It came from the divergence between what practitioners and critics say about rewilding.

A lot of (but definitely not all) rewilders go to great lengths to make rewilding ‘nice’. By which I mean, they talk about how it fits into past cultural practices, that it helps employability, that it’s beneficial for lots of people. As well as sharing lots of lovely pictures and stories of wildlife.

This is all true. And it feels like a way to make it seem unthreatening and easy to say yes too. Which is of course sensible in many cases.

On the other hand, if you listen to the critics. Rewilding is a radical destruction of our countryside and way of life. Risking food security, livelihoods and safety.

A caricature might be: Children frolicking alongside butterflies and beavers Vs Wolves and eagles carrying off babies.

I think the critics are right. Rewilding is radical.

We are talking about a transformation of how we think about our land. How we manage it, and how our day-to-day lives interact with wildlife. This is necessarily consequential. In general, it will bring about widespread benefits, but not to everyone.

Some people’s livelihoods will suffer, there will be new risks, and some things will go badly wrong.

What the critics fail to mention is that the status quo - the unwilding - is already causing suffering, new risks and things going badly wrong. The decimation of our wildlife is already destroying people’s lives, and it’s getting worse.

Through mismanagement of land and our relationship with wildlife we are making droughts and floods more serious. By decimating populations and species we are playing a dangerous game of Jenga with our complex ecosystems, which sustain our food system (and life on earth).

So we should not shy away from the radical nature of rewilding. It needs to be radical to deal with the scale of destruction and the threat inaction poses.

As part of this, there is a reason to share the wonderful stories and pictures of recovery.

I remember how completely disillusioned I felt with seeing the constant news of environmental degradation. How species kept being wiped out to what seemed a collective shrug of the shoulders. It made me want to disengage.

In that context, discovering rewilding was transformational for me. It showed that it was possible for us to be a positive force rather than a destructive one.

Just this possibility alone was hopeful. Seeing the evidence of wildlife returning felt radical to me.

This joyful radicalism I think is at the heart of what makes rewilding powerful.

It’s what led me to found Wild Mosaic as a way to make this as accessible as possible. Even for - the many of us - who don’t own acres of land to rewild ourselves, or happen to live next door to somewhere like Knepp.

So, whilst I find a lot of the criticism of rewilding disingenuous and misguided, I do take heart that it is being seen as a radical threat. It is, and it needs to become even more so 🌱

We used to cycle on a bridge over it on our way to nursery. He was never keen to go. I used to persuade him by choosing stones to take with us and throw into the river from the bridge. One day we saw a kingfisher dart past. When he was a bit older we used to go to a little bank in the park, and experiment with twig races and testing which leaves floated best. Further along there’s a place we now sometimes go paddling. Often there is a little egret that enjoys the same shallow bend of the Roding.

This has been a little spoiled since I learnt how much and often Thames Water dump sewage into the river.

More hopefully, I heard a lawyer Paul Powlesland speak a couple of years ago about how he was successfully campaigning for river protections. He seemed to meld worlds together. The very established and formal world of law. With the more esoteric world of valuing our wildlife.

I was delighted when I discovered he lives on and actively campaigns for the River Roding. The connection along a river felt personal even though I’ve never actually met him.

Recently he organised a group of volunteers to clean up a stretch near us that is regularly used for illegal dumping. They removed over 200 bags of rubbish.

He is now being threatened with prosecution by the Environment Agency.

Many people interested in rewilding have heard about the success stories of beavers. These ecosystem engineers have brought huge benefits to waterways. Improving water quality, regulating flow and increasing biodiversity. This benefit is largely because they are returning home, restoring river systems to what they once were. Recreating resilience and life that had been lost when beavers were driven to extinction in the UK a few hundred years ago.

It’s taken a long time to make releasing beavers legal. They were only recently recognised as being a native animal. Despite clear evidence that they thrived here until their fur became seen as more valuable than their lives.

It’s still pretty difficult to gain a permit to release a beaver. You need to apply for a license and demonstrate how it’s going to create benefit. This takes time and can be complicated. Even when there is clear need and benefit to improve water quality, regulate flow and increase biodiversity.

Meanwhile, 50 million pheasants (a bird that is not native to the UK) are released into our landscape a year, to be shot for fun.

When we think about land and wildlife we often seem to get things backwards.

It is easier to make money destroying life than it is restoring it. Reflected by the stark fact that for every £1 invested in restoring our natural world, £30 is spent destroying it.

There is an argument that the reason driving this is because we feel separate from nature. If only we acknowledged we are part of nature then we wouldn’t act this way.

But I think this misses how many of the environmentally damaging actions make little sense on their own terms.

The Environment Agency threatening to prosecute someone making their work easier is senseless.

Hunting beavers to extinction in the UK for their fur, meat and castoreum (a fancy name for scent taken from their bums to be used in perfume) was clearly not great for the continued trade in these products.

This is less about feeling separate, and more about our desire to feel in control of land and wildlife. We have grown used to our land and animals being tame and domesticated. Demonstrating control over ‘my’ land is more important than the benefits that I get from accepting that the land and wildlife might not care about your property rights.

Consider the temptation to replace gardens with astroturf that has swept a supposed nation of gardeners. Research by Aviva in 2024 found that:

• One in nine (11%) have already replaced lawn with fake grass and 10% plan to do so.

• One in seven (14%) have replaced part or all of their garden with a driveway

As people feel they have less free time, they prefer to turn their garden into plastic than have it become a little wilder.

But what we need is to bring back wildness. This is about wildlife, but it’s also about relinquishing control. Acknowledging how much we are losing through our reflex to manage.

I love the Donald Rumsfeld quote about knowns, known unknowns and unknown unknowns. It feels we live in a world where we prioritise the knowns. And take this to such extremes that we actively sell our knowledge and understanding of everything else.

What happens when we cut down rainforest to make beef a little cheaper? In the ‘known’ column this is economically rational. Land that didn’t make money can be managed and turned into resources, and profit.

In the ‘known unknowns’ column there are undiscovered species, interactions, and life that is wiped out. Now forever lost to us.

In the ‘unknown unknowns’ column… maybe that feeling in the pit of your stomach?

This isn’t restricted to distant rainforests.

When the River Wye was sold out to chicken farmers we did the same thing. Everything we couldn’t count was devalued to zero. And then there was surprise when the river started to die.

How do we change this?

There are signs that the currents are starting to shift. Recently the River Wye was granted intrinsic rights. A first in the UK.

The threat of prosecution of Paul Powlesland is sparking a wave of support, with articles in the media and offers to help.

And beavers are returning across England.

More people are starting to realise that walking in a wood that may contain lynx or wildcats, enriches their world. Sharpens their senses and restores some of the vibrancy that has been lost to endless notification alerts and a compulsion to buy.

83% of Britons say they support rewilding.

Yet, less than 1% of UK land is being rewilded. This is what I’m trying to tackle through Wild Mosaic. I want to make it possible for people to be part of the recovery even if they don’t happen to own a few hundred acres or live next door to Knepp.

I recently wrote a short ebook about rewilding - how it’s about people as well as land. It’s free (no registration required either) here - https://wildmosaic.eco/ebook

And if you want to get more involved (if you’re not already) come and have a look at Wild Mosaic 🌱

You can learn more about the Paul Powlesland story here - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jun/17/campaigner-threatened-prosecution-environment-agency-river-roding-cleanup

Every ten years or so their numbers in the UK increase dramatically. This may be one of their years.

This is a story of natural fluctuations. And an awesome demonstration of how much we don’t understand.

I stumbled across learning more about this butterfly after spotting an unusually high number of them on the Wild Mosaic site.

They haven’t featured much in our butterfly counts over the last few years. Just one in each of the last three years. This year, in a couple of days last week, I saw at least twenty. They were in all parts of the site I visited.

Like so often, once you pay a little more attention you open up whole new worlds.

