Return of the Wilderness to the UK?

[Scythe13]

Right, this is another thought process that's being kicked off by the recent disagreements, agreements, and the alike.

We're most in union, that the UK is pretty much 1 big field. That's simple enough to understand.

The question is, with all the fields not being kept quite as tidy. Clearly Maa-Nature will start to 'reclaim' land.

How long do you think it will be, post collapse, until you can honestly say that the UK countryside is a good step towards being a 'wilderness' again?

This is a fun question, because it depends on the speed plants grow at, the varieties of plants, the suitability of the soil, surrounding waterways, the speed of spread of plants, and things like that. Plus, it depends on the number of people around and how well they look after and sustain the fields around them.

Couple this with the idea of wilderness survival, if the reclaiming happens quickly enough, then once the stored tins have vanished, bushcraft skills may well be more applicable to daily life, e.g. foraging, and the alike.

Weird hu?

So, back to the original question. How long, after the collapse, until the fields are reclaimed as wilderness?

Please do not include the time taken for the plants to recover from human (think refugee's) damage. Think...field in the middle of nowhere, beside a woodland area.

Also, how long until more animals start to populate the reclaimed land?

[bigpaul]

not long, with no one to manage them and I'm assuming no farm animals to eat anything? some people say 3-5 years, I think more like 2-3 years, lets be generous and say 3 years...yep, that's sounds about right.

[Midnitemo]

Land runs wild very quickly if not managed....5 to 10 years perhaps...although depending on what the event was that caused the land to be let go I forsee the tree's being severly depleted for fuel.

[bigpaul]

as far as animals go, again not long, they will spread out to take advantage of the available territory.

[Sunna]

post collapse , heres the biggie and with no mass die off we will need every inch of land for carb rich food like spuds ,sweeds ect.
mass die off 500 years , some still think that it will be like some old 40/50s robin hood movie where you can escape into the woods , full of game and fresh water and live under the branches of a tree.

[NorthernRaider]

I guessitmate the reclaiming of the land by nature will probably be very prominent between three and five years, and it will be detectable spreading out first and fastest in the more lush and wet SW & Wales followed by the SE and Midlands. its already been documented even up around this area that when a new roundabout or by pass road goes in and the old single land road is closed off and abandoned the old road surface will see ground cover plants meeting in the middle often within 2 years.

In more lush areas such as the SW the local authorities in some areas have to prune hedgerows back every other year and the same for some trees growing over single land roads.

Ten years should see many roads and paths completely vanish, many canals and small slow moving streams disappear under duckweed within 5 years, add falling trees, blocked drains causing land slips etc who knows how fast the reclaiming will take.

It WILL drive survivors in time back onto using navigable rivers and old rail lines as the new highways.

[bigpaul]

When we left Devon to move to Glastonbury, a certain woodland we know was clear and easily entered, when we came back 10 years later, that same wood was overgrown and impossible to enter without chopping down some of those trees. now I have no idea WHEN in that 10 years this occurred but at least that gives us some kind of timescale, its certainly no more than 10, possibly 5, could even have been 3 years, but without any intervention by humans it is inevitable, mother nature always reclaims what is hers. and that also includes roads, houses and other structures built by man.

[Devonian]

Ahhh... but will any of this actually mean that the British Countryside becomes a "Wilderness", or is it just unmanaged land??

To me for it to be a Wilderness it needs to be a large expanse of uninhabited, wild, hostile terrain, maybe places like Dartmoor/Exmoor/Peak District/Brecon Beacons/Black Mountains/Snowdonia etc etc could become Wilderness but probably not the Norfolk Broads or the whole of central England?????

If you look back in history, there is no recent evidence of the UK being a Wilderness, it certainly wasn't during Tudor or medieval Times, or any other period of history that I am aware of, so why would it happen after a future event??

And as Mo say's there is a good chance large numbers of trees will simply disappear and be used for fuel (and other things), and as for wildlife, deer for example could potentially be hunted to extinction??

[SlyUrbanFox]

If you want to know what it would be like without us around google Chernobyl or Fukushima exclusion zone. Even 28 years on it doesn't look anything like a true wilderness.

Britain was covered in forest but most of that was gone hundreds if not a thousand years ago. Forestry will probably need more land than agriculture post SHTF as trees take so much longer to mature than crops do.

[Scythe13]

Some really good answers here everyone. Keep them coming.