15 James Canton on renaturing and the transformation of his Two-Acre Field

In his Field at Maplestead in north Essex, author and nature restorer James Canton chats about the transformation by renaturing of small spaces in the landscape. “I evolved,” he says, “the field evolved.” From barren land to cricket pitch to abundant patch of wildflower meadow, scrub, trees and pond. We talk about how life recognises life, and how when you create the conditions, nature comes fast. He describes digging out of the pond, and how quickly insects arrived, followed by fish (eggs from the feet of ducks, maybe), and great crested newts (walking great journeys across the land from other water). Also: think of the digger churning up the land as a herd of aurochs. James is Director of Wild Writing at the University of Essex, and also talks about how students of all ages have been creating story to talk about transformations. He says, “renaturing is open to everyone.”

James’ heroines and heroes are the unsung: Chris Gibson (“mothman”), Steve Carver of the University of Leeds, and local activist Lucy Manthorpe of Kiln Farm near Long Melford. 

James recommends “Lie of the Land” by Guy Shrubsole and “Ice Age Art” by Gill Cook. Also watch the online film on rewilding ideas in Siberia called “Pleistocene Park.”

James’s recent books are “Renaturing” and “The Oak Papers.”

He recommends, renature wherever you are. Even a window box. All through our talk, the rooks nearby are calling. 

My new book will be supporting this podcast, and will be published in March 2027 by Unbreaking/5m. It’s called "Bamboo and Butterfly: Transformation and Story for Climate and Nature Recovery." 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Well here we are in uh James Canton's Fields, the Field. The Field. In Maplestead, North East Essex, and a site of rewilding or renaturing as you call it. So we're going to hear a little bit about what's happening here in the field and how that's been changing. And uh yeah, welcome to the show, James. Well, it's nice to be here, Jules. It's nice to have you here. Right to be here in your field, yeah. So um uh James, author, writer, um number of uh very very excellent books, um and an active participant in the the renaturing, as you've called it, of of this field, which was uh what a cricket field, I think you used it for a while. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 0:59

Yes, I mean tell us a bit about the history of the field. Sure, exactly, yeah. Um I mean I call it the field, and I did think, you know, in a way I I need to I need to evolve that term because it it is no longer a field, really. Um but yeah, so the the story is is quite simple. When I came when I moved here uh to North Essex from London uh 25 years ago now, uh 26 actually, is um the little cottage that uh I ended up moving into, when we came to look at the the cottage uh with the estate agent, round the back of the cottage, what excited me more than the house, uh more than the idea of moving into a house, was was this uh for sale sign and a small field, this this field that we're sitting in. And I, you know, from London, the idea of of having any kind of sense of of ownership or it not even the sense of ownership, but just the capacity to the freedom to to be in a two-acre place without other people demanding things of you. I find I still find it uh exhilarating and kind of like remarkably kind of anarchic. Um and um so the only problem was that 25, 26 years ago I was just uh a kind of London lad freed from the city, and I was like, this is amazing, this is amazing. Obviously, my partner, very much more sensible, she said, uh, what are you gonna do with it? And I said, Well, you know, it's a field, it's a field. The possibilities are endless, kind of thing. And um potentially they are, but um at the time I didn't have the kind of ecological uh vision perhaps that uh has evolved. And um so for a number of years what I did was I I would just mow this field uh almost you know religiously every Sunday. I mean, this is what you have to do if you want to maintain it as a as a grassy patch, and I and I thought, right, I'll have a cricket, cricket match. So we you know, for a number of years, friends of mine from London and locals would we'd meet up here, we'd have a cricket match, a bit of a uh, you know, a few drinks and a and a fire. And it was good, it was good, but um well after a number of years, you know, the the energy to energy for that. Yeah, the the the the mower that I'd bought wasn't great. Uh it was it was designed for golf courses rather than raggedy old patches of ground in North Essex. So uh the um the cricket pitch as such um became smaller and smaller, and what naturally happened was the the JSON oaks evolved on the on the what were the boundaries of the field, if you like. And uh and gradually as well, I think um, you know, I I'd sort of evolved during that time. I'd started teaching the MA and wild writing at Essex University, was more and more involved in that, was starting to see this as an area not entirely uh for for my own human needs, but there were other needs uh of other living beings here, and so it became an evolving pattern, and for a number of years the cricket pitch became smaller. Um we had um oaks growing up around the edge. Yeah, we've got a lot of things. We had longer grasses, yeah, exactly. These oaks here as well, they're all they're all JSON oaks, so they're all from that period. I mean, it was just just a you know a barren patch um when I when I kind of took it over. So it's evolved, it's evolved, and in the last um sort of 10, 15 years, it's been a more um clear project to uh to lay to leave the cricket alone and to allow nature to kind of uh have this space as it should have, you know, and I share it. You know, I'm I'm part of nature and and we all share this this patch, and that's now how it is.

SPEAKER_00 4:48

Um so there's a sort of um it these these opportunities arrive kind of partly by accident but also partly because kind of life opportunities kind of come at you and you think, oh yes, we could do that, and then suddenly a whole creative space opens up, and we're gonna talk about books and writing a bit and how you how you tell story about transformations in places. But um, it strikes me that that you don't know what's gonna happen at the beginning of a thing called a project like this, but that's part of the fun, that kind of creative.

