If you tire of hearing ever more negative news about how we humans continue to pollute and destroy the earth we depend on for life itself, try watching this five minute story from this week’s CBS Sunday Morning. Trust me, you will be glad you did!
Rewilding: Letting nature take over
Rewilding is a progressive approach to conservation. It’s about letting nature take care of itself, enabling natural processes to shape land and sea, repair damaged ecosystems and restore degraded landscapes. Through rewilding, wildlife’s natural rhythms create wilder, more biodiverse habitats.
By growing native, drought-tolerate plants here, we have encouraged the return of wildlife, birds, bees, etc.
This idea/story offered me a sign of relief, showing me that sometimes nature wins in a great win-win way for people too. This is what my late father was always talking about, letting nature take over, because she did a great job up until now! This is also what we have tried to do on our own three acres in southern Colorado. I just do not comprehend those who buy land in the country and begin mowing the crap out of it immediately. We hated “yard work” when we lived in suburbia, and guess what, all the birds and bees and other wildlife there also could not tolerate it. They need biodiversity to thrive. Rewilding is a form of ecological restoration aimed at increasing biodiversity and restoring natural processes to the land.
Why is it so hard for man to simply leave nature alone to take care of itself? Why are we so convinced that we need to “improve” it? We as a species must learn the answer to this question before we “improve” ourselves into complete extinction.
Adventures of the NEW??? Old Farts 
This is totally encouraging! My dad always said that man was the worst thing about nature. He was so savvy about working in concert with the land!
And I agree with him. Nature does just fine without us. Vastly better, even!
My cousin and her husby, years ago, moved onto her parents’ acreage and made a concerted effort to help it relapse. I thought it was brilliant then. I think it’s brilliant now.
Thank you, Laura, for this bright spot of hope today!
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Yes Diane. I get so tired of constant bad news about our world and especially the rape of our natural environment. Let’s hear it for re-wilding!
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I couldn’t help but think of my major professor as I read your wonderful piece. Her re-wilding efforts made NPR and other non-nazi folks wonder what was liberal or progressive about academic suburban yard nazis. https://ethnobiology.org/forage/blog/ethnobotanist-faced-yard-nazis-does-ethnography
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Wow Nancy! Thanks for introducing me to the term “yard Nazis.” We have the opposite problem here. When someone suggested, in our rural area with lots 3-10 acres, that they leave at least part of their lot un-mowed, they went nuts with “I’ll do what I like with my property!” Of course many of them are men from Texas. That explains a lot… LOL!
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