Return of the Wilderness to the UK?

[bigpaul]

it wont be trees to begin with, it'll be weeds, wild plants, long grass, uncultivated crops, then scrub, saplings and the like, trees would come last. Dartmoor and Exmoor only look like they do because they are managed, both by ponies, sheep and cattle, but also by man by "swailing".

[Devonian]

(10 April 2014, 16:17)SlyUrbanFox Wrote: 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.

Exactly!!

All this talk of "Wilderness" is just pie in the sky and has no real relevance to the UK given our environment; climate; geology; flora and fauna.

[Lightspeed]

Agreed SUF and Dev

Countryside will be overgrown if not tended in 3 to 5 years, but reverting to wilderness will take a lot longer. Long enough for trees to grow at the very least.

During WW2, Tyneham on the Dorset coast was evacuated and left to rot in a military training area. Today the village is still entirely recognisable. That's 70 years of neglect.

[NorthernRaider]

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

True wilderness would probably take centuries but being completely overgrown and inpenetratable in the SW could occur in under 100 years as seen by the Lost Gardens of Heligan, (they found a victorian ornamental garden in Heligan including lakes, ponds, walkways, greenhouses etc completely overgrown about 15 years ago and it took five years hard graft to restore it).

An old National parks report suggested it would take around 600 years for the moors to be reclaimed by trees. (Some moors are artificial and were originally heavily wooded)

[bigpaul]

ALL of Britain at one time was heavily wooded, almost coast to coast, it started being chopped down when man changed from hunter gatherers and started farming, they needed land for their crops and livestock, even Dartmoor was heavily wooded once before the coming of man. without man nature will reverse the process.

[NorthernRaider]

I think I read some place that it was the Tuders who relly buggered up the environment cos they chopped down so many trees to build Henrys Navy and expand places like London etc.

[bigpaul]

not just for the navy, a lot of timber from then until more recently were used as pit props for the coal industry.

[Rubismardi]

A good insight into Nature taking back the land is Alan Wiseman's book/audiobook, "The World Without Us".
In it he speculates what would happen to the Earth if one day Humans were just gone. No Wars, Plague or Natural Disasters, just disappeared.
He speculates about Cities decaying and which bits would survive the longest. How insects, fungi and animals would take over houses and destroy them bit by bit.

It's quite a good read/listen, I believe that it is available on torrent sites.

[bigpaul]

try this one: "After London or wild England" by Richard Jefferies, very, VERY descriptive.

[Binnie]

parts of the UK are wilderness already, the far northwest of scotland for one, almost uninhabited and unmolested.

it would happen within 18months uk wide i reckon, 2 summers, look at what happens to parks it the council wait an extra week to cut the grass!!