#102: (WILD) Rewilding Urban Parks with Lost Species - Sean McCormack, Ealing Beaver Project

[00:00:00] little gems of stories where nature has just bounced back on its own and it's totally unrelated to whether it's an urban landscape or not. If you give nature space to do its thing, urban or rural, it'll pop back up and surprise you and it does know best.

[00:00:19] Welcome to the Green Urbanist podcast, where we explore climate action in cities with the people who are making it happen. Hosted by me, Ross O'Kyalli, an urban designer and sustainability educator. Welcome to this episode and to a new series of episodes on urban rewilding. Over the next few weeks, I'll be releasing six interviews with practitioners involved in urban rewilding projects.

[00:00:45] This is part of a wider research project I'm conducting at the moment about how rewilding in urban areas can scale up to the mainstream, boost biodiversity and offer benefits for urban residents. In each episode, you'll hear about real rewilding projects in English towns and cities and learn about the complexities of delivering these pioneering projects. We'll tackle questions like, what is urban rewilding anyway and why do it? Why do some rewilding projects succeed while others fail?

[00:01:13] And what systemic changes are needed to make rewilding in cities mainstream? I'll be releasing the episodes in this series in between regular episodes every two weeks. So keep an eye out for the word WILD, all caps, at the start of the episode titles. Today's guest, who you might know from a previous interview in 2023, is Sean McCormack. I'm Sean McCormack. I am a vet, is my kind of professional and day job.

[00:01:38] And I do a lot of conservation and now rewilding projects in the urban borough of Ealing, where I live. The most kind of notable one, I suppose, is the Ealing Beaver Project, which I'm the project lead and licence holder on. And we've reintroduced beavers to the urban London landscape for the first time in over 400 years. We discussed the rewilding projects in Ealing, which is a neighbourhood in West London. He's led on the reintroduction of harvest mice and beavers to urban parks there.

[00:02:05] The release of beavers in the city has attracted national and international attention. The Mayor of London even came down to the site to release one of the beavers in October 2023. In this conversation, we get into all the details of making these projects happen and making them a success. If you want to understand more of the ecology side of the projects, definitely check out the previous two episodes with Sean, which I've linked in the episode description. Enjoy.

[00:02:33] Rewilding, you know, as a phrase, is kind of controversial at times now. And, you know, it rubs some people up the wrong way and it gets other people really excited. And it's very different, I think, between kind of urban and rural landscapes. A lot of rural communities sometimes feel quite threatened by the term rewilding, because some members within those communities feel that it's possibly, you know, displacing people from the land

[00:02:57] or it's saying that people, you know, have damaged the land too much and we need to heal it and it's all your fault. So it has quite negative connotations, I think, especially in rural communities. But in urban communities, what we've found is that people are very, very excited by the term. And it has an ability, I suppose, to re-engage people who maybe aren't so engaged with nature and green space in the urban context.

[00:03:22] It also has the ability to engage people who were never engaged with urban nature and green space and why that's valuable. Like, we've definitely seen that. The history of my group is Ealing Wildlife Group, one of the project partners in the Ealing Beaver Project, is we started with very traditional conservation, you know, species-focused conservation projects and got the usual crowd in who are interested in nature. But when we started talking about rewilding and species reintroductions,

[00:03:52] like harvest mice first, Britain's smallest native rodent, and now Eurasian beaver's Britain's largest, the passion and the interest that it ignited has been fantastic. So long-winded answer. I think urban rewilding can be a lot of things. Urban is self-explanatory, I think. But rewilding, I would kind of define it as nature-led, nature recovery. It can sometimes involve reintroductions, but it doesn't always. That's obviously what grabs the headlines.

[00:04:20] But we've been partnering with the council as landowners on adopting a rewilding approach on a lot of their management, which often means stepping back from the management and allowing natural dynamic habitat change to happen over time with a little bit of tweaking along the way. That's great. I really like that. Nature-led, nature restoration. Do you think that definition is different to how other people are using the term urban rewilding?

[00:04:49] And does that create any issues? Or other people's interpretation of the word, I suppose? Yeah. I mean, there's so many definitions. And I think there is a movement away from the term rewilding to nature recovery, nature restoration. Yeah. I don't put too much credence into the language.

[00:05:13] I think you can get caught up in terminology and definitions and be real pedantic about definitions. And actually, we're all trying to move towards the same thing, which is restoring nature, allowing nature-led ecosystems to develop, allow, you know, build more resilience back into the urban landscape by allowing nature to recover or putting nature at the front foot of, you know, decision-making and things.

[00:05:41] So, yeah, I'm not too concerned really with how other people define it. And we've definitely faced criticism on, you know, ooh, you know, urban rewilding is a vanity project. And these animals shouldn't be put into an urban landscape. And, you know, there's always naysayers in everything you do. And, you know, whatever you call it, you know, you're going to have varying opinions and sometimes quite strongly held views.