This butterfly completes the furthest migration of any butterfly. The full journey was only confirmed a few years ago as part of their flight is completed too high - 500m up -to be seen.

The total distance of this migration is 9,000 miles, from the arctic circle to Africa. Double the distance of the Monarch butterfly migration (across the USA and Mexico).

This is a multi-generational trip. Spanning up to six generations. Every generation of butterfly completes a different stretch of the journey, always for the first time.

This is a type of knowledge that is difficult to comprehend. From a big picture view of the whole migration it looks like a planned repeated route. But considering a single butterfly there is no capacity for this knowledge in the way we understand.

“They do it through instinct”

Well, yes - but that poses more questions than answers! An insect smaller than your hand, made almost entirely of wing, travelling with certainty and success over huge distances.

The research suggests the trigger is change in day length. If days lengthen whilst they are a caterpillar, they’ll fly north as a butterfly. If they shorten, they’ll fly south. They orient themselves using the sun. It’s a fascinating interplay of simple cues, the environment and hundreds of thousands of years of evolution.

It’s also unlikely to be the whole story. Some single generations, don’t migrate at all. Others travel huge distances. Variation in rain, winds and heat are likely to have a significant impact on their numbers and locations. They are helped by having a large number of host plants for their caterpillars so they are likely to succeed in many of the places they may end up.

This year may be one of the relatively rare years that they end up in high numbers across the UK.

Have you seen more than usual?

I tried different ways to make sense of this. Could I visualise it in terms of land that I am using? How much of this is used up or depleted each year?

I found this quite depressing as it was very difficult to get a real sense of how the food I ate or the products I bought linked to actual land*. I could see the appeal of living in small self-sufficient communities in the woods, where this would be much more tangible. At least in theory!

Around the same time I discovered the concept of rewilding. It filled me with hope that there was something working in the other direction. It showed that people valued land for how it could be restored and brought back to life, not just for what could be taken from it.

This felt intuitive. We value birdsong, a walk in old woodland, seeing wildflowers, watching butterflies and bees. Millions of people watch nature documentaries and feel joy at witnessing wildlife, even at distance through a screen.

The challenge was that rewilding was a story usually told by wealthy landowners who had a few hundred acres to spare. It was told twenty years later. They shared some of the results - which were wonderful - but they invariably said that the real joy came from the journey, which you were not part of.

There are wonderful rewilding projects springing up around the UK, but it is still unlikely that there is one near you. You at least ten times more likely to be near a shooting estate than a rewilding site.

This led me to create Wild Mosaic.

Firstly, to find a better way to value land. To show that people will value land for the life it can support, rather than what can be taken from it.

Secondly, to create value for these people by making it possible to be part of rewilding even if you don’t live nearby. Bring it to life using photos, videos and other ways to show what is happening. What rewilding looks like in practice.

Thirdly, to support the network of organisations rewilding and be a catalyst for their work. Our first partner is a Wildlife Trust.

The way we do it is to take a portion of land being rewilded. Divide it up into ‘tiles’. Each 3 metres by 3 metres (what3word squares).

People can then choose a tile to support. I share updates about what is happening in their tile and the surrounding area. Making it as personal as possible

There are some top-down approaches to try to better value land, from carbon and biodiversity credits and Biodiversity Net Gain. These definitely have a role to play.

But they tend to be focused on large landowners and big corporate investors.

I think there is an alternative, complementary way:

→ build the value from the ground up

Many of you reading this are already subscribers, thank you 💚

If you’re not yet, come and join us! → show that we value land for the life it can support 🌱 www.wildmosaic.eco 🌱

*Someone who is doing a great job at helping visualise the impact of our everyday choices is Frank Holleman:

Sometimes it feels that the idea of rewilding is like the roots of a tree breaking through concrete. It cracks open the smooth artificial surface of our day-to-day lives. Like seeds, small ideas grow more prominent. The earth underneath our pavements, bluebells remembering ancient woodlands, dead leaves as habitat.

These ideas threaten to trip us up, become a nuisance. Soon, just cutting down a problematic tree becomes difficult. Beautifully maintained lawns become ugly. A curiosity grows about half remembered folklore, the plants, the flowers, the rhymes, the fairies.

Increasingly, I have moments of deep emotional reaction from seeing something relatively mundane in the natural world. A robin cocking its head. Hearing a woodpecker drumming. Finding frogspawn.

I’ve never thought of myself as a very sentimental person. This extends to the natural world. I don’t relate emotionally to the concept of Mother Earth.

Whilst I’ve always cared deeply about the wilder world, this has always seemed to be rooted in logic: the loss of a species is the loss of knowledge, the loss of millions of years of evolution. Even if you don’t see the value yourself in that specific instance, surely it’s straightforward and rational to understand that we should avoid its thoughtless destruction? Like we wouldn’t just burn a great piece of art because we wanted to toast marshmallows.

This year, World Rewilding Day felt perfectly timed for me. It was the same day as the equinox, and it coincided with a site visit. But this ended up feeling pretty bleak and dispiriting.

I’m building a business and so my rewilding work sits within a lot of other activity. I spend most of my time working on this where I live, in London. With about two or three days every month on site in Wales.

My priority at the moment is turning rewilding into a community and a movement. Or, to put this in more cold financial language, growing my subscriber numbers.

So most of my time is at a desk, thinking of ways to craft the perfect messages, reach the right people. Move people from liking the idea to paying to be part of rewilding in practice.

And mostly failing.

The plan was to line up several strands of activity for World Rewilding Day →

• a free ebook,

• sharing videos of our impact in 2025,

• and trying our first adverts.

By the time the day itself came I was exhausted and disappointed.

The adverts hadn’t worked and we didn’t manage to get any significant press attention for the ebook. But worse, I was completely trapped in my screen. I was spending my scarce time on the rewilding site checking my phone. Looking for updates and signs of progress.

Part of the reason is that this is actually a pretty difficult time of year for the site. We are on the cusp of spring. It’s a time of year where the difference between London and Wales is most clear, seasonally. Often, I’m surprised by how similar these very different places are. An old sheep pasture has many of the same species you’d expect to see in a London park: robins, blackbirds, wrens, ladybirds, bumblebees, oaks, hawthorn etc. Rewilding is often a story of building layers of life. And those first layers are pretty consistent across the UK, or even most of Europe.

The noticeable differences are that Wales is usually a little colder and wetter, spring arrives a little later.

Time around the equinoxes moves fast. Day length changes quicker at these times of year. The signs of spring jump from a few subtle changes over a few weeks, to multiple new indicators in a single day. Moving a few hundred miles from London to Wales at this time of year feels like jumping back a season.

At this time of year in Japan, the news will show a map of cherry blossom flowering across the country. It is a visible map of how seasonal change is also a slow wave of life returning.

There are many other waves of spring that travel across our counties, countries and continents. Meteorology depicted by colour sweeping back into a landscape.

Going against this wave, back into a more lifeless land is disorientating. Especially when the primary purpose of my visits is to look for new signs of life.

So there I was at the end of a day, pretty despondent and worn out. Feeling that I’d wasted a precious day on site, looking for life that wasn’t there, and distracted by my phone.

Then I stumbled upon a strange formation on an alder tree. Seeing a pair of long-tailed tits chattering away. Realising it was a nest, and watching them flit in and out. It was magical.

This was right on the edge of ‘Marsh to Lugg’ part of the site.

Long tailed tits are charming sociable birds. They’re common and widespread across the UK. I find them similar to robins in that you quite often see them, but their charisma encourages you to stop and pay attention.

There was something deeply reassuring about seeing them build. Oblivious to advertising campaigns, news stories or AI. They build their nest out of moss, and camouflage it with lichen and cobwebs. The inside is lined with up to 1,500 feathers.

They typically live for two years so this construction is created with a different type of natural intelligence than the learning we are more familiar with. A natural intelligence that seems too easy to discount. Simply call ‘instinct’ and brush away.