SPEAKER_01 5:24

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, look, this is a natural space, you know, it's just doing its thing. Um the thing is that that what we find is is that humans often kind of um uh over over place their own emphasis, their their own needs on natural spaces. Um and that's exactly this is just a microcosm, it's just a perfect little exemplar, and that was the thing. A number of years ago I was getting more and more into you know reading books on rewilding and interested in in that kind of aspect of you know natural restoration that we need to be doing across the world because of this impact that humans have had, this you know, kind of colonial approach that we have often. Um, and you know, in my own little patch, I'd be reading about it, I'd be studying it at the university, talking with other people, and then I'd come back to this field and I'd be kind of looking around the field, and more and more I was thinking, right, I should I should get into rewilding the field, you know. Like I've got this patch, I'm really interested in it. I you know, I'm learning about the the wildlife here, the ecology, that the the changing nature of it. Um so I was getting into that, and um essentially I think the the kind of key moment was I I invited a a friend, a good friend of mine who's a who's a one of the leading naturalists in the area, Chris Gibson. Chris came over um probably uh I don't know, it must be a good eight years ago, and we were walking round the field, you know, as as we are seated here now. And um and I said to Chris, look, you know, slightly that mansplainy thing where you uh I was walking him, an expert naturalist, round a field, explaining to him what I was doing in terms of rewilding the field, which was a kind of uh yeah, uh hubris, let's say. Uh and um and and I said to Chris, yeah, yeah, so I'm rewilding, and and he was talking me into like the best ways that I could be uh improving the biodiversity in this patch, and uh, and then we we kind of paused, not not a million miles from here, and uh and I and he said, Look, James, what you're doing is it's great, it's really good. Uh, you know, uh fabulous, but but it's not rewilding. Yeah, and and there was a kind of like, oh, oh, okay, and uh, and and I said, What uh what would you what do you mean? He said, Well, look, rewilding's large-scale nature restoration, you know, minimum thousand acres, this kind of thing. And I was like, okay, yeah. He said, he said, what you're doing is great, you're trying to improve the biodiversity on a small patch, it's renaturing.

unknown 7:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:53

And so there we were, and there was the word that was that eventually became and a few years later the title of the book. So, you know, thanks to Chris Gibson for that.

SPEAKER_00 8:02

Brilliant, brilliant. So you have the space, you have the potential, um, uh, and then you've got a kind of set of choices as to whether how to intervene and what to intervene with, that's right, and what to leave alone and let the course be taken by the trees, the shrubs, the plants, the rooks that we've got in the background. Yeah, the rooks, yeah, yeah. Lovely. Um the pond, which wasn't here before. So pick up a couple of examples. I mean, we've got yellow rattle emerging this this spring on the meadow here, and you've had big stands of that. That's a deliberate thing you needed to bring back in. Yeah. The pond you needed to dig out, yeah. Um, the grass you need to scythe now at certain times of the year. So there are there's this lovely mix of kind of creative intervention and intent, but then also letting things go their way as well as that.

SPEAKER_01 9:00

Absolutely. Combination of the two. Absolutely, yeah. And and and I've just been learning this process, you know, and and um I mean, so this is this is the key thing. When you've only got a small bit of a bit of land like this, I mean I I I think this is quite a small bit of land, but you know, I as I say 25 years ago, I was amazed. I had this whole field, two acres, it's you know, so it's all about perspective. And in the same extent, if I was in London, if I had a small garden, even with that, the same principles really are operating in the sense you're trying to create different areas, so you're just looking at what nature wants to do here, what the natural world wants to do. So a lot of the time it wants to be uh seems to be wanting to bro grow a lot of bramble, uh uh a lot of bramble, which is which is great, bramble's great, um, but you don't want the whole field bramble, you don't you you know patches of nettles where the nutrients are. But that's the thing. Again, so this field uh really has just had so much nutrients shoved into it as a as a bit of old farm, uh farmers field, that if you just left it, you'd just have brambles and nettles, which is kind of good for you know, the the peacock butterflies would be happy type thing. Plenty of moths like that. Yeah. Um birds but but you're trying to do it do a bit more. So one of the one of the key things from that I was doing originally and still am doing is creating patches of wildflower meadow. So that's a very deliberate policy. So I was having to clear uh bramble from behind us here, um, and and kind of you want to keep the bramble, but you you don't want it just taking over everywhere. So, and as you say, in order to create wildflower meadow, one of the things you're trying to do is decrease the fertility, not the nutrients out, not the not the grasses out that are just going to take over and kind of monopolize. So, one of the key things that I've learned for that is this beautiful plant, Yellow Rattle, which parasitizes the grassroots and and helps knock back the grasses. So that's been one of my kind of key workers that I've been working with here in order to create wildflower meadows so that you can get that kind of abundance, that variety of wildflowers in. So that's one example.

SPEAKER_00 11:18

You might have to work at that as well. I mean, I've I've tried yellow rattle in my home, my my garden. Yeah. I haven't managed to get them to take. Nope. Um, and and it's not it's it's it's not obvious that you'll get what you want um in place. No, it's really not, and it takes a number of years. And it might exactly it might take a number of years, or it might just be the place is not suited, and you kind of don't know until you've tried.

