The £3.4 million Summit to Sea rewilding project was launched by Rewilding Britain in October 2018 and aimed to rewild on a scale never before seen in Britain, creating ‘core areas’ supporting low-impact tourism and recreation.
The project targeted some 240 square miles (around 155,000 acres) of land in Montgomeryshire and Ceredigion, an area first earmarked for rewilding in George Monbiot's book Feral, back in 2013.
Following a meeting in the area last July, attended by more than 100 locals, and the subsequent establishment of Cymunedau Oll Pumlumon a’r Ardal (COPA) to oppose the plans, the end result has been the departure of Rewilding Britain from the project and a substantial change in the project's approach and leadership which has been welcomed by the group.
More recently, RSPB Cymru and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) have intervened and taken control of the project, proposing a ‘fresh start’ by taking into account all of the concerns raised during the past 18 months.
However, in a recent discussion organised by the Extinction Rebellion Youth Movement entitled The Eco-Fascist History of Conservation, the speakers discussed the shocking ways in which ‘conservation’ movements continue to treat indigenous populations across the World. It is of great concern that a United Nations Development Programme report leaked earlier this year suggests that movements of violence and burning of camps carried out in the name of ‘conservation’ have in fact been paid for in part by the WWF.
The COPA Group - which actively promotes and supports conservation as a part of, not instead of a farming landscape - has demonstrated that we as farmers and a local rural community can fight back when livelihoods are at risk. The departure of Rewilding Britain marked a major victory for the local community, but with WWF now a Summit to Sea partner, let us hope that the progress over the past 18 months is taken into account and that their actions in other parts of the World do not intervene.