Creating Wildwood & how can we Rewild Britain

In this lecture I explain the History of why Wildwood Trust was formed and our mission to Rewild Britain. I try to explain the complex issues that will challenge us as we try to rewild Britain and make a space for nature.

At the heart of the problem lies  a broken economic system that gives perverse incentives to abuse nature and use land inefficiently. The corruption of economics over the last century & the propagation of discredited economic principles is directly responsible.

Reversing this economic stupidity could lead to a rewilded world where there is wildlife, jobs and wealth for all in a system that  captures economic rents for public revenue. This will enable us to internalise the damage we do to others and nature in a new economic & wildlife renaissance.

Rewilding: A Revolutionary Act in a Countryside of Deceit...

During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act, and so it is with the rise of the rewilding movement, which has shown the truth behind the silent spring that is befalling our countryside and that farming and landowners and the legal and economic systems that they derive so much privilege from are directly responsible for that wildlife loss.

But the Orwellian double think is used by the landowners in claiming to be guardians of the countryside, protecting its wildlife. When of course they are mostly responsible for our countrysides blatant rape. Our Landowners have not only claimed the land as theirs by theft and murder for centuries and in more recent times subverted the legal system & our government to dole out vast taxpayer subsidies and favourable tax treatment in their pursuit of that rape, wiping out so much in their pursuit of personal profit.

From the pen of the National Union of Farmers Ministry of Truth  this week comes:

Destruction is Conservation.....
Flood prevention is Flooding....
Theft is Property...

Their carefully crafted doublethink in the guise of a press releases has the temerity to say that they are guardians of wildlife for allowing one or two little bits of wildlife to remain (as long as there is another subsidy from the taxpayer for doing so) and that the rewilding movement threatens the countryside and existing wildlife.

Destruction is Conservation.....

 NFU Scotland Vice President Andrew McCornick who said in the Farmers Guardian:

“New species will also affect Scotland’s existing biodiversity and ecosystems. I genuinely believe that Scotland’s biodiversity is in good health, and farmers are at the heart of delivering that,”.

This amazing doublethink is truly cognitive dissonance at its highest that this Landowner thinks they are

a) contributing to Biodiversity - when they have utterly destroyed biodiversity at a frightening rate all helped by huge taxpayer handouts.

b) that existing wildlife will be threatened by rewilding, when it will return in abundance

This is the most amazing lie trying to make out they are protecting wildlife from rewilding which is plain daft, but any lie is good when trying to lie to keep your privilege.

I notice at the bottom of the article for 'premium' users only is a handy calculator to quickly calculate what taxpayer handouts are on offer!

Mr McCornick went on to say in the Scotsman:

 “Recent history has taught us that any species introduction can have an impact on the many benefits that the Scottish countryside currently delivers.

Benfits to whom, the barren hills, the deer stalkers and the uneconomic farmers. But nor our wildlife, the taxpayers or the poverty created by those taxes on people's hard work and enterprise.

Flood prevention is Flooding....

Rewilding is also being blamed for recent flash flood in Alyth in Perthshire. This is an interesting view as beavers do cause local floods the 'simple minded' conclude they will cause bigger floods. On a very small level it is true, but those tiny floods stop the big floods in villages and town and prevent loss of life, this logic is lost on some of our 'Country' Community, again just sophistry protecting privilege and fearful of real wildlife.

The Scottish Association for Country Sports (SACS) have been trying to point the finger at the Tayside beavers for causing the floods instead of the barren uplands shedding water in rivers canalised to carry such torrents of water ever quicker down stream into the homes of the people of Alyth or even someday to Perth.

Alex Stoddart, director of SACS, said  “We have been told by residents that there are clear beaver marks.SACS is concerned by reports from local residents and members affected by the flooding, that beaver lodge material may have been an exacerbating factor.

“Beavers... now play an increasing, but largely unknown role in local flood and water catchment management. "

The wonderful Scottish Wild Beaver Group leapt to the beavers’ defence, refuting claims that material from dams upstream of the town were brought down by the floodwater.

