A Welsh charity has bought more than 480 hectares (1,195 acres) in Ceredigion to establish Cymru’s “flagship” rewilding project, helping the country catch up with large-scale nature recovery projects under way elsewhere in the UK.
Tir Natur (Nature’s Land), founded in 2022, announced it had acquired the site at Cwm Doethie in Elenydd, or the Cambrian mountains, after a fundraising drive launched last year raised 50% of the £2.2m purchase price. A philanthropic bridging loan enabled the sale.
Fundraising efforts to begin early restoration work and community activities on the rewilding site – Wales’s largest – are ongoing.
The naturalist and broadcaster Iolo Williams, an ambassador for the charity, said: “I am hugely excited by their efforts to purchase land and showcase the benefits of rewilding, not only to wildlife and the physical environment but to farming, Welsh communities and culture. Nature needs this.”
Tash Reilly, Tir Natur’s chair, said: “This site will demonstrate what’s possible when we allow nature to take the lead and work for people again. It’s a hopeful, practical vision anyone can contribute to.”
Tir Natur says the project will restore Cwm Doethie’s natural landscape, which includes rivers, peat bogs and ancient woodland, acting as a carbon sink and reducing the risk of flooding downstream. It aims to encourage the return of red squirrels, pine martens, polecats, curlews and hen harriers, and to create new nature corridors and habitats for beavers and butterflies.
The charity plans to use a wild grazing system involving traditional cattle, pony and pig breeds to act as “ecosystem architects” that kickstart natural regeneration by turning over soil.
The site had previously been considered poor for grazing and unsuitable for commercial forestry owing to its location in a site of special scientific interest (SSSI).
Ian Rickman, the president of the Farmers’ Union of Wales (FUW), told Cambrian News the union had concerns over “the scale and transparency of this project”.
He said: “While it is positive that the role of livestock has been acknowledged, questions remain over how such a large area of land will be managed and funded in practice.” He said the FUW would seek to work with the charity “to ensure the voices of local farmers and rural communities are properly heard and considered”.
Reilly said Tir Natur was seeking a long-term approach and was “keen to engage with farmers and their representatives as the project moves forward”.
“We respect that there are different views about rewilding,” she said. “The recent Natural Resources Wales and Welsh government reports show nature in Wales is continuing to decline, which is our motivation … We will improve this site’s ecological health while ensuring it is a working rural landscape.”
The valley in the Cambrian mountains is set to become Wales’s largest rewilding site by far: some of the biggest in the UK are Cairngorms Connect at 60,000 hectares, Rewilding Affric Highlands, currently 80,000 hectares, and the Lake District’s Wild Ennerdale (4,400 hectares).
The UK ranks 229th out of 240 nations, with an average score of 50%, in the Natural History Museum’s biodiversity intactness index.
In 2017, another major rewilding project in Wales, Summit to Sea, aimed to establish a protection area stretching from the Pumlumon massif in Elenydd to Cardigan Bay, encompassing 10,000 hectares of land and a 28,000-hectare marine zone, but it faced criticism from the local community.
It was re-established as Tir Canol (Middle Ground) in 2020 and is now focused on a smaller area of mountainous Elenydd.
