Of bears and beavers

And so the Scottish government have produced their blueprint for independence. 

Amidst the all the clamour from scrutineers and nit-pickers, a refreshing piece by Simon Jenkins in the Guardian today makes the point that the goal of independence isn’t to get rich, it’s to become independent of the domineering neighbour, in the same way that some 30 other countries have done in the last 50 years.

There is an interesting, and only slightly tenuous, parallel with the growing appetite for re-wilding[1] the countryside which has finally reached even Britain. This is not so much to do with re-introducing bears and beavers as giving a place more freedom to achieve a natural equilibrium, with all the joyful diversity that results, instead of imposing an alien and destructive mono-culture. That freedom, of course, comes with uncertainty about what will evolve, but that is the fundamental point - the possibility of change. A liberated process, rather than a prescribed outcome. No wonder the paternalistic & backwards-looking elite are worried.

In Scotland, where currently more than half the land is owned by fewer than 500 people, few of whom live there (ref), and where barren deserts for shooting grouse & deer, the so-called sporting estates, amount to 5.2 million acres (ref), the time for political and ecological re-wilding is long overdue. (Apologies for repeating the stat about half the land owned by fewer than 500 people twice in a row - but it does beggar belief !)

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[1] For more about rewilding, read George Monbiot’s slightly rambling but otherwise excellent Feral, and look at the fine work of Trees For Life