[00:06:07] We're just trying to make space for nature and try and enthuse urban communities about the value of nature. And from a selfish perspective, you know, for us to thrive in an urban landscape, we need nature. But also from a kind of biodiversity crisis and climate crisis aspect as well. So you've been involved with several rewilding projects. Can you give us a little bit of an overview of what they are? And then I'd be interested to know a little bit about how, what started them, you know, what kicked them off?

[00:06:36] Yeah, yeah. Well, if I start maybe with what started it, because we kind of went down this kind of rewilding path that led to where we are now. So from a very traditional, as I said, conservation approach where we were our targets, you know, our end goals or aims of each project was we want to boost the numbers of this specific species of bird or plant or animal mammal.

[00:06:59] You know, and that can be quite constrictive and it can be quite, I guess, narrow focused and definitely single focused. But it can be to the detriment of other things. And it can also lead to disappointment because, for example, we wanted to get barn owls breeding back in Ealing. We knew they were hunting on the outskirts and sometimes coming into some of our meadow environments to hunt and we didn't think they were breeding.

[00:07:29] And, you know, we focus everything on putting up nest boxes for barn owls and things. And you can be disappointed because you don't get the results that you're looking for because maybe there's not enough feeding habitat for barn owls. Or maybe there's too many large roads that are a hazard to barn owls.

[00:07:44] But actually, if we say, you know what, we want to rewild some of our very highly managed wildflower meadows and we want to allow some of those entire meadows to revert to rough grassland and scrub emergence over time by stepping off the mowing regime. Or we want to allow messy margins to develop by not mowing the whole meadow, but just leaving, you know, 10 metre strips either side of the hedgerow. So then wonderful things happen. There's no set end point.

[00:08:14] It's just a management change and it's allowing nature to take the lead. And then we monitor what happens. Actually, what happens is a load of field voles arrive and boom in number. And then our barn owls can feed chicks and we get a boom in kestrel numbers. And suddenly all of our boxes are occupied with owls. You know, so it's this change in mindset that actually we don't need to micromanage everything towards this defined end goal.

[00:08:39] We actually can just go we can have just nature for nature's sake here and see what happens. And then it often comes up with, you know, really, really positive results that surprise us or that actually, you know, were better than our traditional conservation approach that we began with. So that's kind of where our rodent obsession in Ealing came from, because it did start with our barn owl project.

[00:09:03] And we suddenly had all of this lovely, messy margin, marginal habitat that would be seen in agricultural land as waste ground and is often seen in urban parks as scruffiness and untidiness and laziness on the part of the council. But actually what it's providing is biomass of insect life and now small mammal life. And we I am a self-confessed rodent nerd.

[00:09:29] I did my undergrad dissertation on rodent ecology and parasite burdens and things. So I've always been fascinated by the role of small mammals in general ecology. And I was looking at this habitat and going, this habitat is perfect for harvest mice. And I started looking into, do we have any records of harvest mice in Ealing? And the last known record of harvest mice in Ealing was 1981 at a reserve called Perryville Wood. And then I thought, do you know what?

[00:09:59] This could be a new project, an exciting project of trying to bring back a species and getting into the kind of rewilding narrative of, do you know what? We don't manage the place best nature does. So that's where our road into rewilding and species reintroductions came from. We put back harvest mice after, you know, 30, 40 year absence, we think. And we're seeing, you know, amazing results, not only in terms of the number of eggs and chicks laid and touched by owls and kestrels and things in our boxes,

[00:10:28] but also in the interest from the community within Ealing and London, but also like nationwide. We've got a lot of press and it's captured hearts and minds. And it's, this is where, you know, you get philosophical and maybe a bit romantic about it. But, you know, people talk about urban rewilding, rewilding people and showing people the power of nature, the value of nature, inspiring them to get outdoors, inspiring them to take an interest in, you know, how we manage green space in the urban landscape.

[00:10:58] And that, yeah, kind of snowballed into, right, well, do we reintroduce water voles next? Because Britain's fastest declining mammal also locally extinct. And then I kind of came up with the crazy idea that beavers should be first and water voles next, because beavers are the keystone species that create the habitat that water voles and lots of other wildlife thrives in. And otherwise we would be battling habitat management for water voles forevermore.

[00:11:26] But actually the beavers create the habitat for us, for water voles and everything else to thrive as keystone species. So long story short, I skipped up the rodent ladder from harvest mice to beavers, and we might come back down to do water voles in time. We'll see. That's awesome. Thanks. What a great, what a great story it is. Like, it's a great narrative of how it comes together. That's the short version. Yeah, yeah, I know. I know. We spoke for two hours last time on the long version.