Soon it will be filled with 8-12 little beaks calling out for a constant supply of food.

The knowledge that this small wonder is common is somehow reassuring. Near you, there is probably the same thing happening. A couple of long-tailed tits building a home out of moss, spider thread and mystery.

There is something else here though.

I didn’t know about how they made their nests when I stopped captivated by them. The surge of emotion that I felt wasn’t due to wonder at the nature of intelligence.

It was more akin to a jarring back into myself. And into a wilder connection. Like a missing piece suddenly clicking into place.

I had been stuck in my head, but suddenly a part of me noticed something to pay attention to, and then my mind caught up. A reminder that my senses were still running despite myself. That letting them lead the way helped my sense of self grow. Working out that the shape was likely to be a nest, scanning and finding the birds. Remembering they were long-tailed tits. Noticing that they had noticed me and had become wary. Waiting to see if they were actively building.

This jump back into my own body, was also a jump back into the environment, the life of these two birds, our shared surroundings. Bridging different sorts of consciousness.

It felt that I had been prompted into being a better version of myself, more aware and present. The wave of emotion was part joy and excitement; but part sadness that it can be so easy for this lightness of feeling to be buried under day-to-day concerns.

They flitted around but seemed reluctant to nest, spooked by my presence.

Returning the next day. I felt different and the world felt more welcoming. There were now signs of life popping up everywhere.

I returned to the nest building site. This time the birds were less reluctant. Happily building away in front of me.

What can explain this shift? One day, the site is lifeless and feels like winter, the next day it is spring and full of signs of abundance.

Is there an objective answer? Is that the right answer?

Increasingly I feel like sharing rewilding is less about sharing data and more about sharing experiences.

In a mirror image, the biggest cause of biodiversity loss is carelessness. Species are rarely wiped out through malicious intent. Rather because we no longer care about our connection to the wilder world. It is easier to see land as a resource rather than habitat.

Stopping this, reversing it, bringing life back is logical. But it is also emotional. Finding a way to bring ourselves back into our bodies, and those bodies back into a wilder world. Which could simply be on your doorstep.

One was surprisingly quick. One was surprisingly slow.

Here’s the ebook: https://www.wildmosaic.eco/ebook-reader

Here’s an example of one of the videos:

The quick one was the ebook.

The aim is for this to be a useful general guide to rewilding. A little bit about the normal things a rewilding guide might cover . Definitions, example sites, etc. But also how this is about people as well as land.

I’m also starting to try some advertising - so, I wanted to have a useful free resource available. Not so much as a ‘lead magnet’, more to balance a the vague guilt I feel about adding to the weight of distractions forced on people.

The reason this was quick to write is because I used AI.

I used it to look at what I’ve written here, on linkedin, my Nation articles and my website. Essentially find and summarise what I’ve already said about rewilding. I then rewrote it to make sure it was accurate and what I wanted to say. It was a much better experience than I expected.

Most of the corrections involved updating references I’d made in the past (e.g. surveys now find that 83% or people in the UK support rewilding, up from 79% a couple of years ago).

It shifted my language a bit into AI speak - with nested phrases like this - that I needed to change back into how I write. Not necessarily better, but more me.

In a sense it was quick because I’ve already spent a lot of time thinking and writing about this.

I was also able to ask the design agency (Harrison Brands) I’ve been working with to help with the pdf, incorporating the wonderful graphics by Anna Korlath.

The videos were a bit different… We planned to have them ready in January. It was an ambitious project. The aim was to have a personalised video for every subscriber. The main content would be the same but with a data screen that showed their specific tile and location.

This quickly became more and more complex…

How to calculate value as accurately as possible? It had to relate to actual funding on rewilding rather than operational costs. And when should payment count? Spread over a year or at the point of payment?

Should it be per tile or per subscriber? In most cases this is a one-to-one relationship but I’ve also experimented with different set-ups like gift buying and businesses buying tiles for employees or customers.

It was ripe for me to overthink, and hold up the project. And that was before I started to want to make changes to the video itself…

So finally the videos were done. But then the bit I was really dreading - how to send them out to people. One of my first jobs out of university involved mailmerging - so surely it would be easy to use AI to do a sophisticated form of that.

Somehow, I couldn’t quite bring myself to do this. So I sent each video individually. Using a set text in most cases, but personalising as much as possible. Finding the relevant link to their video and copying it into the email. Quite possibly doing nothing more than triggering a hundred spam filters!

It feels like this was exactly the sort of thing automation would make sense for. It seems strange that I seem comfortable using AI for help writing an ebook but not for sending out emails.

These idiosyncrasies are probably foolish. But I wonder if these are things that will become more important. How do we maintain a personal connection when so much can be automated.

In many ways this is central to what I do. Balancing between the real rewilding on the land; and turning this into digital content that can be experienced at a distance by those helping make it possible.

No answers, and in some ways this question becomes more important as(/if) Wild Mosaic grows.

For example, I’m on a site visit at the moment. Part of that involves recording footage for my subscribers. Currently I can do this individually, making videos like this one:

As(/if) I grow I need to find new ways to do this more quickly. For example programming a drone to visit multiple tiles. This would give people more regular updates but might feel less personal, as I’d no longer be able to wave each time (or aimlessly stomp around for some bizarre reason)!

This will probably progress as we all learn to find the edges of what feels intrusive and helpful about increasing automation and AI.

The question will be how to also use this to redevelop our natural intelligence. How to use technology as a tool to bring us closer to being part of our wilder world. And when it’s best to do so.

As a simple example, sometimes using your phone on a walk helps you learn more about the species you see or the birdsong you hear; and sometimes leaving it at home helps you pay more attention and connect more deeply.

How are you finding the balance between wildness and technology? Have you seen any good examples of it working well?

I look forward to spring, but it always seems to come quicker than I’m ready for. A bit of a slow down over winter is often very welcome!

In this quieter time (in terms of life on site) I’ve been working on getting some press coverage, and writing up some testimonials. In different ways these are both about building credibility.

One of the challenges I face is that to many potential subscribers I’m just some random bloke with a crazy rewilding dream - why should they trust me with their money?

Press can help this my showing that what I say and what I do are worth sharing. But this is a big challenge as news outlets have a lot of potential stories and are keen for controversy that will drive clicks. I’m not keen to go down that route.

Testimonials are a little different - they help show that others have benefited from trusting me. They provide social proof. Since I’ve started I’ve received some lovely testimonials, and most subscribers have stayed subscribed. The challenge here is making these testimonials more prominent.

To help with this we’ve started a new series called ‘My Tile and Me’ you can see the first one below.

With the press, I’ve managed to get a series of opinion pieces in Nation - this is a Welsh focused digital news outlet with about 1 million views a month.

My latest one, published today is about World Wildlife Day and is about how foraging is part of our heritage.

It’s been great having a few pieces like this published. Although I’m still a bit unsure how to make the most of these! Some of these activities feel a bit like scattering wildflower seed. It feels like a good idea but you’re not sure exactly how successful it will be, or which ones will take and flourish.

Often writing them is beneficial for other reasons. I wrote this story with help from who writes her own substack, is a fellow alumnus of the Centre for Alternative Technology, and is also a subscriber. She helped me learn about the folklore behind these different plants.

It’s great to feel that as well as a business I’m helping create a community of rewilders each with different but complimentary skills and knowledge. It’s one of my motivations behind growing - to explore how this rewilding community might find ways to help each other and increase our impact 🌱

Tile & me: Joel Phillimore

Tile: closets.knitted.blanking

Location: Marsh into Lugg

What does wildness mean to you?

Nature doing what it’s supposed to be doing, and being allowed to get on with it.

What first drew you to Wild Mosaic?

My partner was the first to find out about it and sponsor a tile. She recommended I take a look and I immediately fell in love with the concept. We were living in London at the time, a long way from our home in the north and missing the nature we’d grown up surrounded by. Wild Mosaic felt like a simple and effective way to reconnect with nature.

