Spring - still the season of hope?

I’ve been doing a lot more dog-walking than usual this last month, helping out a neighbour. And although it’s time-consuming, I’m not complaining - it’s a wonderful excuse to get outdoors and witness spring developing in all its glory: crisp white plum blossom like lace; meadows and verges bursting with wildflower colour as if spattered from a paintbrush; emerald grass shooting fingers skywards; little nubs of green velvet appearing on the tips of branches, unfurling into leaves .

Wildlife is waking up: a newly arrived stork wheels in a thermal rising above our garden; lugubrious tortoises amble the forest tracks in search of a mate, hissing when disturbed; a snake resting hidden in the long grass of the verge rustles away from a probing dog’s nose in a whispering ripple. And the weather is starting to get warmer - I don’t need to worry about gloves any more. Sometimes even a fleece is too much.

I find it fascinating to observe the rhythms of nature like this, the little details of incremental change in the grand cycle of the seasons. And immersing yourself in nature is immensely soothing too. That's why I manage to get up early every morning to take our dog for her walk! Our human world is full of stresses of our own creation, but the natural world cares nothing for politics or finance or war. In spring, tortoises and storks seek nothing more than a mate; trees only aim to grow leaves and create fruit; plants produce flowers to attract pollinators to help them reproduce. It’s simple. It’s uncomplicated. I’m not surprised that more and more people are attracted to the idea of ‘forest bathing’ for the good of their mental health.

The natural world has its own stresses, of course. Natural events such as drought, floods, forest fires, take their toll. The hillside behind our village still bears the scars of a forest fire last September that destroyed many trees, leaving rocks and bare earth exposed. I remind myself that it’s a natural process and the forest will recover in time - little shoots of green are already appearing - although it will take years for the wildlife habitat to return to its original state.

But I can’t escape a niggling feeling that all’s not well in the natural world. Like a few weeks ago, when it was so warm in February that I was wearing shorts, a time when I’m normally bundled up in thermals. Very pleasant in itself, to be sure, but it can’t be normal, can it? Maybe you feel the same. Scientific research is demonstrating more and more clearly that human activity is amplifying these natural stresses. Just last week the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) released their latest report, and it gave a clear message that humanity cannot afford to we carry on as we are now. Obviously that’s not good news, neither for us humans, nor the natural world that we are part of and depend on.

But all is not lost. For now, at least. There’s one growing environmental movement in particular that speaks to me and seems to offer real hope - ‘Rewilding’. I first heard of this concept a couple of years ago thanks to David Attenborough’s film, ‘A Life on Our Planet’. The basic principle: working with nature, not against it; restoring wild nature and, in the process, mitigating the effects of urgent stresses on the natural world, such as climate change, that affect us all.

Many projects around the world are already taking practical steps towards rewilding. Will it work? Will it be enough? Who knows? I’ll leave such questions to the experts. But the stakes are too high to leave it all to chance. For me, what matters most is hope.

I’ll be looking into rewilding in more detail in a future blog post, but if you’d like to find out now what it’s all about, check out:

https://globalrewilding.earth/

https://rewildingeurope.com

https://www.rewildingbritain.org.uk/