Based on Isabella Tree’s best-selling book by the same title, Wilding tells the story of a couple that bets on nature for the future of their failing four-hundred-year-old estate. The young couple battles entrenched tradition and dares to place the fate of their farm in the hands of nature. Ripping down the fences, they set the land back to the wild and entrust its recovery to a motley mix of animals both tame and wild. It is the beginning of a grand experiment that will become one of the most significant rewilding experiments in Europe.
As the documentary hits Australian cinemas on May 22, Nick L’Barrow spoke with Sally Hawkins, a leading expert in rewilding about the impact this documentary can have on positive conversations about rewilding, and how the beauty of nature captured on film compares in real life.
Nick: I watched Wilding last week, and this was a concept that I was not familiar with at all. Isabella and Charlie’s story is so fascinating, so I’m curious to know when you first found about them and the Knepp Estate?
Sally Hawkins: Well, interestingly, I lived in the UK for five years, and worked in rewilding. I was working in research policy and practice. I also lived there for 18 years, but five years of that was working in the rewilding space. I first became aware of the concept when I would talk to farmers about it, and there was a real reticence about what the term meant. Often, it was interpreted as removing people from the land, and having these, like, fortress conservation areas, if you like.
But, when I discovered Knepp, and Isabella and Charlie, it became hugely influential in actually bringing the concept of rewilding into a much more positive light, because they’ve demonstrated that it’s not about removing people. It’s very much still a functioning farm, and they produce food from that farm. It doesn’t have to be this, kind of, land sparing approach where you have food systems in one area and natural systems in another. It’s a much more integrated approach to ecological restoration.
Nick: When you go to these farms, and see rewilding in action, what is that experience like? Does it fuel your passion and drive to continue the research?
Sally Hawkins: I haven’t actually been to Knepp, but I’ve definitely been to other farms that still have cattle for producing beef, eco tourism, and sustainable approaches to farming. But being a social scientist, what has been really fascinating to me is how people have changed the way they talk about their farms. Farmers have completely changed the way the think about how it’s not just a resource to be extracted anymore. There’s been a change in their ethos.
I think that message comes across very strongly in Wilding. I haven’t been to many landscapes, in Europe especially, when it feels overly “wild”, but in the documentary, it’s very much about putting the pieces in place to create a vision for the future. Aside from Charlie and Isabella, we’re probably not going to see these apparent changes in our lifetime, but the end of Wilding shows us their vision.
Nick: It feels like the beginning of the trailblazing moment. Obviously, I approach a lot of my interviews from a film focused point of view, even documentaries! And David Allen [director] captures the Knepp Estate with such beauty. It’s such a visually immersive documentary. So, I’m curious to know, having been on some farms that are at their beginning stages of rewilding, whether that’s also a beauty you see in real life?
Sally Hawkins: Oh, absolutely. It’s so cinematic, and that’s inspired by the philosophy of Isabella and Charlie, because they are promoting the wilding outcomes that look like Knepp. I love at the end where they map out what it might look like, and that feels very beautiful, and very much so gets people thinking about what they want their landscapes to look like in the future.
Nick: Do you feel a documentary like Wilding is an integral part of bringing the conversations about rewilding to a larger audience?
Sally Hawkins: Yeah, I think we need that kind of inspiration. But, what I really want people to think about now is, “what does rewilding look like where I live?” And it’s not necessarily about it only happening on agricultural land. It can happen in urban areas. It can happen in ex-mining sites, for example. Even just where people live. So, it’s about getting people to start asking those questions, and then start working together with their councils, or in their neighbourhoods to just think about it.
Nick: If the documentary works in a positive way to start conversations, what in your experience has been roadblocks in getting people to think differently about rewilding?
Sally Hawkins: The main challenges are people’s mindsets about what nature is and how we relate to it. In the UK, it’s still a very extractive outlook about what our natural resources are. And that’s not just individuals, but policy makers too.
My question has always been, “How do we get people to accept a little bit more messiness and risk in their landscapes?” Because, ecological dynamism and change are all natural processes that we can’t control and maintain just the way they are. That’s one of the biggest challenges.
And we’re hugely privileged in Australia that we have tens of thousands of years worth of indigenous knowledge of people who worked with nature, rather than against nature. And we really should be using that knowledge to rethink our food systems. The principles of rewilding are very similar to caring for country and restoring our cultural connection to place and nature. It’s all very similar.
Thank you to Sally for her time, and to NixCo PR and Garage Films for organising the interview. Wilding is in select cinemas now.
