Rewilding London

Rewinding is a great idea but first things first we need to make our surroundings clean and green and crime free fine people for unkept gardens and should b zero tolerance for criminals they should b caught with the help of records with their photos from police and unemployment offices and punished and fined and by helping with community projects like keeping the footpaths weed free criminals r not punished enough for ruining peoples lifes

If there are any investigative journalists reading, it might be worth looking into what is going on at Warren Farm in Hanwell, with a focus on who (the directors of Southall FC) may benefit from the proposed developments on this site and whether there are conflicts of interest with local politicians. The recent consultation indicated that people did not want the site developed, but the politicians seem to be going ahead regardless.

To help people connect with animals and nature the Newham city farm needs to be restored. Courses and training opportunities can be run there to make people aware of their natural environment and what we can all do to protect and preserve it.

The lack of green spaces in inner city areas such as Tower Hamlets, Newham or Hackney must take a heavy toll on the mental health of local council housing estates especially. London already has a lot of parks which the Victorians built so rewilding should not be that expensive. Building on green belt is a very bad idea: it will lead to more urban sprawl and pollution.

As I have already said. The Mayor is not interested in re-wilding anything. If he was why are the councils building so many tower blocks and houses all over the place. The answer is. Wilding London doesn’t pay. Being in the pockets of the developers does.
Every vacant piece of land is being built on. An example of this is right in front of me on Highgate road ,Camden This could be left as an open space ,a small park for the Green Wood centre. BUT NO. Camden is going to build a monstrous 8 storey block of flats having had no consultation with the local residents They have already torn out all the vegetation.This block will stop light and sunshine coming into everyone’s homes. According to the Camden planners residents “ do not have right to see the sky or have direct sunshine” let alone a green space.

Do less by NOT weeding unnecessarily. After all, weeds are simply flowers and plants growing in what is perceived to be the wrong place. Bromley Council, in particular, should STOP shaving their grass verges; this is totally unnecessary and should ONLY be done where the grass verge is known to be a danger to drivers with their view being compromised. This means, therefore, that NOT ALL grass verges need shaving frequently and neighbourhoods should appreciate the wildlife that this would encourage such as butterflies and bees. Without these pollinators, we would lose a lot of our food! That is a fact!

I think it's really important that the taskforce looks not only at things to DO, but also at things to STOP DOING. Whenever you ask people for ideas, they tend to come up with things to add, new things to do. But a lot of rewilding is about getting out of nature's way, reducing our impact on it and doing less harm. For example: stop mowing grass, stop removing mature trees, stop paving over gardens and other green spaces, stop use of pesticides (in private gardens, public parks, roadside verges, privately managed green spaces on estates etc), stop light pollution. There are some trees and shrubs that spring up freely in city spaces - buddleia, elder, sycamore - and they're usually treated as 'weeds' and removed; can we stop automatically removing them and just let them grow in some places? Please make sure you're looking at ideas like this which are about doing LESS, as well as all the ways we can do more.

Rewilding London does not require token "projects" that look good for marketing departments. Among London's LA, over HALF have no employed ecologist, despite happily signing "biodiversity emergency" pledges - which means they have no clue on how to deliver them. Every single borough needs a permanent ecology team on staff, able to oversee/comment on all of the actions that have an impact on the environment: planning, street management, trees, lighting, parks, energy... Ecology needs to be at the forefront of decisions, rather than a tickbox at the end of a form and this requires the skills of experts.
This is the only way to deliver large-scale rewilding in London, across boroughs, with durable and successful results.

Many of the institutions and projects focused on rewilding come from the angle of reverting nature to how it was before humans. But in the UK the environment is so brutally degraded that any effort made to build/maintain/restore natural habitats will be time well spent. It doesn't have to be reintroducing aurochs or wolves, just not mowing every inch of grass will create huge benefits for insects and birds. Restoring biodiversity and reducing emissions should really be the main priority for any council, authority, or government because of how interconnected human health and wellbeing is with the natural world.

