Rewilding, an [[Ecology|ecological]] restoration approach, aims to return landscapes to their natural state, allowing ecosystems to recover and thrive independently. By embracing rewilding, we can enhance biodiversity, improve ecosystem services, and reconnect with nature, ultimately fostering a more resilient environment and a deeper sense of harmony with the natural world. **Timeline** of key thinkers, debates, and publications around E.O. Wilson’s _Half-Earth_ idea and the broader intellectual movement of large-scale wilderness protection / rewilding. This isn’t exhaustive, but it captures major milestones and figures. --- ## **Timeline of Debate & Writing on “Half‑Earth” and Large-Scale Conservation / Rewilding** |**Year**|**Event / Publication**|**Significance / Commentary**| |---|---|---| |**1970s**|**SLOSS debate** (Single Large Or Several Small)|Conservation biologists debate whether one large reserve is better than many smaller ones. This is foundational: Wilson’s work on island biogeography is highly influential here.| |**1970s–1980s**|Biological Dynamics of Forest Fragments Project (BDFFP)|Empirical research on fragmented habitats stemming from the SLOSS debate.| |**1980**|Founding of **Earth First!** by Dave Foreman et al.|Earth First! becomes a radical environmental movement; Foreman will later articulate “rewilding” in a conservation biology context.| |**1991**|_Wild Earth_ magazine begins publication|A key journal for conservation biology, wilderness advocacy, and early rewilding thinking. Foreman and others use it to bridge activism and science.| |**1992**|Dave Foreman **coins “rewilding”**|In _Wild Earth_, Foreman defines rewilding in its original activist sense: restoring large wild areas, re-introducing carnivores, reconnecting landscapes.| |**1998**|Michael Soulé & Reed Noss publish on rewilding (“core, corridor, carnivore”)|They formalise a scientific definition of rewilding: large core protected areas, ecological corridors, and key species (especially predators).| |**2003**|Boreal Conservation Framework begins|One of the first big ‘half-nature’ initiatives: calls for protecting and connecting at least half of Canada’s boreal forest.| |**2009**|Launch of **Nature Needs Half** movement|Formally launched at the 9th World Wilderness Congress. A coalition of scientists, NGOs, and conservationists commit to the goal of protecting 50% of the planet.| |**2016**|E.O. Wilson publishes _Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life_|His most forceful statement: to safeguard biodiversity, dedicate half of Earth’s surface to nature.    Also in 2016, **Eric Dinerstein et al.** publish _“An Ecoregion Approach to Protecting Half the Terrestrial Realm”_ (with the Nature Needs Half network) laying out practical ecological design for a “half-Earth” network.| |**2017**|First meeting of Nature Needs Half Steering Committee|Marks institutional commitment and planning for global expansion of the half-Earth idea.| |**2017**|Critique in _Oryx_ — _“Half-Earth or Whole-Earth? Radical ideas for conservation”_|Scholars raise concerns about equity, social justice, and feasibility: for instance, how will half-Earth affect indigenous / local people?| |**2017**|**First “Half-Earth Day”**|Wilson himself writes about it, emphasising the urgency of biodiversity loss and the moral case for dedicating half the planet.| |**2018**|_Wilding: The Return of Nature to a British Farm_ by [[Isabella Tree]]|A concrete, local case-study: the Knepp Wildland project in Sussex shows how rewilding can work on a former farm.| |**2013**|_Feral: Searching for Enchantment on the Frontiers of Rewilding_ by [[George Monbiot 1]]|Monbiot’s philosophical and practical reflection on rewilding in the UK, predating Wilson’s _Half-Earth_ but very influential in the public discourse.| |**2021**|Article “Thirty by Thirty and Half Earth: Promises and Pitfalls” by Howie Wolke (Rewilding Institute)|Reflects on scaling Half-Earth ideas and links them to the “30×30” conservation target (protecting 30% of land by 2030), and practical challenges.| |**2021**|[[E.O. Wilson]] Biodiversity Foundation actively promotes implementation|The Foundation begins building research, education, and conservation programmes specifically around the Half-Earth Project.| --- ### **Key Themes & Tensions in the Debate** - **Ecological vs social justice** The Half-Earth idea is bold ecologically, but critics (e.g. in _Oryx_) warn it risks ignoring local communities, land rights, and equity.  - **Feasibility & implementation** What does it _mean_ in practice to “set aside” half the Earth? Contiguity, governance, funding, and land rights are enormous practical challenges. - **Rewilding as a complementary concept** Rewilding (Foreman, Soulé, Noss, Monbiot, Tree) doesn’t always demand a human-free world; it’s more about restoring ecological processes, connectivity, and keystone species, rather than strictly drawing a line around “wild reserves.” - **Movement building** Nature Needs Half is not just a theory but a **coalition**, aligning scientists, NGOs, and policymakers toward actionable conservation goals.  - **Ethical foundations** For Wilson and many rewilders, there’s a moral imperative: humans are responsible for the current biodiversity crisis, and must act at scale to preserve non-human life.  ## Rewilding — the philosophy behind it What sets us apart from other animals is our urge to control our surroundings. Over thousands of years we have cleared forests, drained wetlands and smoothed the landscape to suit ourselves — and a tidy garden is that same instinct in miniature. We battle the weeds, insist the lawn holds nothing but grass, and arrange plants in neat threes and fives because it pleases the eye. The price of all that control has been steep: more threatened species, less biodiversity, and an increasingly unpredictable climate. Wildlife needs all the help we can give it. Rewilding in its purest form means stepping back entirely and letting nature restore its own balance. In a garden that rarely works — our plots are small, hemmed in by streets and fences, and ours for only a few years, while true rewilding takes centuries. Left completely alone, most gardens would simply fill with brambles and sycamore saplings: hardly a rich habitat, and hardly a garden either. The practical answer is a blend — wildlife gardening and rewilding together, lending a hand here and loosening control there. It is still your space, and you should enjoy it. Easing that grip brings three real rewards: - **A natural haven on your doorstep.** Relinquishing a little control turns a garden into a safe, welcoming place for [[Hedgehogs|hedgehogs]], birds, bees and insects to settle. - **Far fewer chemicals.** For decades we have fed, weeded, poisoned and sprayed — disrupting whole communities of flora and fauna in the process. Rethinking what we use, and when, with the aim of using nothing at all, transforms the health of the soil and everything living in it. - **A welcome for undervalued plants.** Many of the plants we dismiss as "weeds" are native wildflowers with real history and value — food, shelter and nesting sites for wildlife, and sometimes for us. Letting a few gain a foothold can be both beautiful and useful. The forest garden plan below is one of the most rewarding ways to put this thinking into practice. --- ## Forest gardening — an example plan *An example of the kind of garden I love to help create: a multi-storey, mostly edible planting that more or less looks after itself.* Forest gardening is an increasingly popular practice that uses a multi-storey approach — food and flower at every level, from the canopy down to the soil. By growing climbers up the trees and choosing species that crop at every step, you end up with an easy, self-sustaining edible garden that doubles as wildlife habitat. Here is how I would approach it, layer by layer. ### 1. Design the layers — autumn, before planting - Walk the plot: note sun, shade, shelter, soil and any trees worth keeping. - Sketch the five layers so each has light and root room: canopy, climbers, shrubs, low/herbaceous and ground. - Improve the soil with compost and plan a [[Hedgehogs|hedgehog]] highway and bird & bat boxes in from the start. ### 2. Canopy layer — the trees (Nov–Mar, bare-root season) - Plant the backbone: an [[Apple Tree|apple]], [[Cherry Tree|cherry]], [[Fig Tree|fig]], or a nut such as [[Hazel|hazel]] or [[English Walnut|walnut]]. - Space them so light still reaches the floor — this is open woodland, not a thicket. - Stake and mulch well; these trees are the structure everything else hangs from. - Where a traditional gardener tends to keep trees firmly in check — or out of a small garden altogether — the wilder approach welcomes them: pick good, long-lived natives such as oak, walnut, beech or hazel, and let the odd self-sown sapling stay where it earns its place. ### 3. Climber layer — up the stems (spring) - Once the trees are established, train climbers up the trunks to make use of all the vertical space. - [[Hops]] or climbing/[[Phaseolus vulgaris|runner beans]] both work well — beans have the bonus of feeding nitrogen back into the soil. - Traditionally, climbers are tied to a framework and pruned hard to keep them in check; the wilder approach lets them ramble. Native ivy and old man's beard (a wild [[Clematis|clematis]]) are worth their weight in gold — autumn nectar, evergreen shelter and nesting material. ### 4. Shrub layer — beneath the canopy (autumn or spring) - Fill the mid-storey with currants (black, red, white) and [[Raspberry|raspberries]], plus rosemary and lemon verbena for scent and the kitchen. - A mix of fruiting and aromatic shrubs keeps pollinators busy right through the season. ### 5. Low / herbaceous layer — perennial edibles (spring) - Plant mostly perennial croppers so there is little replanting year to year: globe artichokes, fennel, sweet cicely, lovage and [[Borage|borage]]. - Tuck a few annuals in among them for variety; borage flowers are a particular magnet for bees. ### 6. Ground layer — knit it all together (spring–summer) - Cover any bare soil with low, spreading plants: [[Sweet woodruff|sweet woodruff]] (*Galium odoratum*), creeping thyme and chamomile. - Resist the traditional urge to rake the ground clean. Leaving leaf litter and fallen twigs in place gives free mulch — and a nursery for the insects that, in turn, feed [[Hedgehogs|hedgehogs]], mice and garden birds. ### 7. Ongoing care — a light touch - Less mowing, more habitat: let the garden settle into its layers. - Each year, top up the mulch, thin anything crowding the canopy, and harvest as things ripen. - Within a few seasons it becomes largely self-sustaining — exactly the kind of slow, [[Ecology|ecological]] gardening Garden Kind is about. ### Planting palette at a glance | Layer | Example plants | |---|---| | Canopy (trees) | apple, cherry, fig, nut (hazel/walnut) | | Climbers | hops, climbing or runner beans | | Shrubs | blackcurrant, redcurrant, raspberry, rosemary, lemon verbena | | Low / herbaceous | globe artichoke, fennel, sweet cicely, lovage, borage | | Ground layer | sweet woodruff, thyme, chamomile, leaf litter, twigs | #Ecology/Horticulture --- `Concepts:` [[Ecology]] `Knowledge Base:`  `Knowledge Base:` [[Ecology]]