[00:11:55] I'm really interested in this project that I'm doing, this research project, of understanding how do projects like this, urban routing projects, actually happen and become successful, as opposed to the ones that stay ideas and don't go anywhere. And so looking at this as a very successful project, or series of projects actually within that, I'd be interested to know who has been involved in terms of making this happen. It sounds like there's probably a lot of players involved.

[00:12:26] Yeah, there certainly has. You know, no one can do a project of this scale on their own, even like a single organization. It just doesn't happen overnight. It doesn't happen with one kind of team involved. You have to bring in various stakeholders. And I think in the urban environment, sometimes that can be even more difficult because you've got, you know, densely populated area and everyone likes to have an opinion and a voice and you need to listen to those opinions and voices. And sometimes you need to win some stakeholders over,

[00:12:55] including members of the public. So the elevator pitch on this is that we are a collaborative project between four project partners. So it's Ealing Wildlife Group that I chair. So I think we have a lot of people who are a community interest company that try and bring citizens, the public, into conservation and rewilding projects. Ealing Council, who are a local borough council that, you know, manage and own most of the green space in the borough.

[00:13:25] And Horsenden Farm, who are a community farm collective near the beaver site that kind of have volunteer base and do a lot of conservation projects as well in collaboration with us. And then we're also supported by Beaver Trust, who are the national charity aimed at restoring beavers to regenerate landscapes. And then also supported by the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan,

[00:13:52] who gave us some funding for this from his Rewild London Fund. So it's a, you know, a big collaboration. But not only that, official, you know, official collaborators, we also had to get buy in from the public and the community that we were going to do this project in. We were going to disrupt some of their lives for a time by doing the project. You know, there's also strong opinions about whether it's worthy, whether it's, you know, risky,

[00:14:20] whether beavers belong back in Greenford and Ealing. And then we had, you know, various funding streams to get. So we've, you know, approached local businesses and we've approached sponsors and things like that. So there's been a lot, a lot of people, a lot of conversations, a lot of convincing to do, a lot of public consultation. And then getting, yeah, getting the finances together and getting a working, you know, agreement and management plan

[00:14:47] and an army of amazingly dedicated volunteers that are really, really leading on it. It's a community-led project, which is very unique. Amazing. Sounds, I mean, sounds really complex. And I guess a question I have, and this might be slightly tricky, is do you think there's been any, I mean, it sounds like you've had support from all levels, essentially. It kind of goes from the grassroots all the way up to the mayor. Everyone in between has been providing support for this and sort of making it happen.

[00:15:18] Do you think there's been any, like, wider factors at play that means that we're all ready for this now? You know, do you think our mindsets have shifted? Do you think there's something in the politics or, I don't know, something, some wider systemic change that means, like, now it made it happen for you, if that makes sense? Yeah, it does make sense. I think we are at a quite exciting stage.

[00:15:47] We're at quite a terrifying and depressing stage when it comes to our planet's health and the environment and climate and everything like that. But we're also at a stage where a lot of people are waking up to that fact and are no longer ignoring it and realizing the gravity of and how precarious a situation we're in. And therefore, it's a cliche that I think works really well to say, you know, you can think global and act local.

[00:16:17] You know, a lot of people talk about that. But it's powerful. And it's possibly the only thing that a lot of people can do is, what can I get stuck into or what can I take an interest on my doorstep in my busy life? You know, I might be like a little drop in the ocean in my daily habits, you know, recycling or, you know, taking the bike instead of the car and all these little things that we're kind of guilt-tripped by big corporations into doing to be a good citizen and to save the planet.

[00:16:46] But actually, when you give people an opportunity to come into something kind of new and exciting and maybe a little bit more sexy than traditional conservation, putting up back boxes or bird boxes or talking about mowing regimes and meadows and, you know, that kind of stuff can be seen as quite dull or stuffy. But when it's about releasing a charismatic mammal that's been extinct for 400 years, it's incredible how that inspires people to get involved

[00:17:15] or captures their imagination and entheizes them. So, yeah, I think we're at a really exciting time where there is a systemic shift. And do you know what? Politicians follow the masses and they're looking for votes. And if people are telling them that we don't want a music festival trampling down our most precious meadows where we just physically, as a family, release some harvest mice back into the wild, then politicians will go, oh, you know, that's not a great proposal we've got

[00:17:43] because the entire community has lashed out at our proposal and they value those meadows and mice. So there is a shift happening. And I think people also are realizing that they have power over politicians. And people are, you know, you see the protests now and you see people rallying and people being up in arms about things. So I think we're at an exciting time and I think there is a change coming. And I think rewilding, the narrative of rewilding

[00:18:09] is a good tool to drum up a bit of awareness, but also a bit of righteous anger that like we can't continue to trash the little fragments of nature we have left in the urban landscape. Every part, you know, some of their parts, we can't just keep taking bits out and developing and developing on bit after bit after bit of land because then it all becomes fragmented and quite useless. So yeah, long way of saying,

[00:18:38] I think, yeah, we're in an exciting stage and something is shifting in the public mindset, I think. That's great. That's great. I mean, that's really great to hear. I think what's also interesting, and this isn't necessarily a question, you know, you have the answer to or anyone has the answer to, but I see reports in the news of other places where they're attempting to do rewilding type projects and they're having the opposite. They're having actually lots and lots of community backlash to that

[00:19:07] and people who are responding really negatively to it. Yeah. Do you think there's anything you did in your projects that mitigated like a very negative response that could have come about from it? I think we've been around quite a while and I kind of proved the model and gained trust by delivering other successful projects. And we had a large backing of followers and members behind us kind of championing what we do.