Can you describe your relationship to your tile?

I chose it due to its location, on the boundary between a marshy slope and the River Lugg. I figured the meeting point of earth and water would be a good spot to see a range of different changes. It’s been really cool to see the changes to the area so far, especially the recent transformation of a drainage ditch that was carrying water quickly away into a series of pools and ponds that will burst into life over the coming months.

How do you bring more wildness into your life?

We started by digging up our lifeless lawn and filling our garden with region appropriate pollinator plants. The last summer was spent watching bees, birds, frogs and even some hedgehogs make themselves at home. I hope to get more deeply involved in supporting wildness in the area over the coming years.

If you could be a ‘Wild Thing’ what would you be?

That’s a tough one. I love the big cats, and wish we still had Lynxes and Wildcats here in the UK. If I were to choose something that’s here now, it would have to be a good old Fern. The way they erupt into huge plumage after months of regathering hits me right in the good feels!

There are many ways to engage with wildness. As part of my exploration of rewilding I’ve attended a few different programmes that use nature connection as a key theme.

Often they have a central exercise to encourage a deeper relationship with the wilder world.

I find these excruciating. Especially when the idea is first presented.

The earnest enthusiasm reminds me of the ‘I want to be a tree’ evocation in the old Prudential advert.

They leave me feeling self-conscious rather than building deeper connection to the wilder world.

This is more a reflection on me, than the exercises. But I also know that I’m not alone in feeling this.

As I stick with these exercises I’m able to get past (some of) my insecurities and see the benefits. However, I’m rarely able to stick with them long enough for them to turn into an enduring and worthwhile habit. I never fully escape the imagined sneering passer-by.

My expectations are often too high. The ability to talk to animals or summon the elements never seems to materialise. Although I am able to summon a quizzical look from a squirrel. Or a tilt of the head from a robin.

Hugging shouldn’t be done by yourself

Even without these exercises becoming habits, I find an unexpected benefit building over time. This carries on after I’ve stopped. What works for me is to bring the - flawed - human in, rather than trying to become a perfect outside observer.

This exercises are typically done by yourself, but as part of a community. With each individual doing the exercises alone, and then coming together to share the experience.

Many of the programmes will make these group reflections a fundamental part of the practice. The noticing of the wilder world then starts to merge with noticing yourself. This in turn becomes an exploration of our own wildness.

This approach helps me in the moment. It also creates a lasting connection, to the programme and people as much as ‘nature’. Often this is what lingers and provides the seeds of growth.

Here a some of the ways they have made an impact on me.

Sit spots - regularly returning to the same spot to spend at least 20 minutes just observing

There is a place I regularly walk or run past which is where I did a sit spot as part of the bio-leadership fellowship. Now whenever I go past it I am reminded of the Great Tit that regularly shared this with me; and the group I was part of that I then shared these experiences with.

Choosing a ‘mother’ tree - finding a tree to regularly visit and return to

There is an oak in The City that is opposite an office I get to regularly use. Every time I walk past I check on it, and am reminded of the Growth Experience and how it has helped me and my business develop.

Interspecies council - representing another species and coming together with others to discuss a particular issue from these multiple perspectives

I was once a bluebell. And this will stay with me and flower every spring.

Choosing a spirit animal - identifying an animal that you relate to, often as part of an adventure into the wild

I chose a woodpecker as a spirit animal a couple of winters ago. A Green woodpecker flew past me as I was contemplating how ridiculous the idea of this was. Now when I hear them drumming, or catch a glimpse of green darting smoothly across the sky, my spirit lifts. And I’m reminded of the beautiful experience with the Becoming Crew a couple of winters ago.

I now also relate pecking wood to working in sustainability… a seemingly impossible task, that over time can shape worlds.

Different types of hugs

There is a temptation to see these type of exercises as part of a deep nature spirituality. That this would also involve dancing to the moon and living off grid.

For some people it is and they gain deep meaning from this.

The temptation can be to feel that if you don’t experience this instant deep connection you’re somehow doing it wrong.

But it’s not necessary.

I don’t feel I can be a bluebell, or a woodpecker. I don’t feel the oak is a mother to me. I don’t think I have the right type of imagination.

I’m more interested in a pragmatic sort of spirituality. Exploring these connections and practices as a way to uncover more meaning in the world around us, and within us.

As a way to escape the commodification of our attention, a way to reconnect with instincts and abilities that are within us. A way to re-interpret our modern lives and explore new potential.

Initiating the hug

Nevertheless, I still carry the sneering passer-by with me. And I know others do too. As much as you can rationalise, it can still feel uncomfortable to start to explore a meaningful engagement with wildness.

Part of what I’m exploring with my business Wild Mosaic is making this wilder world more accessible. Whether you feel deep nature spiritualty, or you share my pragmatic spirituality, or take a different approach.

Too often there can be imagined barriers: you’re not enough of a nature person, you don’t have sufficient ecological knowledge, you don’t have your own land.

But this is misleading. Put simply, if you eat and breathe you have a vested interest in the wild. We are alive, and we are intrinsically curious and connected to the living world. This is much re-discovery as discovery. Hence why the RE in rewilding is important.

Some ways back in:

• The is a nine month fellowship taking in new Fellows for a start in February. “a global movement of people and organisations working towards better forms of human progress by working with nature”

• The Growth Experience explores how to bring regenerative principles an nature into your work through a nine month business incubator

• ’s Interspecies Councils are workshop style sessions to “introduce more-than-human ontologies and perspectives into decision-making and policy-making”

• create “seasonal experiential offerings online and on-land for you to join as an individual or a team”

• There are also wonderful coaches that use wildness as a partner in the learning process:

  • JK is running a digital detox ‘Reset to Reconnect’ starting in February

  • Katie Newman is running a women only programme through this year ‘Rewild 2026’

What ways do you find work for you in engaging with wildness? The smaller the better 🌱

Winter is quiet. But often surprising. The days are shorter and more relaxed. Listening to birds sing replaces frantically chasing invertebrates. When the weather is welcoming it’s beautiful, and the last couple of days have been clear.

This visit I had an unexpected bonus - new saplings available to be planted. A chance for some more experiments.

This time I’ve tried some companion planting. An oak sapling guarded by hawthorn and blackthorn, acting as spiky body guards. They should help deter the deer, squirrels, voles and other animals that seem to queue up as soon as my back is turned.

They will still have to survive a year or so before they grow big enough to be effective. Nevertheless, it will be good to see how they fare.

I found I was planting in this tile ///these.upset.relations

This is an awful photo, despite the excellent tile name. It turns out I took the day a little too relaxed and ran out of time, leaving me planting in the twilight.

For some reason, it made me think of christmas…

Partly the name, and partly the running out of time. I always seem to be running late for something. Christmas is no exception. I have not got round to gifts, nor have I got round to properly publicising my festive offer.

If you’re like me, maybe a Wild Mosaic gift would be useful? We’ve just redone our festive gift certificate (and ///these.upset.relations are still available)

Seasons greetings and have a wonderful end to the year. It’s reassuring to have the winter solstice tomorrow and the promise of more day light soon.

See you in the new year☃️

Apologies. I realised that I’d made a mistake.

The logos that we’d come up with were all great. But seeing them next to my original logo made me realise I didn’t want to change it.

A little sheepishly I told the design agency that I wanted to discard all their work from the previous few weeks.

It was a little tense, it felt quite uncomfortable.

It had been my limited ability to brief them properly, rather than their designs that had gone wrong. The skill of how to bring in outside help is crucial for a solo founder, but one I often struggle with.

To their credit they understood. And offered to start again. This time bringing the brand to life. Using what was already there.

A central theme was using the wonderful illustrations that Anna Korlath had created for me earlier in the year. You can see an example of Anna’s work in action here:

They combined these illustrations with a more consistent look and feel. Simple colours and typography. I’m delighted with the results.

