Self-willed land - advocacy for wild land & nature

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ARTICLES Self-Willed Land Farming and Food Permaculture (Full list of articles) Your favourite articles LEARN about Permaculture DESIGNS, Reports and Presentations, & Research WILDLAND Wildland Bibliography Wildland Filmography Wildland Information What is Wildland? KEEPERS OF TIME - a policy for England's Ancient Woodland Wildland Network News ssenredliW Conservation Speak Heathland Madness Treeless Forests Heroes and Villains	True wilderness IS A LAND THAT HAS SUPREME NATURALNESS AND IS FREE OF ANY HUMAN CONTROL It is a self-willed land because plants and animals can thrive there, in their own unfettered communities. We have no true wilderness in Britain today. Natural woodland once covered over 70% of our land, but farming has displaced all that wildwood. We have lost our wolves, lynx, bear, wild boar and beaver, and severely reduced the range of wildcat, polecat and pine marten. Nowhere has been left untouched by people and their farming. Our hills and mountains are over-grazed, and our rivers and marshes constrained. We exploit and manage every landscape without leaving anything to natural forces. Wilderness and wildland should be important to us, just as it is in the South American rainforests, the Rocky Mountains in North America, the wildernesses of Australasia and South Africa, or the mountainous regions of continental Europe. If you wish to learn more about this, then read some of the articles on this website. The articles look at: the 5,000 years in which we have shaped our landscapes through farming and game keeping the threat to wildness from SSSI designation and the target driven approach to nature conservation how a Permaculture approach to land use can make a difference how giving land back to wild nature would make some of Britain's landscapes self-willed again (see the manifesto) Self-willed land for its own sake will only exist in Britain if land is held inalienably in the public good and that legislation exists to define its natural character, and thus the limits to human intervention. Mark Fisher - mark.fisher@self-willed-land.org.uk Permaculture Design, wild nature, wildland, wildwood, rewilding, advocacy for wild land and nature, self-willed land, wilderness The latest articles are:
Travelogue - ten weeks in North America	Threestoneburn Forest - a lost opportunity for a new wildwood, Dec 08 NEW	Woodland creation - in need of strategic direction and larger scale, Nov 08	Wild foraging - reconnecting to our ethnobotanical heritage, Oct 08
SELF-WILLED LAND the Manifesto	Wilderness experience and the spirit of wild land, Sept 2008	Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem - the island of hope, Aug 2008	When we talk to trees, do they listen? Jun 08
	Last updated 8 January 2009