[00:19:36] And I'm talking not only about my group, Ealing Wildlife Group, but Citizen Zoo as well, you know, have done some fantastic things. And I think the commonality or the common kind of thread and looking at the council and the parks, the ranger team from the council, how they, several of them within the team had shifted from a sort of authoritarian and gatekeeping, like the management of our green spaces

[00:20:04] to we want the community to lead on this and we want to make volunteering happen. And we want communities to feel ownership of the green spaces. And like with Ealing Wildlife Group and Citizen Zoo and Horsendon Farm, it was like, this is community led. You guys pay your taxes and own these spaces. So we want to hear your voice. We're not sitting behind closed doors, having meetings and saying, this is how we're going to do this. We're actually asking the community and we're giving them opportunity to come in and do it with us.

[00:20:33] And facilitating that collaborative role with the council, I think, was probably the secret to the success here. But also not to, you know, totally take the credit for that. I think the difference between the urban and rural divide is quite interesting because 83% of people in England live in towns and cities. And most of them, actually when you give them a little bit of exposure to nature, kind of realise that they've been lacking exposure to nature

[00:21:01] or they've been lacking access to nature. And there's a, you know, social justice issue there as well of people from some of the poorer socioeconomic backgrounds and things and ethnicity as well, having less access to nature than the traditional people involved in traditional conservation, which tends to be heavily biased towards white middle-class people of a certain age. So when you start to demonstrate that actually, guys,

[00:21:30] our parks and our green spaces belong to us, come get stuck in, come and explore, come and discover, come be part of something. Actually, it's quite powerful. Whereas I think in rural communities and areas, it's almost, it's very new to be going in and purchasing up land and rewilding it and taking it out of production, which has been hammered into us for centuries of, you must be tidy and productive and make this land work.

[00:22:00] So actually something that threatens that and says, let it go, lose control, actually can be very unsettling for rural communities that depend on the land and have been told all their lives and all their ancestors' lives that you need to be productive and tidy and manage this and don't let it escape from you. Don't let nature take over because that's a sign of failure in the systems that you've been living in and been reliant on for your income and your living. So it's just a very different audience and I think the urban audiences

[00:22:30] love the fact that we're rewilding the city whereas actually rewilding the country is a threat to a lot of other stakeholders. Yeah, fascinating. It sounds like based on that, at least in your circumstances, like a community-led grassroots approach was possibly what was needed in order for this to be successful. I'm separately speaking with

[00:22:59] one of the local authorities, Enfield Council. I was thinking, wait, Ealing, Enfield? Get them mixed up. No, not Ealing. Speaking to Enfield Council who is doing a much more council-led series of rewilding projects but are also being really successful and seem to have a lot of support from the community. So I'm excited to talk to them and see, you know, it's a different, it's the other side of London, it's a different, maybe different demographic, different group of people and they'll probably have different lessons from those projects. Absolutely.

[00:23:28] And, you know, we get compared to them a lot because they were the first beaver reintroduction in London. We kind of differentiate ourselves by saying we're the first urban London beaver restoration project because their site is brilliant but it is out in the countryside on the periphery of London and the Essex border and it's a rural country estate, you know, and it's not publicly accessible, you know, and it's a totally different thing. So, yeah, with different challenges and different aspects

[00:23:58] and things like that. So, but yeah, it is really interesting. I actually had some members of that project out at our project yesterday showing them around and we were doing a little piece for the Ealing Council magazine. So, yeah, it's very interesting to hear like the slight difference with two projects that sound, you know, very similar. Well, you're both in London, you're both with beavers actually were, you know, worlds apart in terms of the challenges and even the aims of the project, you know, ours being publicly accessible and in a really, really urban landscape. Great.