Paul Ramsay, who owns the Bamff estate where some beavers live, said it was a “ridiculous exaggeration” to blame the animals.

Of course the are many learnered studies showing the important role beavers play in flood defences - to find out more watch my lecture on the subject from last year:

Theft is Property...

This is the real lie at the heart of our problems of our countryside & economy. Land was not created by individuals only the improvements they make upon it. That should be their property not the land that captures through rent and value the work of everyone else and the income received by destroying nature and misusing natural resources. When the farmer benefits society they should be rewarded through selling food, caring for the land's future productivity and providing services to others. When they take from us by their monopoly of land, taxpayer handouts, destroying the future productivity, polluting and robbing us and our children of nature... then they should pay.

Of course we all pay in higher food costs, the productive farmer is just a conduit in which that cost is passed on, but that is fine as in such as system there will be more wealth to support the needy and we will have more money to buy food but the true cost of making that food will make us choose foods that have been produced in a way that protects our environment and our future. So leass manufactured poor quality food and more whole foods.

So the truly productive landowner and farmer will benefit from his work and ingenuity in creating the food for our table and the feckless landowner and reckless farmer who destroys as he creates will suffer and so it should be.

2 minutes of hate....

So I have had my 2 minutes of hate at the National Farmers Union of Scotland, all well and good but what are the real solutions to the Scottish Countryside, our society and the wildlife that can thrive and benefit.

People are people and we should not demonise any group but find the root problems and remedies, we also need to distinguish between farmers and landowners, even when they are one and the same. But most land managers respond to cultural and economic pressure. The culture of landownership being one of dominion upon land without proper responsibility & the economic topography of grants and taxation systems reflecting that dominion are the real problem. Land owners should both morally and economically pay for what the take (monopoly access to land and environmental externalities) and receive reward for the benefits they bring; food and certain land management practices such as paths and hedge maintenance by road and the benefits to wildlife they bring etc. The legal status of land ownership should be trusteeship and not 'ownership'. This will drive culture and economics to use land wisely and efficiently and allow land of no economic benefit to be rewilded. This would be a massive cultural shift attacking the very substance of privilege in our society over the last 1000 years and resisted fiercely, but it is what is needed if we are to ever rewild our land and hold land as a common treasury for all people, future generations and wildlife.

When landowners compensate all of us for the damage they have done to wildlife and watersheds then they can have compensation for loss of production - that's fair is it not? This sounds mad but is easily achievable through using land rent and externalities as a basis of our system of taxation and reducing taxation on earned income that provides jobs and steers us to a vibrant and environmentally friendly economy.

Beavers in Britian

A history of Beaver in Britain , a lecture by me at a small rewilding Britain Conference. This contains my knowledge of the history of beaver, the history of beaver extinction, the many efforts of people over the last 100 years who tried to reintroduce beavers and the problems they faced. The many benefits to our water quality, flood risks & and wildlife that beaver could bring. Dispelling some of the myths about the augments against beaver reintroduction. The Lecture was given at Wildwood Trust at a Conference on Rewilding Britain by the conservation organisation 'A Focus on Nature' http://www.afocusonnature.org/

What is Rewilding & What are we doing about it

A short Film made in 2012 by Charlie Tanner highlighting the work of Wildwood Trust in its charitable work to rewild Britain. This is an excellent introduction to Rewilding and Charlie captured it well for this video she made for her MSc project, Charlie has volunteered and Worked for the Trust and filmed many of its animals. In an in depth interview with me, she learns of the efforts of the Trust to rewild our countryside and reintroduce animals like the lynx, beaver and Wild horse.

Why the Pope Should Promote the Taxation of Nature's Destruction & Not Just its Love

The Pope has come out with a wonderful statement about why we should love nature and George Monbiot writes an excellent article in the Guardian today looking into this and sophistry around why people destroy nature for perceived personal gain, ignoring the damage we are doing.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/16/pope-encyclical-value-of-living-world?utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=dlvr.it#comment-53954061

This is a perfect Example of the 'Tragedy of the Privates' as I like to call it, why individuals making individual decisions alway make the choice to do things that destroy nature and abuse land for short term finacial gain, and the perverse incentives the system of private ownership of nature's gifts to us ensure's their abuse & destruction.

