Green Action Trust has joined The Scottish Rewilding Alliance. As a member of this network, we hope to learn from the experience of others rewilding at scale, and share our own unique knowledge and expertise of delivering greenspace improvement and creation in urban environments.
Rewilding in the public eye is most often associated with landscape-wide initiatives and large mammal reintroduction programmes in remote settings, but this is just one end of the scale. Rewilding also takes place in smaller settings within an urban context.
If rewilding is commonly accepted to include the repair of disrupted ecosystems and restoration of damaged landscapes, then this is something that Green Action Trust has been delivering for over forty years across Central Scotland.
Through the Central Scotland Green Network, Green Action Trust drives the enhancement of urban greenspaces and the creation of new ecosystems.
Whether through large-scale programmes of work, like the Clyde Climate Forest and the Leven Programme; the transformation of vacant and derelict land into new greenspaces; or smaller interventions such as reintroducing native tree species, creating new wetland ecosystems and increasing habitat connectivity, we work to boost local biodiversity and support nature restoration.
As well as ecological benefits, our urban rewilding projects can deliver a multitude of socio-economic benefits, such as improved health and well-being, and community engagement. By their very nature, urban rewilding sites tend to be more accessible than rural sites. The Central Scotland Green Network covers 65% of Scotland’s population, meaning not only do our projects reach more people, but they also have the potential to showcase the benefits of rewilding to a larger audience.
As we work to tackle the twin climate and biodiversity crises, the need for what we do has never been greater. Landscape-wide restoration is vital to achieving Scotland’s nature and biodiversity targets, but there is also value to an urban approach. Creating nature-rich urban environments will help to reduce habitat fragmentation and restore damaged ecosystems, as well as supporting our communities to adapt to a changing climate.
Enhancing greenspaces, wherever we can and on whatever scale, can only benefit. It is essential that we all harness the power of nature restoration to combat climate change, biodiversity loss, and environmental inequality.