SPEAKER_01 11:41

I think I think it's really interesting. So Chris Gibson, who I've already mentioned, actually has a PhD in yellow rattle. Okay, so like he's one of these people. That's a good place to start. It's a good place to start. But but he said, you know, pus keep keep at it, keep at it. And I would create a a little patch of yellow rattle came up first year I was doing it, you know, kind of died away. A couple of years later, I managed to get a bit of a patch. Last year I I harvested two kilos of yellow rattle seed from from here, and it's all gone back in. So that's several thousand thousand. Absolutely, and and it's gone back in, and I think there's this process that takes place. I don't know uh the genetics of it, etc. etc., the biology of it, but um it it it seems like it gets better in a local soil, and and and it's it's the same argument really for why you want to go to your local uh wildflower uh meadows to get the seed if you want to grow them in your patch, because uh there seems to be that kind of um yeah uh abundance, the profundity of of uh of yellow rattle here seems to seems to indicate that. No, I haven't spoken to Chris Gibson about it, he might give me a far better answer.

SPEAKER_00 12:54

No, no, I think that that's that's particularly right. There's there's um hyper-local circumstances, ecological, physical circumstances that that um uh plants growing in places will fit to or not fit to. That's right. Um and having a diverse, I think it's a bit of diversity in the field here, isn't there? It's quite sandy up by the pond, which is on the phone.

SPEAKER_01 13:16

Yeah, there is, it's it's much more diverse than I originally thought. It's a good thing. Yeah, and and you know, again, I like from from having dug bits of it, you just hit clay pretty quickly. But there are these little seams, as you say, that are far more loamy, far more silty. So um, and and that does mean that you get variants of of wildflower as well. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Um but yeah, no, look, you mentioned the pond.

SPEAKER_00 13:38

Yeah, so tell us about the pond.

SPEAKER_01 13:39

Well the pond was a really uh it was a really good one. It was uh it was something I kind of knew that I needed to be doing. Water on a site is obviously key, like for for most living things need water, yeah. So uh that I'm on a high bit of ground up here and I hadn't did had no water source here, really. There's a there's a sort of winterborne-ish at the back here, but not really nothing, nothing to talk of. Um so for a number of years I was I was sort of gradually digging a pond uh when I could, you know, when I wasn't doing other things. It was just being so slow. So what I eventually did was I I spoke to uh a good friend of mine. I said, look, Mike, I'm gonna need someone to come in and and and dig a pond for me. Who do I get? Uh Mike, who knows quite a few of the people locally, he said uh said you've got two options, I reckon. You've got Mad Mark or Digger Dave. So uh we had a little think about it. So we went for Digger Dave and uh Dave's great, he he digs a lot of the ponds uh locally around here, and um I it was weird when I when I spoke to him I actually realised that um I mean I knew I'd I'd known him from years and years before, but I've forgotten where I'd met him, and I'd actually met him at a parents' evening where I was meant to be discussing his daughter's GCSEs, and uh was instead we'd just moved in and I needed someone to cut this field because we'd bought it in February and I'd come back in May and uh moved in, and of course the grasses were up to my waist. Uh, and good old Dave had uh had topped the field. So it was really nice that the uh that the the guy that had come and saved me initially with the field was then very happy to bring his three tons of orange digger in. And um I was concerned that you know this was going to cause damage to the field as such. Again, Chris Gibson said, look, look, think of it as a herd of orics strolling through your field. Yeah, yeah, um, but he said, like biodiversity, you know, loves disturbance, you know, this all these great lines. And so um, yeah, Dave came in, dug the pond, he's a really uh you know experienced digger of ponds for farmers, etc. etc. So he knew what he was doing, puddled it using the digger's uh itself, which is to say bashed the clay down to create a natural liner. It's what you do in rice fields, it's the same thing. It happens all over the world. I mean, this is what people do, you know. Rather than sticking a massive great bit of plastic down, which again doesn't feel quite right. So we have um uh yeah, it's and it's about it's about 10 metres by four metres, so it's a decent sized pond. One of the lovely things with the pond was um the day Dave dug it, we we went, yeah, he said I'll I'll just pop back tomorrow just to finish off. Yeah, great. And I went out that it there was a little bit of rain that night, and so I went out the next morning very excited. There was a tiny little puddle there, you know, in this big hole, big muddy hole. How's that gonna fill up though? Yeah, exactly. And there were two pond skaters on there. Straight away. Just look, you know, where have you been? You know, and that you could see them kind of almost looking at me to say, well, we've been waiting, we've been waiting ten years for this. You know, and it is that thing, you know, then the natural world will come. Exactly. You know, it's waiting.

SPEAKER_00 17:04

Give it the habitat and and it will thrive. Well, that's what strikes me, and we were talking uh chuckling about this earlier on about the you put the pond in, and when the water's in and and and permanent for for across the year, and we've had the wettest January and February this year. Yeah, we've recharged it. It's been great. In no time at all, you end up with fish, you've got newts, yeah, you've got other um uh insect life here, um dragonflies, you know, that the whole works. Yeah. Um and it's kind of nice to have that as a bit of a mystery sometimes. I mean of course we we wonder how the the fish got here, well, on the feet of ducks, but we talked about it. On the feet of ducks, yes. Probably probably, exactly. And the newts walking across the fields. Yeah, yeah, taking their duck. Tramping along their kind of long march to Moscow kind of thing. Yes, it's kind of finding it, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:04

Their big path. Um but I know what you mean. That the mystery is, I mean that's that's also the wonder, isn't it? Of the of how there are now great crested newts in there and loads of them and uh and how they got there. I mean I know that around this area there are a lot of great crested newts, so even though they are extremely rare across Europe, for example, very fortunately here they're they're in abundance. Um but you're absolutely right. I mean it's that that is the wonder.