[00:24:28] I wanted to ask you as well about your I hate to focus on the negatives but I am really interested in like how, you know, how other projects can learn from this and overcome the barriers and challenges they might face. Did you hit any barriers, challenges, roadblocks that maybe almost halted the project and what did you do to overcome those? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this project now, I'm joking this week that I've been running on 100 miles an hour for two years

[00:24:57] on beavers, beavers, beavers, beavers, beavers. And I'm finally, finally getting a holiday. I'm heading away this weekend and I'm like out of office. I'm switching off. Nobody get in touch with me. I need a break. There's definitely been challenges to overcome. We've probably been really ruminating on this project for four years and we've been kind of gathering info and support for three years and then we've been battling with Natural England for a year

[00:25:27] and then we've had the beavers for a year. So really, it's been very time consuming and there's been lots of hurdles along the way. The main highlights or the main hurdles one was one surprising one that wasn't that difficult to get over actually was asking the council for permission to do it because the site we chose was already earmarked for engineering works to alleviate flooding, urban flooding and we said do you know what, beavers can do

[00:25:57] that at a fraction of cost, probably more effectively in the long run. We were also quite lucky that the head of parks, Chris Welch, was Canadian and we asked him and he said okay. He was all aboard the beaver train already as a Canadian. He was like yeah, beavers are cool, that sounds good. So that was a hurdle we thought we were going to have to jump but it was a little skip over. So we got permission fairly easily and the next stage was public consultation. So we had to have buy-in from the community like if we went and just did this without asking

[00:26:26] local people I know we would have had a hell of a lot of problems and a hell of a lot of backlash and potentially even you know physical damage to our assets and maybe even sabotage of the project because even with all of the comms we did and all of the public consultation and the official survey to get people's views we still to this day have people saying oh the community weren't weren't consulted enough and we didn't have a say and who allowed this to happen without consulting us

[00:26:56] it was like we just physically can't get to everyone and get everyone's opinion and some of the opinions we got are negative and anti but the overwhelming majority of the opinions we got were in support with a proviso that they were worried about the beaver's welfare and we had to reassure people on that that the beavers would do you know do everything beavers do to keep themselves safe from danger whether that's humans or dogs or whatever the biggest hurdle we had was legally and politically

[00:27:27] beavers are a political issue in Britain because we have different legislation depending on which country you're in so in Scotland they have been reintroducing beavers in enclosure trials for some time and now they're issuing wild release licenses and you know beavers were granted native protected species across Britain in 2022 but still we're in a ludicrous position in England where the only legal way to reintroduce

[00:27:56] beavers to an area is behind a very expensive fence in an enclosure liceance which tends to be issued in kind of five year license trial and that's a very costly and time consuming way of running a project like this which is kind of it was put to me the week the beavers were arriving and I was at you know ultimate high stress levels and I was speaking to Chris Jones who runs the Cornwall Beaver Project

[00:28:25] one of the founding members of Beaver Trust and I said oh Chris I'm bloody stressed like I don't know if we're going to be ready in time and he's put it very succinctly and said Sean you're just releasing some rodents into a marsh it's not that big a deal which was brilliant to hear and I thought yeah we are just releasing rodents into a marsh why is there so much bureaucracy around this it's not that big a deal you know they're native species that we eliminated they have an inherent right to be back

[00:28:55] so we need to put whatever management frameworks whatever incentivization schemes whatever compensation schemes that the country needs and politicians need and stakeholders and landowners affected by beavers need we need to just do it the beavers are already out there already in the wild there's two or three thousand beavers living wild free lives in England so actually continuing to put them into enclosure trials is just lunacy really so we're waiting on wild release licenses to come but yeah

[00:29:24] that legal and political uncertainty and hesitancy of government at that time to do anything about it was probably the worst thing so we had to apply to Natural England Ealing Beaver project one is the urban nature it is beside a retail park and the Grand Union Canal and an industrial estate you know and lovely green space of Horson

[00:29:54] and Hill and up to Harrow where the beavers could head off into the landscape or swim to Birmingham in the Grand Union Canal there's all these challenges that wouldn't exist on a private country estate where you've got two neighbouring farmers that you need to kind of get permission or support from we had to get permission from thousands of people really and Natural England you know to their credit they do want beavers back but they're under you know orders from the government and at that time Therese

[00:30:24] Coffey was in and she was anti you know species reintroductions and she said we need to look after the animals and the wildlife that we already have not dallying these silly reintroduction projects and we were banging our head saying beavers will look after and boost biodiversity you know very well better than we can better than we're doing now with one in six species threatened with extinction in the UK so we basically were battling with Natural England along the way to try and

[00:30:54] convince them that A this is a good idea B we could do it C we thought of everything we would guarantee that if a beaver escaped we had permission to get it back from surrounding landowners that was a hurdle where you know they told us very late on in the process oh now you need to get permission from landowners to go trap a beaver if they ever escaped and we said well how many landowners and they said just where you think a beaver might end up if it got out and so we were like there's like

[00:31:24] you know hundreds of businesses and properties around here like how do we do this so we sort of reverse engineered it and we wrote a blanket letter to I think 60 or 70 different local businesses and landowners around us and just said we are reintroducing beavers and if one escapes we will be coming on your property to trap it and if you have a problem with that let us know and none of them had a problem with it or none of them got back to us anyway so we said yeah we've got permission like we haven't received anyone objecting

