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Researchers in North America have studied places in which extract-
ive industries have given way to wildlife, with mixed conclusions.
One paper, for example, states that 'employment and personal income
levels in “wilderness” counties grew faster than in “ resource- extraction”
counties'. 11 Another maintains that in regions where timber cutting
had stopped in order to protect the forests, economic wellbeing
'improved in some, deteriorated in some, and showed little change in
other communities'. 12 The results are likely to be different in other
nations, and the potential impacts, both positive and negative, should
be carefully assessed. But it is possible that rewilding could do more
than sheep farming to keep the school open, support the local shop or
reopen the pub, which the current economy has manifestly failed to
sustain.
As for book-burning, I see it whenever I walk in the hills close to
where I live. I see oak woods, which in some cases had been preserved
by farmers or mining communities for centuries, being destroyed by
the sheep that now graze beneath the trees. I see hedgerows being
grubbed up, drystone walls replaced with wire fences, ancient trees
which once marked the boundaries between farms ripped out and
burnt. Yes, rewilding could present a threat to the cultural history of
the land. But I also see farmers from the communities which claim to
treasure this history obliterating it, with scarcely a voice of protest
raised against them.
If rewilding took place it would happen in order to meet human
needs, not the needs of the ecosystem. That, for me, is the point of it.
Wolves would be introduced not for the sake of wolves but for the
sake of people. If rewilding happens it will be because we value a bio-
logically rich environment more than we value an impoverished
system which continues, with the help of public money, to support
sheep.
After I showed Dafydd the first draft of this chapter, he responded
to my suggestion that the people of this nation should decide whether
wolves are introduced as follows:
Firstly, which people and which Nation? The loudest? The most well
educated? The greatest percentage of the overall population? There is
another value judgement here, do we value the enhancement and
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