“We’re discovering a kind of magic”
Rewilding golf courses, attracting bumblebees, a tree book with soul and readers' goals for 2025.
We’d better get started on this to-do list
In our last newsletter, we asked about your rewilding agenda for 2025 – and got some excellent and inspiring responses. Scroll down to see them below. But before you do, we wanted to give you an update on our publishing schedule.
For a variety of reasons, this will be the last long “newsletter” we’ll be sending out, at least for a while. Instead, our goal is to publish and send a new story every two weeks, with an occasional note from us at the top. We are still committed to producing original journalism about rewilding that educates and inspires – it will just be delivered in a new way. Thank you to all who have supported our efforts. Without you, none of this would be possible, and it means the world to us.
So what’s coming up? Watch for updates on lynx in Spain, rewilding initiatives in Ottawa and tiny infrastructure fixes that make a big difference for turtles, plus some wolves and grizzlies.
Stay wild,
Domini Clark and Kat Tancock, editors
“My 2025 (and beyond) rewilding project is bringing seeds from my many established native prairie plants from my yard to a nearby greenway/power line/right of way plagued by invasives. I’ll give them room to complement some existing native grasses by removing the Canada thistle.” – An anonymous reader in Canada
“Some exciting things I have in the works are launching a new rewilding adventure series exploring the Route of the Parks in Chile, followed by a rewilding series about big cats. I'm also in the early stages of helping a wonderful NGO in Brazil reforest parts of the Pantanal devastated by wildfires. Fingers crossed we get that project off the ground next year.” – Brooke Mitchell of the Rewildology podcast
“I am rewilding an area of lawn in Lake Macquarie 100 km north of Sydney, Australia. We live on a peninsula with pockets of native bush sheltering ringtail possums, squirrel gliders, kookaburras, magpies, rainbow lorikeets, eastern rosellas and blue faced honeyeaters, to name a few. At the waterfront we see pelicans, sea eagles, terns, cormorants and others. We intend to reclaim lawn around an old spotted gum and then plant species that exist in a nearby reserve.
My hope is that some of the neighbours will follow our example.” – Barbara Ward
“I’m aiming to add a heated birdbath and a hanging wren box for more habitat for birds!” – Gillian Grace
“My personal rewilding projects involve removing invasive plants and bringing native plants back to my local parks. I’ve been pulling invasive plants from three local parks for around 15 years. Now, I’m paying people to do larger projects than I can’t handle. I’m in the process of restoring four acres at West Hills County Park in Huntington, NY – it’s being cleared of Japanese knotweed, stiltgrass, periwinkle, English ivy, wisteria, etc.” – Rona Fried
When golf courses go wild
How non-profits, trusts and cities are converting manicured greens into places where wildlife, plants and people can flourish.
The Scottish site where bumblebees now thrive
Rewilding Denmarkfield has been fairly hands-off with its work. The result: an abundance of bees and native plants finding their way to the land.
The painter raising awareness of our connection with nature
Christi Belcourt creates art to help us rebuild our relationship with the Earth – so we can fight for a better future.
How resistance breeding aims to save endangered trees
The American beech, American elm and many other tree species have been disappearing due to invasive pests and disease. Could these breeding programs save them?
Recommended reads
Odds are good that Our Green Heart is unlike any other environmental book you’ve read. It’s a rare blend of memoir, science and Celtic lore that, at times, seems almost biblical, given the reverence that the author shows toward the planet’s forests. For the first couple of chapters I almost felt like I was reading a fantasy novel, with pages full of strange terms and unfamiliar worlds. It was a lot to take in – and yet I kept reading.
The author, 80-year-old Diana Beresford-Kroeger, has an impressive academic background, but she draws just as much – if not more – knowledge from what she learned about the land and plants growing up in rural Ireland. (At times her writing can seem a tad boastful, but given her obvious intelligence and wisdom I can’t really fault her.)
In these 200 pages she shares her fascination with trees – but forests in particular, explaining how they reproduce, grow, change and contribute to life on Earth. The writing is dense but almost lyrical. I will never look at a “simple” leaf the same way again.
Toward the end Beresford-Kroeger, who now lives in Ottawa, shares her ideas for tackling climate change. (No surprise, they involve planting lots of trees.) Somehow she manages to make the work sound not daunting but almost easy. And, perhaps, at the root of it all, it is. – Domini
Elsewhere in rewilding
ABC News
Keith Anthony Fabro
Guardian Staff
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