Have a look 👀

Linkedin:

Instagram:

Youtube:

And here on substack:

Much more consistent!

We’ve also redesigned our certificates. These are optional extras when you subscribe as a gift.

There’s even a seasonal version!

The aim is to bring a little bit more joy and play into the designs and branding. What do you think?

Some alternatives to the shopping frenzy:

• Find a new wood near you - I love this interactive map by the Woodland Trust; it’s not perfect but it is a great way to discover and learn more about spots in your area

• Try out the Encounter App - This guided nature journal is free and a great way to build habits around paying more attention to wildness. It was created by

• Experiment with natural navigation - something I’ve loved playing with in the last few months. Learning to tell direction from trees, clouds and shadows.

You are part of building a rewilding movement 🌱

Some of us are lucky enough to have discretionary spending power. What if we used it to bring more life to our land? Research suggests every £1 spent on rewilding creates between £4 and £38 of value through biodiversity, flood prevention and carbon sequestration.

The more of us there are, the more impact we can have –creating wildness that also results in cleaner waters, healthier forests, wilder futures, and happier communities.

You can help by forwarding this email to someone who you think would find the links useful. They might like to to find a new wood near them, engage more with wildness, learn to navigate by clouds.

🟩 Or become a rewilder through Wild Mosaic

This is the movement I’m trying to build and you’re already an integral part of it. Thank you for reading my emails 🌱

Yours in wildness,

Jon
Wild Mosaic founder

While building Wild Mosaic, I find I have two modes: critique or construct. I tend to get stuck in critique.

I’ll use Black Friday as an example.

Professionally, I find Black Friday a challenge. Constructively, it seems like a good time to sell as people are primed to spend. Looking at it critically, however, a lot of what happens around Black Friday seems wrong and in direct opposition to what I’m trying to create through my rewilding business.

Part of this is personal. I like being contrarian. I find it a comfortable position to take with a lot of festivals. Or the news. Or life in general...

Let me show you my critical line of thinking in relation to Black Friday.

⬛Black Friday: a critique

As the poster child of overconsumption, Black Friday feels like a particularly obvious target. A shopping frenzy that exposes how well our instincts have been reprogrammed to spend.

This is not just about buying things. It’s also about comparing yourself to others. Our important reference points used to be the friends, family , colleagues and neighbours you would meet and talk to in person. But now this comparison has become disconnected from reality. It’s easy to instead compare ourselves to the people we see on screens. Whether social media, TV or film. Our sample size of a hundred or so people has expanded out to millions.

If you’re going to regularly compare yourself to one in a million, it’s going to lead to disappointment.

We do this comparison constantly when we hear billionaires’ stories of how they made their money, or watch the fitness programmes of top athletes and the beauty regimes of the most famous actors. Aggressive marketing preys on this feeling of gap: if only you buy this product you too can become faster, fitter, richer, happier and more beautiful.

Whilst an element of this has always existed, it now seems more problematic. That we are becoming defined by what we consume. Black Friday has become a symbol of this consumption. Can there be a way of changing this consumption to something more positive?

The illusion of the ‘good deal’

In 2011, Patagonia famously had a Black Friday advert asking people to not buy this jacket.

It boosted their sales by 30%. Was it just a cynical ploy?

Patagonia recently released their 2025 Impact Report. Founder Yvon Chouinard stated: “Nothing we do is sustainable”. Acknowledging that even a company that’s held up as an exemplar of sustainable business is unable to be sustainable. Very few things we buy don’t leave a negative impact – a reality that has has driven the current push towards buying second hand and the repair sector.

But, in practical terms, what options are there?

One argument for Black Friday is that it is simply moving sales to this point of the year. That savvy shoppers can make a significant saving on products they needed to buy anyway. Add to this the joy of finding a discount, the excitement of imagining the new item, the thrill of buying.

However, the evidence doesn’t seem to bear this out.

For example, the consumer group “Which?” did research on pricing and found that just 2% of products being sold on Black Friday were at their cheapest. The sales are less about deals and more about boosting sales. Using psychological tricks to make deals feel unmissable.

So that’s my critical reasoning in action… it helps me look a the negatives of Black Friday. But it doesn’t do much positive for building my business. At least not by itself.

🟩Playing with a constructive twist: BLOCK Friday

I’m not the only one that gets frustrated by the frenzy around Black Friday. So if I can create something for people like me, then they can have a choice. Both about whether, and how to spend.

So here is an idea I’m playing with: BLOCK Friday.

🟩BLOCK 1: Make a List

One approach that psychologists suggest to help resist the temptations is to make a list e.g. Scientific American, and NPR

You first make a list of the things that you actually need to buy. Then base decisions from this, rather than a spur of the moment offer.

🟩BLOCK 2: Check it twice

When making this list remember that you have been primed to ‘need’ a lot of things. After watching a few adverts I’m pretty sure I need a Land Rover, despite not driving, not having a license and having no need to own a car!

Perhaps it could make a nice table?

🟩BLOCK 3: Make it count

Make what you spend money on a building block. So that what you spend money on creates as much positive benefit as possible. And helps you build the life that you intentionally want.

Some of us are lucky enough to have some discretionary spending power. We can pay attention to how the food is grown, the durability of the products we buy etc.

Wild Mosaic uses this spending power to bring more life to our land. One block at a time. These blocks come together to build a mosaic. Restoring life by rewilding depleted land.

This creates building blocks that allow wildlife to return and thrive. The research suggests that every £1 spent on rewilding creates between £4 and £38 of value through benefits such as improved biodiversity, flood prevention and carbon sequestration.

It also creates a building block of wildness in our own lives. So that we start to see the potential of land. Notice the other life that is all around us. The signs of wild already here, waiting to be able to thrive.

So if you feel caught up in the buying frenzy around Black Friday, perhaps the idea of Block Friday resonates. If you haven’t already, take a look at Wild Mosaic to see how you can use your spending power to bring more wildness back into our world.

And let me know - do you also get stuck in a critical mode of thinking? How do you turn it to something more constructive?

About Wild Mosaic

I’m Jon, and I started Wild Mosaic to answer a simple question: How can we bring wildness back to the UK?

Part of the answer lies in making the planetary-sized problem of biodiversity loss tangible. That’s why Wild Mosaic lets you adopt a 3m x 3m tile of land in Wales for the price of a coffee a month.

Working in partnership with a Wildlife Trust, we take a low-intervention approach and let wildness lead. You can track your tile’s transformation through our platform with updates, drone footage, and commentary – watching rewilding happen in real time.

Come and join us in building wildness. Adopt your tile and join our community of rewilders restoring life to land, one tile at a time 🟩

This time of year is an important reminder of the role of death and fear. That the cycle of life, like the cycle of a day, takes us through darkness. This is prevalent as we try to rewild land and ourselves.

But whilst death and darkness are natural, the undead is not. We should be wary of how zombies are creeping deeper into our material world.

—

Halloween has wilder origins than the sugar-soaked commercial incarnation of today. Our American cultural influences mean that we may be more familiar with the links to the Mexican Day of the Dead than to the Celtic festival of Samhain.

Both origins recognise the importance of death, as part of a cycle.

This is something I’m also coming to realise, as I watch land become wilder.

In popular culture wildness is never far from death. It is red in tooth and claw. There is fear and danger if you step off the path. The deep dark wood. Monsters in the shadows. The snarling teeth of a wolf.

This is a caricature, our memory of wildness reduced to the fairy tales written as warnings to children from another age. Nevertheless, death is an important part of rewilding. And a missing element to the more sanitised woods and parks we may more easily stroll through.

This can be seen in trees. Dead wood is a vital part of the forest ecosystem, yet it is rare in the UK. Most of our woodlands are closely managed, and dying or dead trees are often cleared away. Seen as a risk, or an eyesore.