SPEAKER_00 18:32

And then they say somewhere they picked up the smell of water, yeah, there's something was over there, they came over and they stayed. Yeah, absolutely. And you'll never really know that unless you set up thousands of wildlife cameras and all that kind of stuff. But it's also kind of nice sometimes not to know the full detail and just and just celebrate the fact that things came.

SPEAKER_01 18:53

Yeah, definitely, definitely. Yeah, and remind you that's a hoverfly between us here. Yeah, yeah, there's there's a lot of hoverflies out today, which is again great. No, it is just reminder of these basics, you know, these basics of like provide a water source for living things, you know, provide habitat for things, and they will come and live there, you know. It's it's and again that even as I say I don't even like the word that I'm using, provide, like like allow to be habitat, you know. It it we we really have to step away from what the way that we've been as as a species, but you know, maybe we're starting to learn that. Uh hopefully, hopefully so.

SPEAKER_00 19:33

Um that's going to be I I suspect, I think that that's gonna be part of any kind of success that we might see around nature recovery and also recovery um in the face of climate crisis and doing something different, is thinking something different and building a different set of relationships with nature. The connections are going to have to be.

SPEAKER_01 19:55

No, I mean absolutely chores. I mean, and and you know, so you know, it the last book, as I say, was called Renaturing and was was very much about I had this sort of frustration as I started to study what what rewilding was both globally and nationally within Britain. And it became absolutely abundantly clear to me, one that we were using the the term rewilding erroneously, like we need to leave it as a term for large-scale nature restoration. We need global, large scale, you know, big, big, big scale. You know, I was just uh fairly recently writing about rewilding in in Ukraine, you know, 300,000 acres, you know, these this kind of big land scale size. Leave it at that, not oh, I've been rewilding my life, oh I'm rewilding my hair because I haven't washed it for two weeks. You know, no, that's the wrong use of the term, and it's become this plastic term. Um so and and then and then also this kind of slightly more um, you know, land ownership issue within Britain, where because of the history of humans on this land in the last sort of thousand, two thousand years, we have this issue that the only people in Britain that are really doing rewilding are are the aristocratic gentry that are deciding uh oh, I'm going to move in this direction with this land that I own, etc. I'm not criticising that, but that is that is the model we have. So it's a it's a kind of like whoever chooses to go down this route. So one that one, why aren't we getting larger organizations, governments even to be doing the rewilding or leading it, if you like. But two, how does an individual you know? I'm very fortunate here, I've got these two this two-acre, I'm you know, in my own uh renaturing experiment, it's great. But what if I was still in London? You know, how would I be involved in nature restoration? So, again, that's where the book Renaturing came from was was the the kind of small ways to wild your world, you know. What how can we all be involved? Because I think there I feel there is a a kind of of You know, a movement, if you want, a vibe amongst humans that they want to be more involved in nature restoration, but often don't see ways in which they can be involved. So that's been great, you know, being part of like Sing projects in London. You know, we've got beavers where I grew up in West London now, you know, and that stuff like that is is fabulous to see.

SPEAKER_00 22:18

And people are super interested in the iconic species. I mean, there's nothing wrong with having them. Um, you know, the the ancient oak, the oak of of England, has a certain kind of symbolic nature as well as a as a real kind of um ecological system um in of itself. Uh a mature oak has 600,000 leaves on it.

SPEAKER_01 22:43

Well, nice.

SPEAKER_00 22:44

So that's kind of every one of those is going to have moss larvae in there. Yeah, yeah. And that's where the blue tits that we can hear in the background here are going to be gathering a thousand moss larvae a day to feed their youngsters. I mean the numbers are astonishing. So Yeah, absolutely, yeah. So once you get to that kind of certain point, you can just see how these things start to connect up. Yeah, absolutely. I love the term, I love the idea of renaturing that could be open to everybody. I mean, I think that's a that's such a great kind of principle as we start with this. Um if you were if we were to think a bit about the the um wild writing course that that you direct at the University of Essex, that's been running for 17 years now. Yeah, 2009. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Um and so um and that's about how we or students in particular, but how we write about the natural world and our relationship with it. So that's about the human connection with places and how we put words down that say stuff directly and symbolically. Um how how have we seen how have you seen changes in uh student interest if we can put it that way, who come at all age groups actually onto the course? Very much, yeah, very much. So they've come from all sorts of backgrounds and ages to with a desire to write. I mean, what would you pick out as uh two or three of the big changes over that recent period?

