The Hushings - Feral: Rewilding the Land, the Sea, and Human Life - page 180

enrichment of outsiders' lives over the needs of the existing community,
placing the recreational and emotional needs of for example West Mid-
landers over those of the local population? Isn't this the same argument
that was used to further the cause of reservoir building (e.g. Liverpool's
need for water in the case of Tryweryn) land clearance (our nation's
need for defence training at Eppynt and Penyberth) and the Forestry
Commission's afforestation (our growing nation's need for timber)?!
Surely, though, lamb is not produced to feed the farmers, but for
sale to outsiders for the enhancement and enrichment of their lives.
Changing the use of the land but not its ownership does not alter this
relationship. But expropriation and dispossession of the kind deployed
by the foresters, the reservoir builders and the army is a different mat-
ter. I would oppose any proposal to wrest land out of the hands of
farmers for the purpose of rewilding. If rewilding is to happen, it must
do so with the consent and involvement of those who currently work
there.
But none of this is to dismiss the core argument which he and
Delyth made so powerfully, and with which I find myself strongly in
sympathy. They see rewilding as completing the long process of eco-
nomic change and exclusion that has been erasing them and their
culture from the land.
I found myself tumbling into cognitive dissonance, the uncomfort-
able state of mind that results from an inability to resolve conflicting
ideas or values. I was unable to deny either position, yet each was
exclusive of the other: I could not simultaneously support rewilding
and the restoration of the ecosystem and support efforts to sustain the
sheep farming that kept Dafydd, Delyth and their culture alive. I saw
destruction and sadness in both directions. That is the sorry state in
which I remained for several weeks.
Then, walking up the hill behind my house one morning, past a rare
stand of birches that has recolonized a patch of rough grazing, the
answer struck me. It was so simple, so obvious that I could not under-
stand why I had failed to see it before.
As I mentioned earlier, sheep farmers in the Welsh hills receive an
average of £53,000 a year in subsidies while their average net farm
income is £33,000. Keeping livestock, in other words, costs them