[00:31:53] to that happening so here we go so there was like a year basically going back and forth and the goalposts moving the deadlines for decision moving and eventually we just had to say look you told us we would have an answer in September then you changed the goalposts and asked us to do more work and you told us December if we run past February we can't do the clearance of the fence line because it's bird nesting season and we'll be delayed by a whole year so just make the decision please in January and tell us have we got the license or not if we don't have it we

[00:32:23] move on if we have it we need to get cracking and so eventually they gave us the license that was the biggest hurdle is getting the permission to do it and then all of the physical stuff was just logistical challenge and sometimes budgetary challenge and often dealing with the public because the public don't like change in their open spaces and putting in a fence which admittedly does look like a fairly you know robust prison when it first goes in to

[00:32:53] a cleared fence line and it's these metal fences with you know overhang and someone wrote on the gate nature shouldn't be confined in a concentration camp and I was like I do agree with you I would prefer not to be putting up these fences but that's the legal situation we're in at the moment and honestly next year it'll be softened and green then you won't even know the fences there so I totally take on board it looks horrifically ugly right now but it's for the beavers welfare and if we

[00:33:22] prove the model here with beavers in this enclosure concentration camp like or other you know it will advance the cause for beaver restoration in London and beyond so yeah there was there was teething problems there was hurdles along the way we had to close the site for a month to let the beaver settle in and people didn't like being locked out so there was gate damage and there was fence damage and locks smashed off the gate and people jumping over anyway and coming through but in the grand scheme of things with you know the collaborative nature

[00:33:51] and large support from the community it went without a hitch yeah some weeks I wouldn't have said that but in hindsight I can say that now amazing that's that's really insightful I mean particularly the legislation and all the bureaucracy part of it I think is probably not the first thing that people think about when they start dreaming up ideas for urban rewilding but that is the reality of it yeah do you have any sense that that might be softening

[00:34:20] or changing or is that is it just as strict as it was when no we're we're very hopeful right now so I'm an ambassador for Beaver Trust and talk to their team quite a lot and there's some good sounds coming from government with discussions with Beaver Trust that wild release licenses are something that this government is going to have to tackle and as part of that you know the advice from Beaver Trust is that we need a management framework

[00:34:49] in place and we need a restoration species restoration plan that's joined up and bigger picture rather than just little higgity-piggity projects here there and everywhere so Labour's just passed its first 100 days in government and they said they wanted to overturn some things or get things moving that the Tory government weren't moving on so I think there's signs of change coming and

[00:35:18] I think that at the moment if I was thinking about a Beaver reintroduction project I would be holding tight and not applying for an enclosure license because I think I hope that there's wild release licensing coming down the tracks okay well that's great to hear yeah fingers crossed do you think did you have similar problems with the

[00:35:48] harvest mice reintroduction was that easier that was much easier because they're not a species that requires a license to translocate or reintroduce but we just followed the natural England guidelines on translocation and relocation or reintroduction of species again we had buy-in already from the council because it was literally an extension almost of our barn owl and meadow rewilding kind of project to actually put back in a little missing link in the food web that

[00:36:18] was eliminated by our habitat management so there wasn't a lot of resistance to that it was funny there wasn't a lot of resistance within our community but when we got press on it it was interesting to see like Sky News or BBC News or something putting it up putting on their Facebook channels and then the comments came through from people who had no context and were like oh that's all Ealing needs more mice on the streets and it was like we're not putting them into the row of

[00:36:48] chip shops and chicken shops down on Ealing Broadway and they live in the wildest habitats in our borough and they don't come into people's houses and they're a part of the food chain for grassland birds of prey and you know there's just kind of always a bit of I don't use the word ignorant in a derogatory way but ignorance is in I don't really know much about this and I'm just going to assume the worst or you know why are you spending money putting rodents

[00:37:17] into the ecosystem there'll be a plague of rodents and it's just a misunderstanding about how ecology works and why this mouse is a rare species but overwhelmingly it was positive and actually it was a real eye opener on my journey in rewilding even if it's just the narrative of rewilding versus traditional conservation because we crowdfunded to kick off we did a kickstarter for the harvest mouse project and we

[00:37:46] said sponsor your own harvest mouse ealing harvest mouse for 10 pounds so we had like you know a family of five here's 50 quid for our mice you know i'll take two and we said if you sponsor your own harvest mouse you'll be invited to the first harvest mouse release and you get to release your harvest mouse and that people just threw us like two and a half grand in 48 hours wow because they were like i want to sponsor my harvest mouse i want to do something that

[00:38:16] actually has an impact in was a just a roaring success of like giving people that kind of feel-good factor of like actually making a tangible difference with it's only a mouse but it's quite symbolic and it's extremely cute which helps because if we were saying we want to you know sponsor your own rare canata striatus spider