SPEAKER_01 24:14

Yeah, it it's interesting, we've I mean well you were you were key in setting this up. It's been it's been a really good course, and we've managed to keep it running. I think, you know, there's been pressure on a lot of these uh, you know, kind of uh nature-based writing courses. I think now, hopefully, we've we've uh we've gone through the worst, everyone sees the need for us to be focused on the natural world and and on wild spaces, etc. Um, but and it has been interesting over the years. I I've I've uh you know kind of anecdotally, I think what's what's really interesting about this master's course is we've always attracted both of a really wide range of interest age-wise. So from people that have just come finished their undergraduate degree, um, whether in sort of creative writing or environmental science, and want to want to take that on, want to be writing about the natural world, etc., and and uh and their involvement in it, whatever aspect. You know, I've got a student at the moment who comes very much from an environmental science background, and she's she's kind of passionate about making us love, you know, ugly beetles and things like this, you know. That's a that's her driving force, you know, and uh and which is brilliant, absolutely. You know, we need we need the ugly beetle around, sort of thing. And then but and then the other thing that I've really noticed is we've always attracted people from all over the world. And and that that is great, but it's always worried me a little bit that there aren't more of these courses. It's you know, you'd like to think that all over the world we've got people and societies that are that are less focused on on the purely human and more focused on the human natural world interaction, if you like. Humans, as we know, we are in we are we are of nature, um, but but getting that message and and imploring everyone to to recognise that it's really important.

SPEAKER_00 26:18

Meanwhile, the pressures of of of the crises, the polycrises of nature, climate, social inequality, and so forth, they're all adding up. They're all adding up.

SPEAKER_01 26:27

And and definitely I feel that's become more and more an impetus, a theme for people coming to the both the MA World Writing, and I now I now teach a second year course on on climate emergency. It's just called Climate Emergency. And that's a really interesting course as well because you again, interestingly, you get students from all different disciplines and from all different uh countries around the world wanting to engage with this idea of climate emergency. And again, I I just feel like there needs to be more of this because it's um it's in our faces, it's it's right up against us, isn't it? And um, and it's it's nice to see that with that second year course. I know we're talking about the MA Wild writing, but with the climate emergency course, nice to see and lovely to work with youth from all, you know, younger people from all over the world that are really keen to be kind of leading this in in as they move forward in their careers and their lives. So yeah, it's good to see. It's good to see.

SPEAKER_00 27:25

Um do you do you find that people are hoping and looking for a way to write about let's let's kind of just call it positive news? Let's kind of say that the transformations towards something good as opposed to uh just reflecting on writing about where it's gone wrong. Because it's it's kind of it's sort of easy to say, well, uh here's a landscape that's been damaged by modern farming, or here's another place where the rivers have been destroyed by pollution and irresponsible action here and there, and um that that seems to me probably doesn't lead to a sense of kind of hope and agency. No, absolutely, absolutely, and and come coming up with ideas on how to make it better, yeah, like here, um uh as an exemplar of making something better. Yeah, you know, we've got a value as defining what better is, but yeah, of course. We're saying it's more biodiversity, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 28:20

More biodiversity is a simple way of putting it here. That was always the kind of the rationale, the outcome. But um, but no, absolutely, I mean, I mean, narratives of of climate change, climate emergency and all have often been way too simplistic, haven't they? You know, uh, and we we you know we explore that in the in those courses, as I say, you know, you have your kind of dystopic vision of the future where you know either robots have taken control and everything, there's nothing green, you know, if you like, or or you know, or um often some sort of disaster. Now I'm not I don't want to be just saying we need to live in some sort of hope bubble, but I think we also need narratives for ways in which you can move the world to better spaces. And so, yes, I think that that's exactly right, that nuancing that narrative is is what we're looking to do within within both those courses. And as I say, often it can be very um individuals have have often come, they certainly to the MA World Writing, they come in with a particular kind of angle that they want to be doing. Um, you know, and they and then and then then we just provide the kind of support network for people to be doing that. I mean you know, we've seen this this huge growth in the kind of what you wouldn't call nature-based memoir uh within within writing, uh non-fiction writing, creative non-fiction writing. So again, I think I feel that's a that's a really healthful, healthy and hopeful uh way forward within uh the narrative. I often prefer it when the central characters are not just humans but are the natural world as well, um, which is often where the best books are, kind of thing. So so yeah, all you're absolutely right, we need these narratives of hope, and um they can't just be kind of bland uh and and childish, if you like. But uh um yeah, and for I've been very fortunate to to have my own little exemplar patch here and be working on it. But again, I think it is that idea of processes, it's that idea of working on things. Um with a longish view, yeah, with with a longer longer term view, exactly, and trying to get you know the the big players, the big players, you know, how do we do this within a capitalist society, you know, this kind of thing, you know, and and there's lots of I mean, look at the rooks, you know. They know they're they're they're really unhappy about this.

SPEAKER_00 30:36

Yeah, yeah, they're gonna be a signal on that. Yeah, they're gonna be. Well, let's let's let's try to think about that bigger picture as well. So the your book, The Oak Papers, was serialised on Radio 4, so it was a book of the week, so that was a lovely thing. That was great, yeah, it's great. Uh and uh speaking to a larger audience um and the oak, to give them personification as well, we could call the the trees the standing people because here they are standing around the edge of the field, and the oak you know, we have oaks in the region here that are a thousand years old. There are many that are four or five hundred years old. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Um there are uh rook colonies that that are probably been in the same same kind of woods for a thousand years in the region around here because they're documented in the doomsday book. Yeah, right. Um and uh and it does strike me that when we start to feel into history in a long term like that, which is something you addressed in the boat papers, was thinking about this one tree with a long view and a wide view, landscapes as well as time, that also allows us to look forward into the future with a little bit more kind of yeah, okay. Yeah, it might it's it it's not that great at the moment. It's a bit serious, it's very serious, however we want we want to go. But it'll be all you know it's gonna get better if we do certain kinds of things. Yeah. Um and that's not just to say do nothing, that's to say do something, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 32:03

