Brighton is home to the UK’s only Green member of parliament and is outwardly a bastion of progressive politics. Wild spaces here are not only the rolling hills of East Sussex or the beachfront but the smaller, often overlooked, green areas within residential neighbourhoods.
These untamed enclaves are full of nature’s drama, but another kind of drama is playing out among residents who feel that rewilding in the city’s backyard has gone too far.
“I’m fully supportive of eco-friendly policies generally but they shouldn’t be used for just manifesting neglect,” says resident Lesley Fallowfield, who recently had to go to A&E after falling over vegetation growing out of the pavement by her house.
Fallowfield, who has lived in her house for 30 years, spent six weeks wearing an orthopaedic boot and crutches and has had enough of weeds among the paving slabs. “I think it looks terrible. It would put me off buying a property here,” she says.
She is not alone in her concerns. The push from local authorities to rewild spaces is causing consternation in villages, towns and cities across the country.
Green patches outside people’s houses are in many places no longer neat and well cut, as the majority of residents expect them to be.
Ivan Lyons, Conservative councillor for Westdene and Hove Park, says that while most people he speaks to are content with unkempt verges, rewilding pavements is going too far. Conservative councillor Anne Meadows, from Patcham and Hollingbury ward, agrees: “It used to be the number two concern for residents, now it’s number one. Number one used to be the rubbish collection.”
The issue of weeds growing between paving slabs started with bans on the weedkiller glyphosate and other herbicides over suspected links to cancer in humans. Their environmental damage, particularly to soil quality, is also well documented.
Foamstream, an eco-friendly foam weedkiller that works by using heat, is currently being looked at as an alternative. Brighton council says it is also trialling mechanical sweepers, weed rippers and strimmers with weed-ripping brushes.
How to get rid of weeds without highly-effective herbicides is a real conundrum – at one point, Bristol council trialled vinegar as an alternative, leading to complaints from residents about the smell.
Leaving grass to grow has the benefit of saving money for councils and reducing carbon emissions from less mowing, but the main ideological reason being put forward is that longer grass creates more space for wildlife within our towns and cities.
Nationally, we have lost 97% of wildflower meadows and the country’s wildlife populations have plummeted by an average of 60% since 1970.
Scientists warn that the biodiversity crisis is as serious as the climate crisis, that these two issues are linked, and that local councils need to respond accordingly. This is why councils all over the UK are starting to draw up rewilding plans.
Long grass provides a home for invertebrates, such as butterflies and moths, which lay eggs on it, and bumblebees, which nest within it.
But many residents in Brighton are unconvinced by these well-documented wildlife benefits. One said the main thing she was finding was dog poo. “I think there is enough wildlife as it is,” said another, adding that the policy had only benefited ticks and rats.
Another row this summer centred around hanging baskets in Salisbury. Some residents were outraged after the city council opted to replace traditional flower displays with those that were better for native wildlife and required less watering.
This clash of values is spreading across UK towns and cities. A councillor from Torridge in Devon said that letting grasses grow to two feet in some areas gave off a “Torridge-doesn’t-care” image, adding that it was “very disrespectful” to have grass that long in the town’s cemetery.
Another councillor, in Lydney, Gloucestershire, said that rewilding was making a mess of the town and was “catastrophic for wildlife”, citing Alan Titchmarsh telling a House of Lords investigation that it was an “ill-considered” trend.
The majority of objectors appear to come from the political right.
Pollsters say that support for a net zero UK by 2050 is expressed among all political voters, yet anti-environmentalism appears to have been identified as a vote-winner. Ideas which were not part of mainstream conversation are being brought in as “wedge issues”.
For example, Tory ministers are looking to water down key climate policies such as the ban on petrol and diesel cars by 2030, phasing out gas boilers by 2035, and low traffic neighbourhoods.
This trend is not confined to the UK. “Rewilding is becoming an important front for political antagonism in Europe,” says Dr Ed Atkins from the University of Bristol, who researches how sustainability policies can be made more inclusive.
It is seen as part of a growing set of challenges from populist anti-green parties across the continent.
Objections to the EU’s nature restoration law were launched by a right-leaning group of MEPs, who raised concerns about farmers losing livelihoods and food security. In France, gilets jaunes protested against fuel taxes, and farmers in the Netherlands fought against attempts to tackle nitrogen pollution through major reductions in livestock.
In each of these cases, the debate centred around how apparently environmental policies were affecting people’s livelihoods.
Policies on rewilding are fundamentally about political, social, cultural and economic concerns.
Atkins says: “I don’t buy that those are just rightwing populist backlashes on climate action. A lot of these episodes are about people saying, ‘we’ve been left behind’, and this is just exacerbating that.”
It is often the negative narrative that is heard the loudest, says Atkins: “In many ways, it’s easier to give that negative narrative that rewilding weeds is messy. It’s disrespectful, and it’s not improving the urban space …What we expect on these spaces is now being challenged. And it’s happening quite quickly.
“People’s responses to that change can take all manner of forms. But in my mind it is important that the voices which explain, inform and illuminate the benefits are loud. This is good. This is good for our environment.”
Atkins believes that these concerns can become culture wars when top-down policy is imposed on people who feel that they don’t have a say. “I would say that there should be greater communication about what rewilding in a city or a town might bring, but also a greater discussion of the forms it could take, and what particular spaces might go through that process.”
Making sure that people have their say has been a key part of the success of the UK’s largest urban rewilding project in Derby, where conservationists have been holding “community conversations” so that locals can talk about what they do and don’ want to see. The 130 hectares of Allestree Park (part of which was previously a golf course) was given the green light to go wild in 2021.
“We knew there would be confusion and conflict,” says Dr Jo Smith, chief executive of Derbyshire Wildlife Trust, who has been leading on the Rewilding Allestree Park project.
Her team set up online consultations before agreeing to move forward with the project.
“We’ve now got monthly events where people can just drop in, and we’ve got staff there who can answer questions, deal with concerns, and just talk to people,” she says.
There was controversy about more cattle and fencing being brought in, with people worried about treading in cow dung and having their dogs chased. Some people were even concerned about the possibility of the reintroduction of apex predators such as wolves because they associate that with the word “rewilding”. Others just wanted the land to go back to being a golf course.
As a result of these conversations the authorities are holding off on plans to bring in more cattle but going ahead with all the things people basically agree on, such as increasing wildflowers in meadows, creating more wetland areas and tree planting.
“There are lots of things that we can start to do proactively that everyone’s pretty much happy with, and that’s where we’ve decided to start,” says Smith.
Generally speaking, there is widespread agreement and consensus, which can be drowned out by a vocal minority who object, she adds.
A consultation of 2,000 people found 89% were supportive of the project, but not everyone can be won over, and so the debate will continue.
Smith says: “We know that it’s almost impossible to get everyone to agree to anything.
“What we need is a big majority that allows us to move forward confidently – we’re in a biodiversity emergency. We have to act quickly”.
