share this model across Yorkshire without it taking up too much resource for us, but with a huge impact, is really exciting.

What approaches have worked best?

Focusing on place, rather than coming at rewilding as an intellectual idea, has helped us reach many more people and a wider demographic. The core volunteers are new to us, which is really positive. Quite a lot of people only wanted to join their Community Rewilding Hub rather than the county-wide Yorkshire Rewilding Network. I think we’re reaching people who aren’t necessarily interested in coming to a county-level webinar on, say, beavers, but people who are interested in connecting locally with other rewilders to make a difference where they live. 

Having a dedicated community and engagement specialist has worked really well, too, because we’ve discovered bringing volunteers on board, nurturing and coaching them is a highly skilled role. 

We’ve also noticed that in-person events are where we get the most ​‘rewilding buzz’, the most energy generated. Having different types of events and ways to engage different kinds of people makes it inclusive. 

Normalising the language around rewilding has been useful too. Our definition of rewilding is really inclusive, with the focus being on encouraging natural processes. This can happen at any scale, so anything from a window box to a massive estate can count. It’s helped boost understanding and confidence. 

The hope that comes with rewilding is desperately needed, so people want it, they just often need somebody to help them get started. We’ve almost taken a rewilding approach to our interventions – to go into these areas and kick start the processes, then step back and let it go wherever it needs to go. We’ve been open minded in what we think the hubs should be like, seeing how they evolve and adapting. Exploring different approaches and letting communities take the lead has meant they can tailor the hub to what their locality needs.

What are your next steps and hopes?

We’re working out how to support the hubs going forward. We’re going to give them seed funding of £500 for a project or initiative of their choosing, to encourage them to figure out how to work as a team and start to be autonomous.

We’ll keep talking to them; they’re in our network now. Ideally, we’d host a call every two months to get the hubs together to talk and learn from each other. Our role is to be a central point and signpost them to each other — and other support — when they need help. 

We’ll spend the next year trying to replicate and scale up the model across Yorkshire. We’ll coordinate, but they’ll all be independent. We hope it will keep growing into a whole Yorkshire movement of rewilders. 

What advice would you give people wanting to set up a local network?

We’d say go where the energy is. We went into it thinking we could set up more hubs, but quickly realised it was going to take up much more resource than we had. Going forward, we’d go somewhere rewilding is already taking root.

It’s also really important to recognise that everyone’s a volunteer. It’s got to be fun, otherwise people’s wellbeing is going to be impacted – or they’re not going to want to do it. 

Don’t put too much pressure on yourself. Everything’s resource limited, so just do what you can and remember anything is better than nothing. It’s fine to start slow. Even just arranging to meet for a walk or a drink or a coffee is enough to start building connections. 

How do you think the rewilding movement can continue to grow?

I think community groups need to be empowered and feel like they’re part of something bigger, and have access to skills and support when they need it. We believe building connections is the most impactful thing we can do.

I think rewilding needs people to not be afraid of letting go of control. It can be hard to hold firm in the face of criticism. Even in rewilding my garden, I know I wouldn’t have held strong if I didn’t have a network telling me ​‘it’s okay, you’re [italics]not[italics] destroying everything by letting these nettles grow!’