Yeah, I mean my mind shi mind shifts, you know, like changing your as we said, you know, change the way that we think is it's so important, you know, uh as humans. And one of the things that I think I learned during that process of spending a number of years beside an 800-year-old plus uh oak tree, which became the kind of the core of what the oak papers became. Well, tell us about that tree. It's yeah, it's a it's a tree not not a few, it's a few miles from here, not too far. Uh it's called the Honeywood Oak. Uh Marks Hall Estate. Marks Hall Estate, yeah. Yeah, a beautifully uh well curated tree, uh cared for um on the Marks Hall Estate. And and yeah, and I just started going to spend time there day and night um whenever I could. It was you know, why that tree? Well, it was kind of halfway between my here, my home, and my work at the time. I was working in a secondary school just down the road in Coggershaw. And um, so I became friends with the the curator of trees on the Markshall Estate, Jonathan Jukes, legendary man, uh expert on trees, really fabulous, fabulous uh tree lover in the best way. And and he guided me into the the Honeywood Oak and just and and allowed me to just step into that space of the oak and be there at all different times of day and night, you know, and I'd just park up and and get in there into the estate, and there'd be no one else there. It was amazing, it was a really amazing few years, and was making notes and just learning. And I think one of so one of the key kind of really simple messages or learning curves that I came was that I was standing next to this oak tree. It's it is a living being just like me. Yeah, it is an individual living being. All of these oaks around here are different, they're individually different, just as every human is individually different. It's just perspective, it's just the way we see them. So we tend to just say, oh look, there's loads of oak trees. You know, if there were lots of humans over here, you wouldn't want it'd be a bit harsh if you just went, oh, it's just loads of humans. If you so I mean that was such a key uh central learning uh uh aspect of what the oak papers was about was seeing, and then you you just extrapolate on, don't you? Like every living thing is different. Individuals. Individuals. You know, care for that individual and you're halfway there towards respecting, you know. So and so uh absolutely so with the honeywood oak, this 800-year-old tree, you know, you start start to appreciate that, start to appreciate that ancient oaks, you know, they they support something like 2,300 other species. You know, most of which we don't have common names for, we just have Latin binomials, you know, some of which we probably don't even have names for, because we probably haven't even established yet us as a species, you know. Um so all these aspects, and then one of the things I I became more and more fascinated with was both the history of our of our relationship as as a species, as humans, with oak trees, particularly in the northern hemisphere, you know, wherever there's been oaks, humans have have appreciated them, you know, right through pre from prehistory. Um so this kind of aspect was really, really key. And and then also, as I say, in in the more kind of contemporary context, that what what we get, we seem to get some sort of emotional uh support from oaks as well. So we get, you know, in the in the deep past, we we might have used it as wood for fires or building our houses, etc. And we might have used the acorns even to survive, you know, um pre-farming, certainly, standard staple. But even those early farming communities, you know, we we know from archaeological evidence, uh, you know, big pits that have been found in the in the early farming communities where they had acorns, stashes, because that was a reliable, that was a reliable thing they could always turn back to to make flour, etc., to to feed themselves. So oaks really have been this incredible supportive uh element in in human evolution. Um but also in this strange emotional way, this more sort of psychological way, and I still find it extremely powerful to to go and climb up. There's a nice little oak here that I've just taken standing in. I think there's something really different about standing in it, getting off the ground. Um, and then another thing that I love doing with um with my students is we go and we go and measure what one of the large oaks on the Wyvernhoe estate where where the University of Essex is based. And by hugging the tree, you know, uh as a group.

SPEAKER_00 36:48

Six six foot, two metres roughly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:50

Exactly, you know, um so if you just measure each of your heights and then you collectively hug, you can tell the age of the oak. It's quite a simple thing. But people love doing it. We love hugging an oak, you know, and it you know, I don't know what what that is, I don't have that capacity, but I do know that as humans, you know, we like being near trees, it's better for us. We've got all the scientific evidence that that declares that. But even in our own states, we know that we feel better when we do that. So that that all kind of became out in the oak papers, and and it actually came the book really came out during during lockdown as well, during Covid, which I thought was you know, it was a strange thing, but actually I think it was a good book for that, in that it it I think a lot of people got solace from from reading the book and being reminded that you don't need humans around you all the time to get your emotional support, if you like. So that was good.

SPEAKER_00 37:46

I suspect life recognises life. I think there's an element of that that there's something there's something kind of deep going on which is actually, in a sense, kind of no more than living things on this planet. Um uh life is the one thing that that goes against the second law of thermodynamics. Everything goes to entropy except life, which goes in the other direction. It builds builds up. Life builds life, yeah. Yeah, it builds up. It's they call it negantropic rather than entropic. Right. And and that's what that's what life does, and I suspect that's part of the reason why we feel different around living things and can respond to them in different kinds of ways, and why people during COVID especially recognized that there was something that had been missing. Um but if if we were to think in a kind of broader sense of the big rewilding projects that you were talking about here and the changes that are happening on s at scale across the world, is that that's kind of quite hopeful when thinking about um providing counter-narratives to you know economics says we've got to have this sort of kind of pattern of growth and exploitation and you can't have anything else because we've got to have this. Yeah, definitely. Actually, really, no. We've got another way of doing things. Yeah, that's absolutely writing, it's gonna need all the students to go off and tell their stories.

