Wilderculture

Around the farm table last weekend we were lucky to have an additional voice, or two, with a visit from Caroline and her son Archie from Cumbria. While Archie was busy entertaining the dog and trying roasted, pasture fed pig head for the first time (and LOVING it), we were busy discussing all things wild.

You see, Caroline is spear heading some wonderful projects, all in the name of her incredible philosophy: Wilderculture. A land management principle that uses holistic management to fully integrate habitat restoration and farming or game management.

Wilderculture is the process of allowing land to ecologically rewild and uses managed domestic livestock or managed wild animals to fill the herbivore tier ‘gaps’ in the food web. Managing the ‘gaps’ can help maximise diversity and offer an additional economic opportunity to landowners other than tourism.

Wilderculture also tries to address the often overlooked social and cultural element of land management by considering the needs and desires of the people involved and the cultural history of a place and weaving these ideas into a holistic management plan. Examples of this could be using lost skills such as the droving of cattle, managing work horses or the restoration and use of traditional buildings instead of new infrastructure or mechanical alternatives.

A holistic management framework is used to plan and manage the landholding at landscape level, using holistic financial planning, planned grazing, land planning, traditional skills and ecological monitoring to influence the process.

The Wilderculture Framework is offered as a management strategy by Caroline through the Roots of Nature website. There you can have a look at her ongoing projects, including the management of the entire 600 acre Isle of Carna in Scotland, where they are developing a Holistic Management plan to help co-ordinate the complexity created by multiple stakeholders. Integrating ways the Island can be managed to improve its biodiversity and better mimic the missing ecological tier of predated wild herbivores to create a profitable, socially integrated environmental solution to regenerating landscape and feeding people at the same time.

On a holistically managed farm the land is managed in a way that mimics the wild. It needs no fertilisers and chemicals, resists droughts and floods and is in perfect balance with a broad range of flora and fauna. The livestock are safe and comfortable yet are moved on by humans to mimic their behaviour in the wild responding to predators. Their varied diet and access to a range of different habitat features ensures a reduction in reliance on medication and reduces the need for intervention. The plants grown on the land for human food are healthy and nutrient dense; naturally resisting disease without the use of pesticides, fungicides, and herbicides. The plants are harvested without destructive ploughing practices that kill millions of creatures from snakes, birds, and moles down to the essential microscopic armies, disrupting the vital polyculture that keeps the harvest healthy. This type of food production system is the only really sustainable model for the future of our planet.

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