Britain is a vocal supporter of the global bid to return land to nature, but its record is dismal. Can it make up lost ground in time?
More than 5 million tonnes of coal were hewn from land at West Chevington in Northumberland in the 1980s. Lorries, cranes and bulldozers crisscrossed the vast opencast mine that had been created there, flinging clouds of coal dust into the air and brutalising the landscape to provide fuel for the nation’s power stations and factories.
Today, the 327-hectare (808-acre) site faces a remarkable transformation. It is to become the focus of a major rewilding programme that will allow the land to return to a mix of scrub and wood and in the process provide homes for animals that could range from water voles to marsh harriers, and from curlews to harvest mice.