We are part of a wider community whose members include more than just humans. The sooner people act like it, the better for everyone, humans included. So yes, absolutely we need to rewild London. We could start with the South Circular. Seriously. It shouldn't only be already leafy middle class neighbourhoods that derive the benefit. Also, the GLA is making money available for tree planting, but they should also protect existing woodland from developers. For example Gorne Wood in SE London is the nearest intact piece of ancient woodland to the City of London, but unless they can raise the money to buy it by the end of the year, some profiteering developer is going to carve it up. The Mayor should support saving spaces like that as much as planting new trees, which often need care to become established. Also - to second an earlier commenter - absolutely plastic grass should be banned! It's total madness that fossil fuels are being dug up, used to manufacture acres of the stuff, ship it around the globe only for people to use it to smother real plants, killing them, killing the soil, poisoning the water, killing the insects, killing the birds that eat the insects, killing the flowers and trees that the insects pollinate, and ramming one more nail into our collective coffin by ramping up the unfolding climate catastrophe.

The more we plant the more we will help the environment, and improve air quality. I understand trees in flood risk area will help slow flow of water into rivers. We should also do more planting by roadside and along rail tracks to counteract air and noise pollution.

I would like to see householders and landlords encouraged to reverse the covering of both front and rear gardens with flagstones, concrete and artificial lawn. We can all help by creating gaps in our fences for the feral wildlife such as foxes and hedgehogs. Allow alleyways to go reasonably wild but managed. Ask the keen gardeners to create a wild area in their plots.

Is there any chance of encouraging Peregrine falcons to occupy high buildings to deter the flocks of feral pigeons?!
Consideration is needed to create safe habitat for prey animals like voles, mice and hedgehogs. Garden fences should have spaces for wildlife to wriggle under.
Around where we are in Croydon the occasional deer gets lost and trapped in a small park. They use roads and railway track at night to explore new pastures but high fences are often counterproductive.
Too many private front gardens are paved over causing local flooding and reducing underground water levels.

yes we should rewild london, we should do it because it connects people with nature, better for mental health, improved health, more climate secure, connects people to community, encourages growing with food issue

challenges:

pests- things that attract positive animals also attract pests and provides cover for them, london is a dense city and a rewild patch that links bin stores and green spaces will create issues if efforts arent made

planning- changing planning policy to protect wild areas will create incentive to pre-emptively destroy them

lack of knowledge/access to seeds: what sort of rewilding is useful for my area, what is low maintence, lack of information and access to appropriate plants or seeds.

where should rewilding take place? everywhere but create strands of organising along themes, this is how to encouraging front/rear gardens, public spaces, council estates, riverside etc. create a network of projects.

costs/efforts of maintence, rewilding isn't a shortcut, in a dense area like london where there is competing demands and activities - for example in a heatwave/drought a beautifully rewilded area could well become a fire hazard, what happens then?

attittudes: on my council estate the staff mow twice a year and cut everything back, it looks horrible but its cheap and efficient and people complain if grass isnt short- rwilding takes effort and planning and thought and the staff involved don't have any authority or time to have agency to do this and its hard to communicate up the chain of command to decision makers.

the only one that will work is community led bottom up rewilding, councils don't have anywhere close to budget to maintain projects long term, and if a large complex project is dropped on an area without local community members to maintain it it wont last

my estate has a green group which encourages residents to take on empty green spaces, it has had success in creating small rewilded spaces as part of that and is keen to grow

It is important not to be limited in ambition for fear of the outcomes or impact of other land uses. Acceptance of nature is not a 'nice to have', it is essential for a properly sustainable society. This includes the reintroduction of predators, including raptors and mammals such pine martens, to ensure a health food chain, and accept that visible death and hunting are part of this. Beyond the urban boundary it will also include the introduction of animals such as beavers, which are great for flood control downriver but do cause small-scale local flooding.

It also includes accepting that the south-east of England's native biome is a scrubland wood-pasture, and patches of brambles and 'weeds' is a sign of health, and not mismanagement.