Rewilding

[AndyinPA]

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... his-estate

Lord Randal Plunkett strides through the hip-high grass of Dunsany, a 650-hectare (1,600-acre) estate in the middle of Ireland, trailed by an invisible swarm of midges and his four jack russell terriers: Tiny, Lumpy, Chow and Beavis & Butt-Head.

The cattle and sheep are long gone, so too are the lawns and many of the crops. In their place is a riot of shrubs, flowers and trees, along with insects and creatures that call this fledgling wilderness their home.

It is probably Ireland’s most ambitious attempt at rewilding on private land, an attempt to recreate a vanished landscape in a swath of County Meath, 20 miles north-west of Dublin.

According to the UN, the world needs to rewild and restore an area the size of China to meet commitments on nature and the climate – but not everyone applauds Ireland’s pioneering effort. “You’d be surprised when you live in a castle how many times people think you’re an idiot,” says Plunkett, the 21st baron of Dunsany.

I think we had a topic on this on the old Forum.

[AndyinPA]

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... ishan-wong

In 2017, Yishan Wong was ready to retire in Hawaii after leaving behind his career in Silicon Valley. The CEO of Reddit until 2014, Wong had previously held senior positions at Facebook and PayPal. But then came what he calls the “moment” when he decided he was going to take on the climate crisis instead.

“I was literally on a beach trying to retire, and it was too hot,” he said. Temperatures in Hawaii at the time were abnormally high, and he thought: “The planet has a climate change problem. I need to solve it.”

Wong started looking for “the most cost-effective per unit way” of removing CO2 from the atmosphere. After digging into climate science papers, he settled on his solution: trees.

In 2019, he founded Terraformation, with the aim to help reforest 3bn acres of degraded land around the world – an area bigger than the US – which Wong estimates could hold a trillion trees. He believes these forests could absorb enough CO2 to halt global heating.

[Tiredretiredlawyer]

[AndyinPA]

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... ewild-land

Farmers in England will be given taxpayers’ cash to rewild their land, under plans for large-scale nature recovery projects announced by the government. These will lead to vast tracts of land being newly managed to conserve species, provide habitats for wildlife and restore health to rivers and streams.

Bids are being invited for 10-15 pilot projects, each covering at least 500 hectares and up to 5,000 hectares, to a total of approximately 10,000 hectares in the first two-year phase – about 10 times the size of Richmond Park in London. These pilots could involve full rewilding or other forms of management that focus on species recovery and wildlife habitats.

Rare fauna such as sand lizards, water voles and curlews will be targeted, with the aim of improving the status of about half of the most threatened species in England.

[jez]

I wonder if I can convince the city and our neighbors that we are just rewilding this little part of Ohio?

[keith]

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... ishan-wong

In 2017, Yishan Wong was ready to retire in Hawaii after leaving behind his career in Silicon Valley. The CEO of Reddit until 2014, Wong had previously held senior positions at Facebook and PayPal. But then came what he calls the “moment” when he decided he was going to take on the climate crisis instead.

“I was literally on a beach trying to retire, and it was too hot,” he said. Temperatures in Hawaii at the time were abnormally high, and he thought: “The planet has a climate change problem. I need to solve it.”

Wong started looking for “the most cost-effective per unit way” of removing CO2 from the atmosphere. After digging into climate science papers, he settled on his solution: trees.

In 2019, he founded Terraformation, with the aim to help reforest 3bn acres of degraded land around the world – an area bigger than the US – which Wong estimates could hold a trillion trees. He believes these forests could absorb enough CO2 to halt global heating.

Which is all well and good, but the last time the CO2 levels were this high (around 420ppm) was about 20 million years ago and it took about 19.9 million years to sequester it into the coal and oil fields and to stabilize to the pre-industrial level of about 280ppm. And there were zero humans on the planet during that time. While it varied quite a bit between 10 thousand to 1 million years ago, it has not been above 300ppm during human existence and has, until now, been extremely stable for the last 10,000 years (that is, since the last ice age).

So how long does he figure it will take for his trillion trees to reduce CO2 from 420ppm to 280ppm with 8 billion (or what ever) people?

[Foggy]

Makes ya want to live on Trantor.

[Tiredretiredlawyer]

Give the boy a chance. At least he is moving in the right direction.

[AndyinPA]

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... -spain-aoe

Rewilding Europe’s 10th project ‘has potential to benefit both nature and people’ in one of the continent’s least populated areas

Black vultures, lynx and wild horses are among the animals being reintroduced to eastern Spain with the launch of a rewilding project spanning 850,000 hectares (2.1m acres) in the Iberian highlands east of Madrid.

Rewilding Europe’s 20-year landscape recovery scheme, which covers an area more than five times the size of Greater London, aims to make the land wilder and more nature-friendly. The protected area is the southern part of the Iberian Chain, a mountain range that stretches 500km (300 miles) from the north-west of the country to the Mediterranean in the south-east.

It is a landscape of canyons and valleys, dominated by pine, oak and juniper forests, as well as steppe and agricultural areas. As a result of decades of land being abandoned as people moved to the cities, it is among the least populated areas in Europe; since the 1950s, populations in many places have more than halved. Consequently, species such as deer, ibex and wild boar have already started to come back.

[Volkonski]

Just like when the turkeys and deer return to the North Fork once the summer people leave.

[AndyinPA]

They are here all the time. I've seen them in the middle of the city. The deer never left; the turkeys made a major return about 35-40 years ago. The first time I saw the turkeys, a cat was trying to intimidate them. It was hilarious.