[00:38:46] would not have the same impact you know and there was same enthusiasm in the public so choosing an umbrella species that you focus your efforts towards and you focus community engagement towards but actually the habitat that we've created or allowed to develop for harvest mice actually has allowed a lot more biodiversity than harvest mice to thrive again yeah that's awesome that's awesome i was at i went to NEP during the summer which was great oh and i got an

[00:39:15] ecology walk around with an ecologist and they've released stork storks yeah white storks absolutely amazing gorgeous you know animals they look prehistoric and just so different to anything you know you see in britain and he was telling us about it and you know they are a historic species that went extinct and it's the right thing to do to bring them back and they had to translocate them over from Poland and he said to be honest ecologically they're not particularly important for the site but they're just

[00:39:45] such an iconic species and they're so obvious and you can just come to NEP and you see them immediately you don't have to go searching for them he said they've become such an important like emotional emblem exactly an emotional connection for people to see that sort of wildlife coming back yeah and you know what it was perfect perfect timing with that project because it kind of kicked off fairly under the radar for the public and then they had

[00:40:15] their first wild born wild hatch chicks in nests in trees as COVID lockdown lifted and everyone was getting out again and they were absolutely inundated with visitors to come and see these white storks and as I say it was this like emblematic inspirational story of this very iconic and obvious species that was back in Britain once again and breeding in the wild you know real feel-good factor at a time when the country really needed some feel-good stories you know

[00:40:44] so it's amazing timing but it's interesting to also say there's a lot of hardcore birding people and very traditional conservationist types who I won't say too much bad about them but there's a culture of gatekeeping nature conservation in that sector and there's a lot of them still to this day contesting the fact of whether white storks are native to Britain oh wow there's only a few records and references

[00:41:14] to them in the literature going back hundreds of years I think six seven hundred years ago they say they went extinct there's a couple of place names like Starrington in West Sussex that they say is derived from storks but there's still people to this day saying that's a vanity project that's not something you should be spending conservation money on that's not a bird that we have any

[00:41:47] if someone dares to dream and you know rewild and almost like maybe a jealousy of like capturing the public's imagination with a story or a narrative that may not be 100% true then you're cheating and it's like whatever the you know the viewpoint on this there is some evidence it's a native species but whatever your thoughts on pure retanical conservation or whether it's a good use of resource

[00:42:17] if it's capturing the public's imagination and a sector of the public's imagination who would never be interested before in why nature is important then I think that's money well spent yeah and I think you know as well and also is not causing any issues ecologically within the space yeah yeah it's coming into a niche that exists there for us and it doesn't seem to have a detrimental effect and and I'm not saying we just put in you know animal

[00:42:47] ecosystems without evidence they were there before and there can be some issues with you know human altered ecosystems now not being capable of certain reintroductions for example wolves the really controversial one you know can we have wolves back in Britain technically yes should they be here absolutely is it really difficult and there will be lots of conflict with having wolves back in Britain as it stands today yeah that's a hell of a big problem

[00:43:16] to solve and I don't know if it'll ever be solved so I'm not advocating putting things in willy-nilly just because it captures public attention but there's sort of a begrudgery and a you know bashing of rewilding projects from some of the more traditional conservation brigade that kind of kind of maybe has an element of sour grapes that is getting a lot of attention right now that's it that's interesting I actually didn't know that about the story because that's really interesting so thank

[00:43:46] you I have two more main questions and I know you need to shoot off fairly soon but we'll sort of get into these I'll try to take up too much of your afternoon hint for me to stop off not at all have any other specifically urban rewilding projects influenced what you're doing in Ealing my career you know has kind of like

[00:44:17] taken me near to beaver and projects and rewilding projects throughout my career and one of the earliest kind of lifebulb moments for me was I did an international semester in Vancouver Canada back in 2003 and there's a place in just outside downtown Vancouver Stanley Park with a place called Beaver Lake and at the time the beavers had departed Beaver Lake but there were signs of them coming back into the city and it was all this excitement about beavers are coming back

[00:44:47] and we're I just associate beavers with like the wilds of Alaska and Russia and the fur trapping trade and like these are animals that live out in you know the wilderness but you're saying they're going to live in a massive international city it's like we just pushed nature out to the edges of everywhere but actually we were immersed in it once upon a time so that was the first kind of thing where I

[00:45:17] was like urban rewilding now this was passive rewilding and it was like an animal reclaiming its territory and colonising urban space so that was the first kind of inspiration on the kind of beaver journey that I was like we should have beavers back you know everywhere really in Britain and then the other things that have kind of inspired me to you know advocate for urban rewilding and urban beavers in particular is the wild beavers that are

[00:45:47] living in Britain you know this summer we had beavers arrive in Canterbury in Kent and everyone going down in the evenings to watch them from the back of the Sainsbury's car park overlooking the river you know and we have a beaver lodge in Froome in Somerset which you go and look at from the deliveries bay from Asda car park so it seems like supermarkets for some reason so little gems of stories where nature has

