Feraculture, the UK and Rewilding

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#1

So I’ve been thinking a lot about how to apply this concept of the Feralculture model into the UK and it’s been harder than I initially thought. The UK has some difficult and unique problems compared to North America and in some regards to the rest of Europe which make creating Feralcultures a hard prospect:

  1. The UK is one of the most domesticated countries on Earth. There is no wilderness or even partial wilderness. Our National Parks are really upland sheep preservations with totally stripped mountainsides and bare hills. Google pics of the Lake District or Brecon Beacons. The land is owned by a aristocratic/elite small group of people who have economic interests in game shooting and timber extraction making access to biodiverse lands impossible.

  2. Planning laws. If you were fortunate enough to find some cheap land or woodland for sale you are still extremely limited in your options for what to do with it. Most cheap land is sold without planning permission and you are unlikely to be granted it. Woodland sales come with laws and restrictions about building structures, how many nights a year the owner can sleep in the woods and the legal maintainence of public footpaths. There are centuries old footpaths and trails which the public is allowed permenant access to for walking meaning your land is not truly your own and the landowner has the responsibility to maintain and keep safe all footpaths.

  3. Hunting laws. It is illegal to hunt on public land. It is illegal to trap, snare or use a bow to hunt an animal. In general it’s illegal to hunt deer without a stalking license and you must be on private property to do so - hence the practice of big landowners turning the uplands into giant hunting estates. Fishing also generally needs a permit and people often own the fishing rights to stretches of water. The coast is equally problematic - you cannot buy the beach, all land between high and low tide mark belongs to the Crown. Foraging there is possible but you must contend with the general public.

  4. Domesticated culture. The UK is one of the least tolerant of large wildlife in Europe. While our counterparts in Germany, Italy, France etc have all had wolf, lynx, beaver, bison, boar introductions - the UK lags behind and remains terrified of introducing any new animals. Landowners don’t want any threats to their shooting businesses and gamekeepers routinely poison and shoot rare and endangered birds of prey as well as resisting any attempts to introduce new species.

All this leads me to believe that the UK needs its own strategy if Feralculture is to be a real project. Personally I’m willing to start thinking strategically and making connections with projects and people who would be sympathetic. The Rewilding movement was kicked off here by George Monbiot with his book Feral (great book if anyone hasn’t read, amazing stuff). There is a rewilding movement happening in parts of the country with reclaimed land in Ennerdale Valley, Cambrian mountains, Scottish Highlands, Cambridgeshire Fens etc. I think it would be worth making alliances and promoting a human-land rewilding collaboration.

Anyone any thoughts?

#2

My first thought is escape.

Aside from that, your only option is to fight. It seems like asking for forgiveness instead of permission will be the way to go though. Study up on law and legalese, live as a free human, fight the harassment in court, win your cases, and set precedent. All of the laws “protecting” the land are just magic words written on paper. If you want freedom in your home country, you’ll need to say the right words to th right person at the right time to negate those laws.

Will the church exemption stuff work there?

Another idea I had was to call the nodes properties movies sets and call the infrastructure “props”. No permits needed for props and a few people onsite at all times for security and night shoots should be reasonable enough to bypass camping laws.

#3

It’s only real if it’s fully expressed in the UK? I thought only Americans denied the existence of anything outside the national border. I’m mostly joking, but nobody claims that everything will look the same in all jurisdictions. Quite the opposite, in fact. We recognize the systemic limitations. Due to the internal logic of domestication culture, it seems more likely that the places rewilding is currently most possible will become more restricted than restricted places will become more free–barring significant sociopolitical change.

Unless some pasty 270-year old dude born in Italy and semi-supported by France who doesn’t even speak Gaelic shows up on a beach in Scotland then cobbles together a scrappy army to invade England, it’s going to take a lot of work by people on the ground there now.

It seems like building alliances with people in the places most on the fringe of what James C. Scott refers to as legibility (also legibility), who are at least near semi-wild spaces, even if they don’t have legal access, is the best way to get from here to somewhere better.

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#4

My poor wording wasn’t intended to upset! The rewilding movement is beginning the take hold here, lynx are due to approved for a trial release, beaver and boar are making a comeback as well as a variety of wetlands, salt marshes, chalk streams and forests. My plan is try and collaborate with these groups as much as possible and look for openings and possibilities to acquire land. I guess I’ll update the forums here if and when anything comes out of this.

#5

Ha! I was just playing. I posted this thread in the Facebook group. There are a few people from the UK in there. Hopefully someone will jump over here and participate.

#6

I appreciate that, I don’t have FB so maybe others will want to chat here :slight_smile:

#7

As I said before - I agree with the severe difficulties of forming nodes in the UK. And with living in what passes for the wilderness here - usually it will be too close to civilisation to get away with anything illegal (i.e. hunting, guns, bows). As for Ernesto’s fighting talk - I was caught carrying a bow and arrows and charged with weapon offences. If I had claimed some inalienable right to carry weapons I would have got 4 years. Since I pleaded ignorance and forgiveness I got away with it. As nice as it sounds in theory to say ‘I am a free man’ it doesn’t really work when everyone else is 100% behind civilisation. Laws are magic words backed up with force. The people who try to use the ‘freemen on the land’ defence as it’s called here always lose in court. No one has ever won by it. Someone even tried to contest a parking ticket with a duel using old laws. Of course it didn’t work. Your original thought of escape is probably better!

