Early January 2025: Year-end news on climate change and biodiversity is piling up on my desk again—the Arctic switching from being a carbon sink to a carbon source, 2024 being the hottest year on record by many accounts, and so many species in peril. Then the LA fires shocking the world, and it isn’t even January 20th yet! New Years is a time of reflection and recommitment, but where to start with this year’s news?
But then, Jimmy Carter’s passing—sad, but strangely uplifting as his commitment and persistence gained renewed attention. And, on the other side of my desk is the pile of reports on rewilding here and around the world—protecting wild areas, reintroducing species, and the less dramatic but critical everyday work of strengthening ecosystems of all sorts, including our food producing lands and their surroundings—our foodsheds. There is even growing acceptance that rebuilding healthy biodiversity and ecosystems is one of the most powerful ways of building climate resilience.
Possibilism and Positivism—excited about the possibilities: Almost exactly eight years ago, I wrote of how the concept of “possibilism” is easier to talk about than the perplexing idea of “hope” with so many layers of complexity. That there are possible solutions to many perplexing current problems, however small the possibilities might be, gives me what I would call “informed hope.” That I am able to work toward those possibilities makes me feel fortunate and leaves me with no excuse to give up in any way—but that is a daily struggle of course. That struggle entails deliberately giving more attention to the possibilities of success than of failure, but without ignoring the odds. In other words, one can choose to be excited about the possibilities of success in spite of the odds—a glass-half-full proposition. Fortunately, there are many inspiring examples of people whose lives are guided by such a view—reminders that I need daily.
Rewilding of the world around us is a wonderful example of the big wild ideas that we have suggested recently—ideas that spring from possibilism and dreaming of what could be. Rewilding just might bring a refreshing and profound systems change in how we see our place in nature, and how we must pursue fairness to all living things, the planet, and the future. From reintroducing keystone species, to protecting wild spaces, to restoring working landscapes to be dependent on natural processes more than human technology, rewilding spans the spectrum from obvious, no-brainer measures to some that challenge us profoundly. Rewilding is central to my dreams of our Greater San Juan Mountain Ecosystem that we call our regional foodshed and our home.
Rewilding dreams: A highpoint of my week is the Friday arrival of the Rewilding Institute’s newsletter with inspiring success stories to balance out the challenging ones. We have suggested dreaming to allow one to more freely explore what could be, and we are encouraged to push the envelope on the possibilities, but the rewilding movement fortunately has some very concrete successes that justify this dreaming and inspire us to action. Salmon returning to the Klamath after dam removal, lynx returning to our own San Juan Mountains, bison being given enough land and freedom to return to grassland ecosystems as a keystone species, beaver on the landscape as natural engineers, rewilding of long-degraded lands in Scotland by their own John Muir Institute. Inspiration abounds and validates our dreams!
From “dewilding” to rewilding—what does rewilding have to do with food? It can easily be argued that agriculture has been responsible for much of the “dewilding” of our world over human history. The fact that 96% of the mammalian biomass in the world is of humans and their livestock—leaving only 4% wild—is mind boggling! Few would seriously wish that the agricultural revolution never happened and that we remained as hunter-gatherers, but many of us wonder about diminishing returns, long-term sustainability, and our quality of life as industrial agriculture’s footprint ever widens and deepens. Likewise, while it might be tempting, few would wish that our industrial agriculture system would crash and lessen the impacts on nature, but many of us hope for a (non-violent) revolution or systems change—sooner rather than later—in the way we grow our food. So, it seems that rewilding should be a core strategy to reinvigorate and strengthen the resilience—and fairness to all—of our landscapes, ecosystems, and in particular, our food systems and foodsheds.
Organic as rewilding: Sunday mornings bring to my kitchen table Real Organic’s Sunday Letters which time and time again reinvigorate my drive to seek deeper sustainability though local food and healthy local foodsheds. It’s humbling to say that I still need—after 40-plus years of such work—these frequent nudges to try even harder to make local food a bigger part of my diet and to resolve to work even harder to influence the policies that make that so difficult. Real Organic’s mission to keep organics focused on soil and its health is a powerful rewilding effort aimed at respecting, nurturing, and depending upon the often-mysterious natural biological processes within the soil that feeds us. They admirably promote and support many such ranchers and farmers in certification and marketing as well as pushing policy reform to keep organic true to its roots—in the soil especially.
Wild Farming, Ranching, and Gardening: Each month, the Wild Farm Alliance’s newsletter brims with practical advice and examples of rewilding the farm. WFA defines “wild farming” very simply and eloquently as “farming in a way that supports and benefits from wild nature.” We at HCFS were inspired many years ago to call our school garden efforts “Wild School Gardens.” To emphasize the importance of ranching in our area of the Southwest and of gardening in engaging the public in this effort, we speak of Wild Farming, Ranching, and Gardening. WFA’s amazing stories of such efforts across the US in their beautiful Farming with the Wild coffee-table book continue to inspire me, as do the projects they have across the country. I keep those stories in mind as I wonder what Wild Farming, Ranching, and Gardening could look like in our Four Corners and Greater San Juan Mountain region.
Getting serious about rewilding—now: Our Getting Serious Now campaign is aimed at being sure that the most important and fundamental changes needed for deeper sustainability, resilience, and fairness are being addressed and that we are responding to the urgency of the climate and biodiversity crises—and in our case, starting with food and foodsheds. What better time than now to explore and learn about the health of our foodsheds, dream of what they could be, and use rewilding as an inspiring and powerful tool to make our foodsheds and surrounding ecosystems as productive, resilient, and fair as they can be.
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