The economic forces pushing us to destroy nature and land is pervasive throughout the world and forms the very basis of our financial, banking & political systems. Its contumacious virtues extolled in our corporate media and enshrined in legal systems and pushed to ever greater heights of absurdity by trade treaties such as the The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership TTIP.

But the issue, as Monbiot alludes, should not be about how to make people value nature more than their bank accounts, as many will never do that, it is for the green movement to push policies that align people's bank balances with saving nature. To this end land use and environmental damage needs to become the basis of our taxation system and not productive work that causes little damage to others and our environment. Land Value Taxes, monopoly taxes and externality taxes like a carbon tax could all achieve a titanic shift in how we use nature and allow its restoration in an economy that protects peoples wealth and wellbeing and shares all efficiently and equitably. Land Value Taxes will instantly allow us to rewild our marginal land and see the complex ecology return and provide us with a secure future for our children by combating the calamitous consequences of climate change and the loss of our biodiversity and the ecosystem services we depend on.

This will also have the effect of increasing the value of labour and doing more to reduce poverty, than any other form of income redistribution as well explained by many economists such as Stiglitz or classical economists like Henry George, Adam Smith or even briefly by Karl Marx. This is because it makes the earth, and its destruction, a treasury for all and allows no elite to monopolise it, sucking the wealth out of the rest of humanity. The green movement needs to recognise this more than the need to stimulate wonder and mystical enchantment in the intrinsic value of our natural world and revel in its gestalt, which often has little effect apart from making people feel warm and fuzzy. Such an economic system would turn us all into rabid 'greenies' irrespective of wonder or love - but we have to ask the question why the green movement cannot push these policies: I blogged on this issue some time ago - Zen & the art of Land Value Tax: http://renegadeecologist.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/zen-and-art-of-land-value-tax.html For an indepth analysis of the Pope's encyclical read this excellent article on Progress.org by Fred Foldvery: http://www.progress.org/the-pope-on-climate-change?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Weekly+Progressorg&utm_content=Weekly+Progressorg+CID_9b5e66bc89df0f9b1f88cadd807be4bf&utm_source=Email+marketing+software&utm_term=The+Pope+on+Climate+Change

Vote for theft from our children & the planet.

I run a zoo, the Wildwood Trust, not a normal zoo to be sure, but a zoo. We do great work in education, conservation and promote rewilding. Nearly all the people I know support the work we do however rabidly anti zoo  they are & I was rabidly anti zoo until I wanted to reintroduce beavers - then I need one. So wildwood Trust was born to help conservationists with rewilding projects. Many of our animals are rescued and we try very hard to give them the best of care.

On social media a commentator posed me the Question that the  Green Party & Labour Party would ban zoos  and this would somehow lessen my distress at the election outcome.

My response:

Animals should only be in captivity if they are well looked after and serve a legitimate purpose for conservation & education. And there is nothing wrong with good regulation of zoos (as a Zoo manager & Green party supporter myself) Sure there are people who would ban them and they have a right to hold that view. But I never got in this business to be the next Barnum & would be happy to see more stringent regulation.

As for the election - my faith in people has been once again sorely tested - these Tory Dominionists will enact legislation that will diminish biodiversity & most of that is because of the the economic processes of giving kickbacks and tax dodges to their rich land owning supporters. The fundamental lie in the Tory party is that they support wealth for those that work. They do not and mostly support wealth for those that do not work to create it, through promoting monopoly income for those that hold unproductive assets (mostly land) or gamble in the financial industry. The support the Tories give to rentiers (those that make money from monopoly by renting things they 'own') utterly dwarfs the amount of money we spend on welfare for the unemployed;  these monopolies, rob our economy of jobs, wealth & make the lives of us all more difficult and give a perverse incentive to destroy our natural environment. 