I experienced this first-hand in my rewilding site. A huge ancient oak was struck by lightning and split in two. Standing on a steep slope, the top half fell and inverted.

This created a magical upside down world, resembling the root system that existed down below it. As the leaves fell and the wood started to rot it creating a new habitat of shade and shelter. A nursery ground for new saplings. A home for the hundreds of species that only live on dead wood.

Unfortunately, it had to be cut up and taken down. As more people were being brought on to the site it represented a risk. Sometimes even rewilding has to be tamed a little.

There are signs of change, you may notice more deadwood in your local park as the importance is being understood. This is less attractive than wildflower meadow verges, but just as significant in restoring life.

We are - necessarily - afraid of death. Halloween, Day of the Dead, Samhain, rotting wood, the autumn leaves crunching underfoot are all part of the reminder that this is nevertheless an important part of the cycle of life.

In a rewilded landscape, the possibility of death shapes the environment. The famous example is the wolves of Yellowstone Park reshaping rivers. The reintroduced wolves are relatively small in number but they move thousands of elk. The fear of the wolves meant the elk spent less time in the river valleys. This allowed trees and other vegetation to grow, stabilising the river banks. Ultimately changing the whole river ecosystem.

There is a strong argument to bring back lynx to our bigger woods to help manage the deer populations. Partly as a result of them becoming prey. But more through how the threat of lynx will keep the deer moving. Providing time for saplings and other vegetation to grow.

Fear is powerful. Part of the cultural purpose of festivals that revere death is to help us confront and understand this.

But we also have a fear of the undead, the things that break away from this natural cycle.

Zombies have become a common cultural artefact. Perhaps reflecting that we increasingly live in a world of the undead. Our products and materials aspire to a permanence that takes them out of the natural cycle of death, decay and rebirth. The plastic that envelopes and permeates through so much of what we buy. The concrete and tarmac that encase our land. Our bins overflow with materials that will exist longer than the people that threw them.

We want things to last, but bringing this out of the natural cycles is becoming increasingly problematic. Plastic collects in our bodies and world. Less water can permeate into our soil, creating the paradoxical risks of both floods and drought. If we keep producing things that don’t decay, then eventually these will overwhelm the living.

The rise of algorithms and AI is another form of this. This allure of artificiality, permanence, infallibility is creating an unreal digital world. When I was growing up the unreality of the digital world was simply that it was unrealistic. You could get lost in a computer game, but you could never confuse it with reality.

Now it is impossible to distinguish between the world experienced first-hand and that mediated through a screen.

Algorithmic manipulation is designed to make you click and linger, your attention a commodity. This emphasises content attuned to our base instincts: violence, lust, shock, disgust, social status. Trapping you in a screen.

This combines with the increase of AI in writing and design. There are areas in which this will bring huge benefit but it also risks a removal of personal creativity, mistakes, failure, human frailty and authenticity.

The future can feel bleak. It can feel that this is an autumn of civilization and we need to prepare for a dark winter ahead in a more catastrophic sense. This time of year accentuates it. Can become an excuse to wallow in it, get lost in the meaning and consequence of it. But also a time to remember that spring will also follow. Our wilder selves know that we can emerge out of the darkness stronger. That there is a real world out there to experience.

A starting point could be to make distinction between death and the undead. Separation between appreciation of the cycle of life, including the darkness that is part of this; and from the wariness of the things that step outside of that cycle.

How do we move from a world of the undead back into rebirth?

Perhaps some sort of return to wildness. In our festivals and in ourselves. In small ways as well as big. Getting back out into the woods and using all our senses. Noticing the leaves change and fall. The smell of the earth. The soft rot of deadwood. The birds more visible in the sparser trees. The urgency of the squirrels recognising the last moments to get ready for the winter ahead.

There is a different sort of beauty in this season. An appreciation of what was, of change, and what will be again. This can be reflected in the sunrises and sunsets, that come back into our lives more easily as the days shorten. And the festivals. The joy of a big fire on a cold evening. Or a candle in a pumpkin.

—

We’re having a little fun for this season with our ‘find a tile’ feature. See if you can find a tile name that relates to Halloween or Samhain. We reckon there’s thirteen… would love to see which ones you find!

We’re also offering a 25% discount (effectively a season free) if you wish to claim any of the tiles you find, just use the code PUMPKIN25 at checkout

https://app.wildmosaic.eco/projects/JRPW2M/find_tile

These downstream consequences can be positive as well as negative. Our wild mosaic has helped fund rewilding work that will create a flow of benefits from the land and down into the River Wye. This contribution to restoration is much needed.

How to kill a river

The River Lugg flows through the Wild Mosaic site. Its source is just a few hundred metres upstream. At this stage it is narrow, fast and shallow. And in recent years a little precarious. At one point last summer the source dried up and the river was reduced to just a trickle.

On another part of the site is a small stream, “Nant yr Wyn”. Too small to be picked up on google maps. This flows into the Lugg which eventually flows into the River Wye and then out to sea. There was a time when salmon would have made the opposite journey, from sea, through Wye and up the Lugg.

The water that flows into the Wye comes from the Lugg and other tributaries, veins spanning across Wales. Spring water coming out of the ground, rain water trickling through the hills.

The rivers Wye and Lugg have been recognised for their ecological importance. All of the Lugg and most of the Wye are Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI).

But both rivers are dying. Or being killed, depending how you look at it.

There are 15 points on the River Lugg where water quality is measured. Its ecological health was judged to be ‘good’ in just one. Both the Wye and the Lugg are assigned the status as ‘unfavourable-declining’, the worst available category for UK waterways.

This has happened quickly. In 2010 it was assigned ‘favourable’. It was renowned for its salmon, and varied wildlife that drew locals and tourists to enjoy it throughout its winding path from the hills to the sea.

In the meantime the area has become home to 24 million chickens. A quarter of all the UK’s chickens. (I’m not sure at what point the UK had more chickens than people, but I suspect it has also been in the last ten years).

Farmers do not set out to destroy rivers. At least not in most cases. Chicken manure is rarely deliberately dumped into water. It is the result of there being more waste than the land can absorb. More than can be used by organisms above and below the ground. This excess flows into rivers through the soil, or is washed off the land with rain. This nutrient dense waste then causses algae blooms in the water. Choking off other life.

The source of the name “Lugg” is bright stream. Regular algae blooms are not a typical feature of this ecosystem.

Each individual farm can - rightly - say that they are just one farm and not responsible for the destruction of the whole river system. Just as we don’t set out to create harm through the food we eat or the products we buy. We are all part of the same incentives that mean that we now live in a distorted world. Where more than 70 billion chickens are killed a year. Where our livestock massively outnumbers wild populations of animals.

There are more chickens in cages than wild birds free to fly.

This is also a problem of years of development. Unintended consequences of encasing more earth in concrete and tarmac. Building infrastructure that makes it easier to flush waste downstream.

This isn’t restricted to urban areas, it is true in our countryside too. This can be clearly seen in the Marsh to Lugg part of the site where the Nant yr Wyn stream runs. As you might guess from the name, the land naturally holds water. For days after rain you squelch as you walk across it. As farmland, this was something to fight against. A ditch runs along the edge of the field and multiple drainage pipes run under the ground. The stream is suspiciously straight. Like in most managed land the aim was to move water off and out as quickly as possible.

You see something similar in villages and towns along the river. Built up banks, straightened rivers, make the water move on faster. To the next town downstream. The cumulative effect in heavy rain can be extreme. Water rushes down the hills through the uplands and can easily overwhelm. A single stretch of river is tiny compared to size of the land catching and sending rain down to the river. The water catchment area of the Lugg is over 60 square miles.

The opposite happens in times of drought. The water becomes precious, but slips through and out to sea before it can replenish the land.

It is not hard to see what is killing these rivers. But it has proven harder to take effective action against it. In recent years there have been more attempts. A couple of weeks ago the Rivers Lugg and Wye have been in the news. It is now the centre of the UKs largest environmental lawsuit.