SPEAKER_01 39:14

Yeah, definitely. I mean we we we definitely I think everyone's I think even the most ardent capitalists would hopefully accept that the world's not in a great state, and and and it's not in a great state, not because of a a natural fluctuation in in climate, but because of humans. I mean, there's the odd person that still denies it, but most now accept that. And you know, we we've seen we've seen this, you know, industrialisation, capitalism, etc. etc. But individually, what do you do? You know, what do you do? Do I how do I step out of that society? Well, I don't know. But there are certain things that I can do. I can go and hug an oak tree if I want, you know what I mean? I could or I can at least recognise that oak tree is a living being uh and respect that. You know, if whatever bit of land that you have any kind of say over, if you can try and help the natural world that is evolving there, the living beings that are there, then it it's doing good for that, it's doing you good as well. So it's it's all part of this process, isn't it? Um and then as you say, other narrators of hope. I've just I had this fabulous conversation last week with someone I've been wanting to speak to for a number of years, uh, Nikita Zimoff, one of the the Zimoffs uh in north northern Siberia. So these guys are doing rewilding on on an enormous scale. That's their that's their vision. So this is re-establishing the mammoth step in Siberia. Pleistocene Park. I would if you don't know about it, I would urge you to go and find out about it. And if you want to support any organisation, I'd say support Pleistocene Park. They're trying to bring back uh large herbivores to to the northern steps of of Russia. And projects like that give me genuine hope. Uh, in I mean, it's hard because you're you're working against you know this. I mean, how do you make it happen? It seems to me such a no-brainer to put for for all, you know, any tech bro that wants to be a world saver, put your money into Pleistocene Park, you know. Um let's support that. You know, we'll stop the permafrost melting. We might even, you know, do do something towards easing climate change. But yeah, it it it then comes up against the hard narratives of capitalism and stuff like this. So, yeah, but those kind of projects, if you start telling about them, you start researching them, you start chatting to these uh these people that are that are doing these things, it gives you hope, and then hopefully you can get that across in the story somehow.

SPEAKER_00 41:44

Um well let's come to a couple of things to to wrap the couple of questions. Um uh you're proud, something against the odds. I mean proud of the field, obviously. Um is this is there something that you would pick out from what you've done? You know, is this kind of we're looking for these transformations in nature, in places, transformations in the way that we think to help the the moving beyond the crises. Um uh we also need to celebrate the good things that have happened. Is there a proud?

SPEAKER_01 42:18

Yeah, yeah, proud, proud's a funny one, isn't it? Um I mean, like, so I was very pleased, for example, in summer last year when I had the first moth survey in this field, yeah. That that I was very I was proud then because I haven't been very scientific, I hate to say, about the way I've gone about checking my biodiversity in the field and the changes over time. You know, if I've been doing this as a kind of organised scientific survey, it would have been quite different. But so I had uh Darren the Mothman over last in um in August and he had just been doing he's a he's a legend in these parts of moth surveys, and Darren had just come, it was really sweet, he fitted us in and he came over and and did brought two brought his two moth traps, one right here, and he'd just been doing uh Kempwell Hall or something, you know, like a big old estate, you know, like ancient woodland, you know, etc. etc. Yeah, yeah, you know, a few miles up the road sort of thing. And I was a little embarrassed that he might be very disappointed because he came at nine o'clock in the evening. He's very conscientious about what he does, so he stays. Some people leave their moth traps and go away and come back in the morning. No, no, not Darren, because you might miss one. He stays, so he wanted to stay till two in the morning in order to observe everyone and record them. He's he's very good on his moths. Anyway, so he did this, and I was there, and we we were actually doing a bit of filmmaking at the time, so it was anyway, it was a good it was a good atmosphere. 120 moths. Species. Species of moths, yeah. Sorry, sorry, species of moth, exactly. Isn't that amazing? And I was pleased with that because Darren was pleased with that. And we were like, he was like, that's amazing. Yeah, you got a fourth spot. I've only seen two of them ever in my life. You know, and so there were there were surprises there, and it showed like I knew that if he'd come and done that when this was a sort of cricket pitch, we wouldn't have got 120 species of moths. So in that sense, I I wouldn't say it's down to me, but it shows that if you do allow nature to thrive, it kind of will.

SPEAKER_00 44:33

And if you've got the moths flying at night, you're gonna get bats? Yeah. So you've got and you've got the water, so you've got other things, bats, swallows. Finding the diversity in one indicator is a sign of much more that's going on. And things like moths are largely hidden from us because they're night. Yeah, no, absolutely, isn't it? And and even if you were standing out here looking, you wouldn't see very many of them. You need to actually bring them to life.

SPEAKER_01 44:57

No, that's right, and again, and you needed that expertise of Darren to come in and actually, you know, show me and record, you know, and send me this incredible Excel spreadsheet afterwards. Fantastic. Which is fabulous. You we need these people, we need these naturalists, you know, to show us the change. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 45:13

Um uh here, a heroine or a hero in in renaturing, wilding, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, I mean there's can be can be problematic because it implies one person, but we know that each of us has got to go through some sorts of transformations. Yeah, no, definitely.