These monopolies destabilise the very fabric of our society promoting crime and despair and the fear that lies at the heart of so many of their voters. They are not pro business - they are pro theft; from us, our children & the planet. The endless tax breaks to keep house prices high is a monumental theft from our children destroying their lives, as is our destruction of the natural environment. How can we get those that voted Tory last thursday to take on board that responsibility (and the Blair Brown years was little better)? How can we establish a rule of law that stops the colossal theft we are perpetrating on the young people of today, from our children and our wildlife?

The solution as ever is to Tax rent seeking and environmental destruction and take away the massive burden of taxes and economic rent that blight the lives of British 'hard working families' , Share the rents and protect nature is an anathema to the Tory leadership and why they are unfit to represent this country.

Will Land Value Tax destroy that Birdie in My Garden?

A commentator on this blog was very worried that LVT will destroy gardens and the wildlife that lives there. This is an interesting question - my response is below:

There are many gardens that are rubbish for wildlife so we have to be able to distinguish between the two and incentivise biodiversity in gardens and areas of land that are designated as gardens and recreation spaces within cities. Our current system does not do this and this would not change under a 'pure' LVT system - the incentives would not change.

LVT does value nature as land that no one can pay the LVT on will go back to nature as we only need so much land. At present all the economic incentives push us to use every bit of land we have however inefficiently and destroy the wild on it to pursue whatever use, however uneconomic, or useless to society.

LVT is a very efficient, and 'holistic'  system but is not perfect which is why we should have externality taxes (taxes on things that damage the environment, society or people) and planning laws. So to achieve more wildlife in gardens you could simply have a scheme which monitored the biodiversity of a garden - say an assessment the landowner must pay for from the local Wildlife Trust, and if obtained allowed a rebate on your LVT. This would also be for landowners across the UK for farmland etc. This could be incorporated in the periodic Land Value Assessment as well. But LVT kind of does this automatically on farmland as explained above as land which is difficult to farm all comes out of production and 'rewilds'.

BUT we could do that today!  a wildlife rebate on Council tax for the same ecological benefit!

LVT is based on the value of the rental value of land and permitted use, houses with gardens are more expensive but only a little bit more so the tax would only be a bit higher on gardens.   - you would still need planning permission & the pressures for development are really unchanged as the uplift in rental value accrue to the present owner if developed or to us all, through tax, in a LVT system. The pressure is the same.

So if you did get planning permission to build a house in your garden the rental value would shoot up - say the rental value of a garden in london is £500 per year but a house may be £20,000 per year for the same area of land

I agree in our terrible state of ecology gardens are useful for wildlife, also LVT would get rid of brownfield site which are often very 'good' for wildlife in our ecologically depauperate landscape. But it is still very poor for biodiversity and the view that clinging on to a tiny proportion of a very poor ecological habitat to stop a programme that could create massive increases in complex biodiversity and promote renewal and maximisation of utility of the buildings we have (more people happy using less land) and promote energy efficiency and the use of less environmentally damaging inputs would be ecological madness (you have to think in the total not the tiny!, the aggregate & not what is in front of our eyes!). Also I very much doubt LVT would get rid of that many 'gardens' except in inner cities and even then it would promote inner city eco grids for good biodiversity.

LVT would make land much cheaper and allow for local government to designate and acquire land for nature corridors and grids within cities, landowners would be less inclined to cling to the privilege of land title like grim death wich is the big problem with such programmes as implementing eco grids and urban rewilded water systems for flood prevention & storage.  Local authorities could invest in useful eco grids as the uplift in land value surrounding such eco grids (and the ecosystem services they give such as flood mitigation and recreation) would pay for the purchase and upkeep though the LVT of the surrounding areas that benfit.

The benefits of gardens and parks accrue to the landowners and neighbours in the value of their properties as it is a nicer area and devalues the properties if too developed so there is and exchange going on. LVT would socialize this exchange  and the local authority is not incentivised to build on parks as the total take would be unchanged by building on nice gardens that lower overall rental values etc.