{"id":7813,"date":"2020-11-20T10:48:04","date_gmt":"2020-11-20T10:48:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=7813"},"modified":"2020-11-20T10:48:04","modified_gmt":"2020-11-20T10:48:04","slug":"re-wilding-nature","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2020\/11\/20\/re-wilding-nature\/","title":{"rendered":"Re-Wilding \"nature\""},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Like a lot of people, I sense, I'm wary of the re-wilding movement. \u00a0This is, I think, because of its pious motivations rather than some of the possible outcomes. \u00a0There is a playing God side to it all and a whiff of ethical superiority.<\/p>\n<p>On October 3rd, the Economist has a feature\u00a0<em><span class=\"article__headline\" data-test-id=\"Article Headline\">Rewilding in the Scottish Highlands: i<\/span>n the battle between rewilders and traditionalists, the Scottish government is walking on the wild side<\/em>. \u00a0Much of this was familiar material to me but usefully brought up to date.<\/p>\n<p>Cue a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.economist.com\/letters\/2020\/11\/07\/letters-to-the-editor\">letter<\/a> from an ethicist and an agrologist in last week's edition adding some balance to the argument. \u00a0It's so good that it's worth quoting from:<\/p>\n<p>\"...\u00a0your analysis of the rewilding of Scotland missed a deep irony in the effort to create a landscape purified of human influence. \u00a0This concept of natural excludes humans, but at the same time envisages a highly managed, human-constructed landscape achieved by human processes, undertaken for human goals, and based on the best human guess of what those landscapes used to be like.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article__body-text\">The reality is that it is impossible to go back. \u00a0Whatever natural world existed before humans is lost to us for ever. \u00a0What is created in the project of rewilding is but a simulacrum of the prehuman ideal.<\/p>\n<p class=\"article__body-text\">In addition, this concept of \u201cnatural\u201d morally bypasses issues of justice. \u00a0This is an exercise of the hyper-wealthy, with a contempt for the lives of people, plants and animals whose home this has been for millennia. \u00a0It could be described as a project in environmental colonialism, where those enlightened, wealthy few civilise the locals or take their land in order to make the world as it should be.\"<\/p>\n<p>For Scotland, also read the Lake District and many other unnatural unwild places, so I hoped St <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-admin\/post.php?post=5930&amp;action=edit\">George Monbiot<\/a>\u00a0would respond.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Like a lot of people, I sense, I'm wary of the re-wilding movement. \u00a0This is, I think, because of its pious motivations rather than some of the possible outcomes. \u00a0There is a playing God side to it all and a...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7813\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}