We could also look at this another way - What gives rivers life?

This is a question that is at the heart of many rewilding projects. Water is critical for the restoration of land. And so - in a reversal of years of land management practice - rewilding finds ways to keep water on the land for longer.

This water is seen as a source of life. Beavers are iconic symbols of rewilding because their dams hold water, create wetland areas. In doing so they restore biodiversity.

We can do something similar ourselves, although perhaps with less finesse than a beaver. Recently in the Marsh to Lugg site wetland restoration work has been underway. Two ponds have been dug, and leaky dams put into the stream. Water will stay longer, leave cleaner and support more life.

I thought this process would take a couple of seasons. It’s starting to have an effect within a month. Already the ponds have filled. Water boatmen and pondskaters have moved in. A heron flew down to take a look. The leaky dams have turned the often foamy water (the source is near a chicken farm) slower and clearer.

Imagine if this was done across a number of hilltops and upland valleys. The veins of water would be bright with life. The rivers would be clean and more reliable. Less prone to drought or flood. The Wye would once again be renowned for fishing and swimming.

As I’m discovering, alongside my subscribers rewilding with me, supporting rewilding in the Welsh hills can have far reaching benefits down in the valleys and out to sea.

Working in sustainability I’m used to hearing how our everyday actions have negative consequences that are hidden from view, often deliberately to avoid the discomfort they would cause. Part of my aim with Wild Mosaic is to create a positive reflection of this. Show how simple actions to make things better, to restore life, can have far reaching benefits.

Recently I’ve been looking at the value of £1 invested in rewilding. What benefits does this create? European Commission research shows that 4 to 38 euros of value are created for every euro invested in restoration. This is from the biodiversity benefit but also through broader consequences such as improvements to water quality and regulation.

This translates to £36,000 - £342,000 of value created by Wild Mosaic so far in my first three years 🌱

The £5 subscription creates £20 to £190 of value, each month, each subscriber.

I’m currently working on researching this more closely to see more precisely how this works in my project. But it’s certainly clear that the knock-on benefits are greater than the cost. A welcome change when usually the research is to uncover the hidden risks accumulating out of sight!

Too often interventions such as improving sustainability or biodiversity are seen as some sort of sacrifice. But this is the result of failing to look downstream and take the time to see what happens when you start to add up the trickles and streams of consequence.

A huge thank you to the Wild Mosaic rewilders making this possible: Have a look at how our wetland creation is shaping up 🌱

If you would like to find out more about becoming a rewilder with Wild Mosaic have a look at our subscriptions here - or drop me an email - I always love to hear from people interested in bringing back more life!

jon@wildmosaic.eco

I used to think about ‘wild’ in a fairytale sense. To do with violence or lawlessness. The wild wolf snarling with bloodied fangs.

Then, I became fascinated by the idea of re-wilding. Which made me think more carefully about what wildness could mean.

• Is wildness the opposite of civilisation?

• Could becoming wilder mean becoming more human?

• Can wildness be a way to rediscover the world around us?

I started to pay more attention to the wolf, how it cares for itself, its pack, its ecosystem.

In creating my rewilding start-up - Wild Mosaic - this question has become more important for me, practically. What does it mean to successfully rewild?

In the professional field of ecology it is common to hear complaints that ‘rewilding’ has become too broad and is used in too many contexts. There is desire to tightly define it around a particular type of land restoration.

But this struck me as problematic. It left the question of why rewilding as a concept seems to have increasing appeal, across multiple domains. And it failed to tackle the core problem - our relationship with the wild.

If we waved a magic wand and restored half our land to wildness, it wouldn’t be long before it was once again cut, burnt, dug up and destroyed. Species would continue to be wiped out. Their evolutionary journeys of hundreds of millions of years ended. For a little bit of fleeting profit.

Whilst thinking about these things I was recommended the book “How to Do Nothing” by Jenny Odell. It was exactly what I needed. Her soft but forceful anger and rebelliousness spoke to this desire to reshape our relationship with the world around us. To resist the creeping theft of our spirit.

It made me ponder that one opposite of wild is tame. A wolf to a dog. And question who this benefits. A dog becomes controlled and dependent on people. What if we thought about our attention in a similar way. Who controls our attention? Who profits? How can we bring this attention back to the world around us?

In many ways it was too radical for me, it was nice to find my edges.

Recently I was invited to share a book recommendation on rewilding by for her Reeding Room and a session we’re doing together (at the end of October - come and join us!).

I chose this book. That might seem a stretch... it will certainly not appear in an AI list of rewilding book recommendations. It is more ostensibly about our relationship with social media, and how our attention has become commodified.

But there is one simple way to turn this into a rewilding book. When reading it, hold this question in mind “What would it mean for you, your family, your neighbourhood, to become wilder?“

In fact, this framing can be surprisingly effective in many contexts. With the increasing incursion of AI into our lives, it becomes increasingly relevant. Our human-ness, our inherent wildness, becomes a way to find ourselves.

My idea is to use a small piece of land, and build a relationship to it. Seeing how it changes, how it is part of a wider system.

It’s symbolism, but also practical. It can be too big to engage in landscape level eco-system restoration. It can be too much to care for all the species being wiped out.

But we can start with a small piece of land, and simply pay it attention.

I recently received this video recommendation for Wild Mosaic. It was made by Simon Dures who is a conservation biologist who shares positive stories of conservation in action. Simon has a lot of great videos on his youtube channel; He is also on LinkedIn and Instagram

It’s always fascinating for me to see how others frame what I do. Often far more succinctly than me!

Here Simon points out that subscribing is similar to choosing to make yourself a coffee a couple of times instead of buying them in a café.

It’s a simple analogy, and potentially persuasive - what do you think?

Here are three options. Vote for your favourite and I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Here is my current logo (a couple of variations):

I’m aiming to freshen it up, add a little colour and help it stand out more. I will use the circle as a standalone element, but probably start to use it with the text a little more.

Here are the new options:

Vote here!

Their start-up has the same spark → the overwhelming urge to tackle biodiversity loss.

I touch on the scale of this problem in our conversation:

Rob and his brother take a different route to Wild Mosaic, using limited edition clothing to spark interest, awareness and funds to protect endangered species: nolongerknown.com

I find it fascinating that within this still nascent niche of biodiversity business there are so many different expressions.

I love listening to Rob and his brother talk about building their business as they show the complexity of getting a start-up going. It contrasts with the typical depiction of entrepreneurship, which is glossed into inspiring talks, or impressive slides showing clear paths to success. The reality is much more prosaic. Doubt, endless small decisions, a to-do list that grows exponentially, and a lot of admin!

It is something that I’m also trying to show. The process of building a business like this. The process of trying to become wilder myself. Of trying to reach more people.

One of the challenges in building a business is the mistakes. The ones you have made. The ones you will make. The ones you might be in the process of making.

It becomes a way of learning. Not to avoid the mistakes, but how do you tolerate these failures. And how visible they are. Or how visible you perceive them to be. The messiness of wilder space provides me with a helpful comparison.

I’m constantly reminded that one of the challenges I have is with self-confidence. How do I find the courage - or arrogance - to really push myself to reach more people. To become a prominent voice in rewilding, genuinely offering something new. To make a significant difference to biodiversity loss.

My route here is to build for others what I feel I need. There are so many people working to tackle biodiversity loss, or trying to reconnect themselves and others to wildness. To a more fulfilling sense of themselves in the world.

My focus is on how do I build this for them, to be part of a movement to create a wilder world.

You can see the full podcast below. Would love to know what you think!

And often surprised by how little I know. Or how much of what I know I didn't fully understand.

This brings me a lot of joy. Once I overcome the pang of embarrassment. There is still so much more to learn and discover.

A couple of weeks ago I was told that tonight would be a full moon. But last week I noticed the moon was half full. So I thought what I was told must be wrong. Two halves make a whole, and so the full moon must be two weeks away from the half moon.