As far as I can see it there are few places that are far enough away to avoid civilisation and the law - uninhabited islands, coasts and maybe the Scottish mountains. As I’ve said before on here - I think the only way you can do this is sea nomadism with foraging or guerilla gardening.

Travel:
Kayaks or currachs are both low tech skin-on-frame sea vessels. Gaels have built skin-on-frame boats forever - they win most Irish sail races. And they’re still being built, you can learn in Ireland or figure it out from online videos. Or go to a kayak workshop next time that cool Seawolf Kayaks guy is in Europe. If travelling all the way around Scotland you can cut back through to the Atlantic from the North Sea via the Forth-and-Clyde Canal. I really don’t see the point in going down through England or Wales - the sea coast is not remote enough in most places and there are not enough islands. It would have to be the Western Isles and mostly the West Coast of Scotland. Maybe trips to the Orkneys and Shetland, but I don’t think it would be worth it since all of the land there is claimed and seems to be occupied.

Animal food:
Sea fishing is legal. Fresh water fishing usually requires a permit. Killing sea mammals is illegal I think, but if you’re on an uninhabited island then just get rid of the evidence. Mussels etc are everywhere. When I was on Lewis the creels (lobster pots) were always full. There are feral sheep populations on some uninhabited islands. You can leave some more on other islands and come back to catch them later.

Vegetable food:
Plenty grows on coasts, easy enough to forage. Can plant some stuff on untended land and islands and come back later.

Living:
Well it looks like it’s going to have to be some kind of tents or temporary built shelters. There are some abandoned houses on uninhabited isles. Not ideal for former civilised folk but lets be honest most of the existing HGs or herders in the north live in tents.

But last time I said all of this no one was happy with this as a solution - they didn’t like this style of nomadism. I just can’t see us copying the Node One way of life without buying multi-million £ estates. So I have thought of a solution since this started and this is all I can come up with with the restrictions we have in the UK - leave the civilised parts and take to the seas. For me the biggest problem would be that climate change seems to be making storms worse…but maybe profitable as wreckers. Also fuck midges.

All said, I am actually in Estonia so wouldn’t be implementing any of this any time soon.

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#8

I’m thinking that there is another way to begin the process of node creation - there is a real movement to reclaim and rewild large tracts of land in Wales and Scotland, for instance the guys rewilding the Cambrians in Wales are into their A-primitivsm and rewilding humans. Their plan is to create a wild enough space for people to experiment with rewilding. If we in the UK push for permaculture spaces in amongst rewilded lands then we have the chance to create spaces for living outside the polis. I do like the kayaking idea though, I’d be up for a trip across the Scottish islands :slight_smile:

#9

Good to hear it! I’ve been out of the UK for about 17 months now so not kept up with what’s happening other than Brexit. Although I did see a lot of stuff on the Rewilding Scotland page about lynx coming back. It would be great if there was space for this to do legally, but I guess those are the few people doing it. But it’s a start! One way round the hunting problems would be just to graze animals on owned land - I know it’s not HG but it’s a way to get around the main difficulties. Renting grazing land is also cheap (http://www.countrylife.co.uk/property/need-to-know-grazing-licences-9050). I’m not 100% on this but temporary buildings are allowed on private land, otherwise you’d have to get permission for a garden shed. Basically as long as it doesn’t have a foundation I think you’re ok legally. Maybe not ideal, but you can still make a decent living space from it using local materials. Or if you’re happy with camping then you can just use commons (https://www.gov.uk/guidance/managing-common-land) and if you look at the enforcement rights against people using commons…you basically win, it seems like they have to talk to you first, try to bargain with you, serve you a notice and if you ignore all of this then they can finally ask a court to do something about it. Seems like you can pretty much get away with this if you want.

A friend from university’s family are one of those posh people who are the problem (Earl of Elgin and Kincardine, they have Robert the Bruce’s sword in their safe). They have huge holdings that they just keep as shooting estates and land to claim EU subsidies from. My old roommate’s family own like 1% of Lewis (3rd biggest island after mainland Britain and Ireland), but they’re actually pretty good. The old man was wanting to open up his 30 person lodge for free all year round. They are ruthless against poachers though.

Addendum to the previous post: I guess it could be possible to build ‘temporary’ shelter on uninhabited islands since no one is there to stop you. Transporting some wood over for frames as most islands don’t have much in the way of trees. Some clay, sand and reeds/hay/whatever binder to make wattle & daub. Though there would have to be a bit of experimenting and research on how make them storm resistant. Dig some root cellars too.

#10

16 year old living alone in a tipi on Skye