SPEAKER_01 45:32

I mean I've got I the the book Renaturing is is that there are so many, there's lots of heroes in there, and and I sp what I basically do is spend half my time in the book just going, this but she's amazing, you know, because they are, and and often they're the the slightly unsung heroes. So as I say, like right from Chris Gibson, my naturalist friend, who gave me the term renaturing, or it's his you know, that I could use, obviously. And then, you know, one of the people that really opened my eyes up to the whole issue, the politics, if you like, of rewilding, the reality of rewilding was Professor Steve Carver at Leeds University. He's been fabulous because I really like what he what he does as a kind of professional expert. But then, you know, the unsung, um, there's a friend of mine, uh, Lucy Manthorpe, who's I I was just describing her the other day, I was trying to write about her, and she's she's sort of five foot nothing in heels, you know, and she's such a powerful advocate for nature. She's ended up buying 400 acres of farmland um up the road in Melford, including bits of ancient woodland, and has just absolutely gone at it in terms of improving the biodiversity of that land. And so she uh she Lucy's definitely a hero uh of mine. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:48

Fantastic. Um uh a recent book or book that you'd like to recommend. Um that's a good one, isn't it? So we've talked about your own book, so Renaturing and The Oak Papers and several others as well. Um someone else's book that you there's so many, aren't there? Uh dip into history a bit. Um Alex Oswald. Um Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely definitely.

SPEAKER_01 47:13

I mean, there's so many books. Um Lie of the Land Guy Shrub Soul, you know, is I think it's a really good book at the moment in terms of what I'm thinking about, in terms of that human uh land ownership issue. Uh I've it's it's very pertinent in my head at the moment because just because that we need so much stuff uh changing in terms of the way that humans exist on these landscapes. Um the book the book that I've uh been most closely associated with over the last few years is a book called Ice Age Art by Jill Cook, who's an incredible curator at the British Museum. I've been really fascinated by this idea that as humans, if you go back 45,000 years, etc., we're exactly the same. We're monotomic, you know, anatomically modern humans, uh, we're exactly the same, but we were living in an ice age, living in this intense climate emergency, changing, fluctuating, and we we were creating this incredible art, you know. I find that very moving. Um that's been a beautiful book. I'd I really like uh writing about at the moment about the way in which we can remember the past as we were as humans in the natural landscape, the kind of the nature of us as I'm starting to think of it as. So books like that have been fascinating as well.

SPEAKER_00 48:36

And isn't it amazing that and I think not surprising in in the light of what we've been talking about, that so many of those early images, whether cave art or paintings or carvings or other representations, are of mixtures of humans and animals and birds. They're therianthropes. They they are combinations, and and and and I think that's a kind of mental activity that's us imagining being a bird. And it's us imagining there's a bird imagining it's a human. Um there's a famous piece from China two and a half thousand years ago. Somebody wakes up um uh having dream dreamt of a butterfly and then says, I'm not sure if if it was the butterfly dreaming he was a human, dreaming he was a butterfly, or whether it was me dreaming that I was a butterfly. And there's just this kind of actually it's about these deep connections. Yeah, absolutely. And that's that representation is telling us that, I think.

SPEAKER_01 49:34

And yeah, and and you know, the Theranthropic is is fascinating, and and the Lion Man figure, which has captivated me for years, that uh I went to Swabier in Germany last year to kind of go to the landscapes where these figures have been found. But um, but also it just I it's it's this reminder that we've always been an animal in an animal environment, surrounded by other animals and other species of animal, and that's where we that's what what we should be reminding ourselves of being. Uh, and and at the moment, as I say, you know, a project like Pleistocene Park is fascinating to me because it's about um combating climate change by re-returning the numbers of mega herbivores to the world that used to be, you know, and in and we can do that, we can do that, and and it seems like such a a sensible way forward learning from the past. We used to live with so many more animals, you know. I mean, I'd love to reintroduce a herd of aurychs into this field, but they they'd they'd want to smash through the fences and run them around, and some of my local farmers might be really unhappy with that.

SPEAKER_00 50:42

As they as they try to raise their wheat or whatever, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 50:45

But you know, look, we're the only we're the only country in Europe without wolves, you know. Let's uh I'm I'm all for getting wolves back, and I know that there's going to be problems and someone is gonna get their sheep eaten and stuff.

SPEAKER_00 50:55

But the Netherlands has the largest number of wolves of any country, and it's a tiny country, so it won't be about twice the size of your field. Yeah, the full you know I mean um uh uh look what can happen.

SPEAKER_01 51:05

Yeah, absolutely. And and I think that this is the way of thinking forward, isn't it? It's like getting our minds into this possibilities of change. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 51:14

So a final recommendation, I mean it might be that. I mean, to to viewers and listeners, what would you say as a recommendation? Renature if you can.

SPEAKER_01 51:22

Uh yeah, renature, renature whatever you can. And and I you know I did a demonstration the other day in Culch of renaturing a window box. You know, uh don't don't think, oh I live in a flat in a tower block, you know. I I use that as an example in in my book Renaturing of Trelic Tower in in you know in London. A mate of mine lives three from the top, you know, exactly. Wherever you are, it's about mindset, it's just about mindset. So, yeah, renature and go and watch the film Pleistocene Park. Yeah, exactly. And meanwhile, listen to the rooks.

SPEAKER_00 51:56

Yeah, I love listening to those rooks, they're very busy at the moment, very busy. Uh, James Canton, absolutely fantastic. Thanks for coming on the pod. It's been brilliant to sit here in your field, and um and who knows what will happen next. Yeah, absolutely, George. Nice to see you. Thanks very much. Cheers.