Then I thought about it again and realised I had never considered how quickly the moon moves though its phases. I regularly enjoy seeing the moon in the sky. But not often enough to notice the speed of its changes.

45 years of noticing but not paying attention.

I googled 'half moon' and discovered that it's not even a phase (despite it being the name of many pubs – apparently pub names are not a reliable indicator of truth). When the moon appears half full, it's described as a quarter.

The phases all capture this sense of motion. From the waxing to the waning. From the 1st quarter (my 'half moon') to the last quarter.

There's even a 'gibbous' involved. Which after half an hour of research I discovered has no shared etymology with gibbons. Sometimes knowledge can be disappointing.

I've wandered off topic.

I meant to write about the summer solstice being wrong.

Astronomically the summer solstice is the start of summer. Which feels wrong. Shouldn't it be the peak of summer?

It’s not because it takes time for the heat of the sun to warm the earth. In the same way the hottest part of each day is usually a few hours after midday.

I often fail to account for lag. Lag between the sun and the warmth. Lag between the work and the result. Lag between the knowledge and the understanding.

This lag is a sort of off-centred-ness. Maybe it describes feeling out of kilter as a fundamental state of being alive. Always a little unbalanced. By the speed of the moon and the time it takes for heat to become warmth. Always in motion, always coming back round again.

Anyway...

This is what I wanted to write about, this natural imbalance, the two-sided out-of-kilter-ness that seems captured by the solstice.

I went for a walk near where I live. Around the Wanstead flats in east London. In many ways it perfectly captures this sense of duality, and imbalance and natural-ness.

For a long time I found the Wanstead flats disappointing.

Technically it’s part of Epping Forest. But it’s mostly a tree-less expanse of grassiness. Surrounded by busy roads. Dominated by playing fields in its centre.

It felt pretty tame.

But it has edges that grow on you.

It contains an expanse of sky. The weather is part of its landscape. Clouds floating, speeding or threatening. The wind inescapable. The sun always dramatic when at the edge, on the horizon.

This ability to see far across it can be misleading. I remember going for a run one morning and seeing an Alsatian crouched ready to pounce. As I tentatively came closer, it turned into a strange creature from a dream I’d had that night, and then a person relaxing on the ground, and then finally resolved itself into a log. Looking into the distance was a way to see into myself.

It is surprisingly wild, in multiple senses of the word.

Like many green areas in urban settings, it is a place where people on the edge go. People that have little, looking for peace and shelter. People with addiction, looking for their own space. People who are engaged in illicit activity taking advantage of the duality of seclusion and ability to see people approaching from far away.

It is the home of many rare spiders and other invertebrates. The scrubland and grassland were grazed by cattle for many years and so have become home to many animals that look for these habitats. Or perhaps this has become a last island in between the concrete and more classical woodland of the rest of Epping Forest.

The paths, if you look closely, are dotted with little holes of mining bees and wasps. You can regularly see green woodpeckers flying fast, straight and bright. They enjoy the anthills that are dotted across, in amongst the shrubs.

One of the plants that is common here is ragwort.

A dangerous and toxic weed. And an incredible source of life. It is treated with caution and legislated against because of history. When hay fields were common it was a problem. It is poisonous to livestock. When living they know not to eat it. But if cut and mixed in with hay they eat it and are poisoned. So it used to be removed aggressively. It often still is in places that long ago stopped making hay.

In the flats it is largely left alone, and you can see it covered in the yellow and black caterpillars of the cinnabar moth.

Skylarks live here.

They are rare in London and declining across Britain. I’ve never seen one sing. Just seen them flying, or heard them singing, as if these where two separate entities. To me they sound like there are cheerful robots hiding in clouds. Their song reminds me of R2D2. A magic blend of bird and science fiction.

They have an area roped off. Which is a fascinating barrier. Presumably the birds – if they notice it at all – are not required to stay within. And the dogs – that threaten them by disturbing their nests – can easily go under. Yet, it works. Roping off part of the sky.

Inconsequential barriers can have meaning. We play in this space a lot. Draw up these strange dividing lines: nature <-> human; wild <-> civilization; public <-> private; us <-> them.

We are also often deceived into thinking real barriers are more consequential than they are. Our skin is permeable. We contain our own ecosystem of organisms and life. We breathe and share breath without thinking.

I was walking and thinking about these contrasts. How I often seem to find and be stuck in paradoxes. Constantly feeling a little unbalanced and out of kilter.

Then I realised that the opposite is more true. I like to unbalance things. Find and dwell in the paradoxes. Bring them to light and play with them.

My business is built on them. I make it possible for you to rewild, at a distance. Connect people more to wildlife, remotely. Aiming to create a bridge between real wildness in Wales and felt wildness where you are. You can ‘own’ a tile, but in an abstract sense.

Rewilding itself is a way of playing and exploring edges. It challenges what we mean by nature, of past and future, our relationship with land.

We ‘rewild’ – an action we take… to be able to step away and let natural processes take over. We RE-wild. Acknowledging its past state. But also aware that this isn’t an act of time travel, it is more an act of creation and discovery. Inspired by what was, what still remains and what could be.

As I was thinking these things a swift swept down and past me before shooting back up into the sky. I feel they must have inspired the rocket scientists that first imagined using gravitational force to slingshot spacecraft faster, by traveling further. It’s often better not to travel in straight lines.

Not sure how to end this rambling. Except that this is probably more of a beginning than an end. It is after all only the start of summer.

www.wildmosaic.eco

People and wildness are core to what I’m building. Creating a wilder world also means bringing people back into wildness. But the two together can clash.

If you’ve been following me for a little while you’ll know that I’m fascinated by a dead oak. This particular oak was struck by lightning in a storm, and split in half. On a steep slope, the top half fell, inverted, and came to rest. Stable and upside down.

I’ve been watching with wonder as this top half stands, like the earth has fallen away to reveal the root system of a giant.

But this has now been cut down and tidied away.

The Wildlife Trust owns the land (they are rewilding 50 hectares of which the Wild Mosaic area is a part). They are starting to bring more people on to the site to learn about rewilding and see the progress. This is great and an important way to engage the local community. But it has meant that risks have to be managed. In short, the fallen oak had to go.

One of the questions I’m asked the most with my business is if it’s possible to visit the site. But I have always been resistant to this, and this fallen oak helps explain why.

My model is to engage people with real land, remotely. The aim is to build connection to wildness through videos, audio and reporting the changes. This way a 3 acre project can support 1,000 people. Far more than could be supported with people directly accessing the land.

I’ve always been taken by the idea of self-willed land. Land that is left to find its own way without human intervention. Recognising there has been enough human interference already.

In the UK I don’t think that’s practical. Our land is never far enough from human habitation to ever become truly separate from us. And if you’re looking to engage people in the process of rewilding, there is more benefit to intervene to speed up natural processes. We are impatient.

Indeed, the UK is in many ways an ideal place to explore what wildness could mean in a modern world. We have led the way in biodiversity loss and now have a land that has been almost fully cut up or tamed. We are in urgent need of restoration and reintegration with the rest of the wilder living world. Despite - or maybe through - the impossibility of being truly remote from others.

Nevertheless, my preference is to push towards less intervention than more.

The challenge for me and Wild Mosaic how to make this remoteness a way to grow new shoots. How to make it possible for my rewilders to be able to engage with the rest of the living world where they are. So their tile in the wild mosaic becomes an inspiration for more wildness wherever a rewilder is based. I imagine this as a propagation of rewilding. Emerging out of each three acre project.

This is something that I still need to think through and develop.

I’m lucky that at the moment many of my rewilders already are engaging with wildness where they are. And this has become a two-way propagation, with them feeding me with new ideas and possibilities. As well as bringing life to this wild mosaic. Without the need to complete risk assessments 🌱

A look at the dead oak in its former glory