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Connectivity - Founder Opinion Piece

Hugh Somerleyton • Jun 21, 2022

Nature needs space to move around the landscape in search for food, shelter and a mate.


For over a generation, conservation efforts have largely failed because sites have been too spread out, with little or no connectivity to join them up.


Incredible efforts are now taking place at both a local and national level to ensure these much-needed natural corridors return, as WildEast Founder Hugh Somerleyton explains.



Natural England pioneered the phrase NRN, or Nature Recovery Networks, and rightly deserve the praise for coining something which goes right to the heart of why, for the last generation, conservation efforts have largely failed, despite the many millions of pounds worth of investment. These efforts have been been isolated and unconnected, often over-focused on one particular species. They have also been far too small against the vast sea of human-dominated landscapes, which in the WildEast is largely agriculture (80%), but also golf courses, gardens, urban sprawl and so on.

 

The concept of connectivity, the focus of this month's newsletter, lies at the very heart of what WildEast is all about. Restoring nature, giving it the space it needs to move about, means that we too must become greener. We need to restore our human nature networks, to re-learn how to co-exist with and harness nature, in all aspects of our lives.



This is why we call ourselves a ‘human nature recovery network’, where we work across all sectors, industry, farming, roads, rail, schools and of course gardens, on a truly regional scale. All of this we chart on to the Map of Dreams to inspire first a region, then a nation, towards a greener healthier bio-restored future. We have partnered with Natural England and the LandAPP to develop a strategy everyone can take part in – WildEdges. We have lost around 50% of our hedgerows since the end of the Second World War. The good news is that we can restore the ones we have, and re-plant those we have lost. It's all about re-joining up the dots.


There are still 65,000km of hedgerow in the WildEast, and if we increase the size of this pre-existing network to say on average 10 meters wide, we would return 5% or 75,000 hectares of land back to the wild. Living in the capitalist system that we do, nature must be monetised. So, LandApp have mapped the entire network so that every farmer or landholder can plot their farms' hedges, and add see how much money they might lose in production by increasing the size and connectivity of their hedges (or as we like to call them, their WildEdges), but also crucially how they can benefit from carbon and biodiversity credits. or Natural England’s new flagship ELM scheme.

 


It's an obvious point but a comparison worth drawing when questioning WHY? Why do we need to create these networks ? Let's look at it in another way. The car you use every day, its engine is a network. If you take out the spark plugs, the engine, or the network fails. The route you take to work is a network, if a bridge collapses or if there is a crash, the network fails. The tube you get across London is a network, if the drivers strike, the network fails. The wifi you rely on is a network, if you go out of its range the network fails. All these networks, as we have seen recently with our truckers at Dover, are fragile, and if they break or are damaged, our lives do not run well. They break down. And that is what is happening with nature. It has broken down.


This is the state of the natural world around us every day, and until now anyway not enough people in enough places have thought or cared much about it. We are just waking up to find our human way of doing business with the world has caused immense damage to every part of the planet, and brought many species to the brink of extinction. We seem to have conveniently forgotten that our life systems depend on them working too, pollination, and soil micro-biology to name two obvious ones to us in the WildEast.

 


Networks therefore are a critical pathway that allow nature safe passage across our human landscapes, making those networks thicker, stronger, wider and with tunnels or bridges over or under roads making them connect hot spots like nature reserves or ancient woodlands. This is VITAL WORK but no more so than the networks through the gardens of our villages and towns, our schools and our churchyards. Expressing your efforts on the Map of Dreams is the best way, the ONLY way, to bring about lasting societal change, through leading and inspiring others, until we are an army of acres and an army of people for nature forever…!

 

WildEast isn’t about what me or you can do in isolation, it is about what WE can do together. So join WildEast today and make your pledge on the Map of Dreams.

 

WildEast: Wilder by the sum of our parts!


WildEast Blog

By by WildEast 05 May, 2022
Broad bushy hedges, or WildEdges , can become substantial ecological assets whilst increasing crop productivity for the farmer. WildEast estimate that 5% (62,500 hectares) of the 20% of wildlife habitat required, could come from WildEdges. Working together, WildEast and Land App will equip farmers with the toolkit that they need to transform their farmland hedges into rich wildlife habitat. 80% of the WildEast footprint is agricultural land. WildEast and LandApp aim to enable landowners to broaden hedges to increase space for wildlife. If you're having difficulty viewing the below Wild Story, please head here.
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