[00:46:17] just bounced back on its own and it's totally unrelated to whether it's an urban landscape or not if you give nature space to do its thing urban or rural it'll pop back up and surprise you and it does know best you know so there's been various things I think the Plymouth project to give them their due Plymouth Beaver project was the first urban beaver project in Britain

[00:46:50] and if it's not over 250 acres it's not a rewilding site and there's all this stuffiness sometimes in the rewilding space as well and gate keeping that and it's only rewilding if it's at scale no it's not you can rewild your lawn you can rewild your local park you can adapt a rewilding approach to something you know we didn't even use the word rewilding on our ealing beaver project we said we're reintroducing beavers to urban London and people were like

[00:47:21] you know some people were critical and saying this isn't rewilding and we're like we didn't say why are you getting hung up on the terminology like we're putting a species back in that's going to improve the habitats and restore nature and biodiversity on that site and has beneficial effects for our community and us as people because it will mitigate for urban flooding downstream and it's worked so you know people

[00:48:24] all complex thing to deliver so I had visited various beaver projects and beaver people in Britain and just tried to absorb as much of their wisdom as possible because our project was quite a high stakes project you know it could fail in many directions in terms of public support in terms of letting people into a beaver enclosure you know in an urban setting where there's going to be thousands of people coming through that site every year

[00:48:53] will someone let a beaver out will someone try and harm a beaver you know will dogs be a problem so yeah we tried to basically take as much information in on all of the projects that came before us and learn from them and also Natural England I think had put some stipulations in place to try and head off some of those issues that other problems other projects had so yeah it was definitely a case of let's not make the same mistakes

[00:49:23] other people may have and let's learn from them and let's try and keep pushing the beaver agenda forward it sounds like beaver trust are like a key nexus for all of that absolutely I mean I can't sing their praises highly enough they're a great gang great their advice and help they also you know they caught the beavers for us from an area of conflict in Scotland where

[00:49:53] the options were for those beavers to either be constantly disturbed and tried moved on or lethally controlled which is a nice euphemism for being shot so you know they are absolutely vital in their work and at the scale and genetics matters now as well because of Brexit it's more difficult to import beavers so

[00:50:23] we're relying on have to give them credit that's good yeah absolutely final question Sean and this is the one

[00:50:53] that I'm super interested to get your take on your perspective which is if we think beyond your project and individual projects and I suppose we think about urban rewilding as a wider movement what would you like to see happening with urban rewilding in the coming years and I suppose another way of saying is what change that I talked about earlier which is that politicians are

[00:51:23] realizing and politicians influence top down local councils and land management and how communities see and engage with our urban spaces I think the sign of success would be that we have a kind of mindset change across communities like even with that interested in these topics that are green and blue

[00:51:52] spaces in urban environments are not just for us they're also directly for wildlife and nature and indirectly allowing space for nature will affect us in a positive way so I think people often wonder like why are you doing that mouse example why are you reintroducing mice what does that what difference does that make in the grand

[00:52:22] scheme of things it's maybe just reintroducing some mice to a meadow but it's actually reinstating some processes that we've lost that we don't even know the impact of and I think we're at a time when people are now starting to realise that the more little bits of the puzzle we start pulling out it's like a big genga slowly extracting consuming damaging the whole pile is going to fall down

[00:52:51] and it might be as simple as putting back a mouse into our meadow environments or not being crazy neat and tidy brigade in cycle or it might be as simple as you know putting in other features natural features to thrive like ponds and

[00:53:21] planting trees and things like that I think the direction of travel is quite promising and I think the sign of success will be when people are largely celebrating the return of nature to our communities rather than seeing it as the old historical colonial and controlling way of seeing nature as if we stepped off the gas literally and allowed nature to grow and bloom and blossom then we're very untidy and

[00:53:51] it's neglect and we're not doing the job we're meant to do I think we're seeing the kind of like deconstruction of that Victorian mindset and that colonial mindset that we need to conquer nature and we need to drain the land and we a proportion of park space in every borough across the nation has long grass and scrub emergence and good habitat for

[00:54:21] harvest mice might see are the gateway drug to nature once you've held one for the experience and release them into the wild and use our motto which is make good choices as we let them go into the

[00:54:51] we are from that I think we're there I think we're getting there I think we're quite lucky in Ealing that we have a very progressive and green and biodiversity minded council we have had struggles we've certainly gone up against the council leadership and councillors on certain decisions that would have been very harmful or destructive to nature and indeed directly to some of our projects but we kind of have an agreement where it's kind of like this

[00:55:22] big brother relationship in some ways saying we want to work with you but we don't think you should do that and we will go up against you if you do and you know but we will sing your praises too when things are there so I come into standard practice that nature has

[00:55:52] given space at the table as well otherwise we're all in big trouble so I think we're already in