September 2018
The Forest as Ideological Symptom
To speak of England’s forests, rewilding, or landscape management is to enter a terrain already deeply ideological. The idea of a “lost forest”—a pristine, primeval wildwood destroyed by human intervention—seduces us with its simplicity. It offers a myth of original harmony, a state of nature we imagine we can restore if only we erase the traces of history. Yet this narrative obscures deeper contradictions. It allows us to lament the destruction of the past while refusing to confront the entanglement of human and non-human processes that shape the landscape today.
But this is not just about ideas in the abstract. Landscapes are not static objects upon which history has acted, but dynamic, relational systems—worlds that emerge through the ongoing interplay of soils, waters, animals, plants, and humans. The forest is not a “thing” to be restored but a process, a becoming, shaped by centuries of interaction and change. To reforest indiscriminately, or to freeze a landscape’s “character” in place, is to betray the vitality of these relationships. It reduces a living world to a snapshot, a static vision imposed upon a dynamic reality.
Rewilding: The Fantasy of Nature’s Return
Rewilding appears, at first, to transcend this static vision. It offers a seductive promise: let nature take its course, and it will heal itself, returning to its true state. But here we encounter a paradox. The idea of “letting nature return” assumes that there is a natural state waiting to re-emerge, a baseline of harmony from which we have strayed. This ignores the fact that there is no “nature” apart from human activity—no Eden to reclaim. Rewilding, then, is not a return to nature but another form of intervention, another way of managing and commodifying the landscape under the guise of non-intervention.
Consider the Knepp Estate, often celebrated as a model of rewilding. Yes, trees and shrubs return, wildlife flourishes, and the land transforms. But all this happens within the bounds of human ownership, economic systems, and strategic planning. The process is still framed by human decisions, still shaped by the structures of property and profit. The “wild” is not truly wild; it is a carefully curated performance of nature for the Anthropocene.
LCAs: Managing Nostalgia
Landscape Character Assessments (LCAs) seem to take the opposite approach. Where rewilding seeks to undo human influence, LCAs embrace it, classifying landscapes into types and character areas based on their historical and cultural qualities. They aim to preserve the “distinctiveness” of each place, balancing ecological, economic, and social factors. Yet here, too, we encounter a troubling move. By defining landscapes through their character, LCAs freeze them in time, treating them as stable, almost museum-like artefacts rather than living, evolving worlds.
Take, for example, the hedgerow. An LCA might celebrate its role in defining a traditional agricultural landscape or supporting biodiversity. But the hedgerow is not a static feature; it is a process, a site of constant growth, decay, and interaction between human and non-human actors. To preserve it as part of a “landscape character” is to miss its essence as something dynamic and relational. This act of preservation reflects a deeper desire: the longing for a stable, knowable world in the face of ecological and cultural uncertainty.
Living with Contradiction
Ultimately, both rewilding and LCAs are attempts to manage the contradictions of our relationship with the land. Rewilding seeks to erase human history in the name of nature; LCAs seek to fix history in place in the name of culture. Both approaches, in their own ways, deny the messy, dynamic reality of the landscape—a reality that is neither wholly natural nor entirely cultural but always both, always entangled.
The task, then, is not to restore a lost past or preserve an idealised present but to engage with the landscape as it is: a site of tensions and transformations. The land is not a canvas for our designs, nor a static object to be conserved. It is a living world of relationships, where forests grow not as monuments to the past but as openings to the future—a future that is uncertain, contested, and deeply interconnected.
The forest, then, is not the answer. It is a question: how do we live within this evolving world, embracing its contradictions without resorting to fantasies of control or escape? How do we engage with the land not as managers or spectators but as participants in its ongoing becoming? The answers lie not in restoration or preservation but in relationship—learning to live with the landscape as something continually transforming, a world always in process, and always beyond our grasp.