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A £150,000 initiative to tackle the “teenage dip” in nature connectedness will involve the Scout Association introducing rewilding to its adventure centres across the UK.
The funding, announced on Wednesday by the environmental charity Rewilding Britain, will support 11 projects aimed at putting young people at the heart of nature restoration. Several focus explicitly on reversing the sharp decline in young people’s engagement with the natural world during adolescence.
“Children are often naturally drawn to nature – think mud pies, sliding down grassy banks, making daisy chains, chasing birds. But then suddenly there’s this dip when the teen years hit, which can last well into adulthood, of disconnection and disinterest in nature,” said Sara King, a manager at Rewilding Britain.
In one of the world’s most nature-depleted and nature-disconnected countries, addressing the teenage disengagement from wild nature is seen as critical to the success of future conservation and nature restoration efforts in the UK.
The Scouts, Britain’s largest youth organisation, with 440,000 young members, will use the funding to apply rewilding principles at their adventure centres across the UK. These popular sites, covering more than 300 hectares, include sites in protected landscapes from the Lake District to Ashdown Forest.
Joining Rewilding Britain’s more than 1,000-strong Rewilding Network, the management of centres will shift from a primarily human-focused approach to one that better balances people and nature. Scouts aged 10 to 14 have already been involved in planning and installing nature-based solutions, including leaky dams and seasonal streams and ponds. These aim to improve habitats and reduce flood risk, both at Scout centres and downstream.
Welcoming the embrace of rewilding, the chief scout, Dwayne Fields, who succeeded Bear Grylls in that role last year, said: “As scouts we always try to look after the environment we are in. Our young people are actively encouraged to learn about nature and the impact we have on it, now and in the future.”
Acknowledging the mounting evidence that connecting with nature can directly impact young people’s wellbeing, Rewilding Britain also awarded funding to the Wilderness Foundation UK. The Essex-based charity will develop a designated ancient wood as an outdoor classroom. Last year, it engaged over 7,500 young people, many from urban and vulnerable backgrounds.
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Terri Dawson, the environmental education manager at the Wilderness Foundation, said: “When children grow up with a love and connection for the outdoors they grow into adults who appreciate the importance of thriving ecosystems and the need to protect them.”
Rewilding Britain also funded the youth-led non-profit organisation Youngwilders. Set up to channel the energy and inventiveness of young people to speed up nature recovery in the UK, Youngwilders’ projects are conceived, designed and delivered by people aged between 18 and 30. They also host annual youth rewilding summits.
Jack Durant, the co-director of Youngwilders, said: “At a brazenly straightforward level, having money to do our work is great. But more than this, it shows Rewilding Britain [ …] values the next generation, values creativity, values community building.”
He added: “Rewilding can’t just be a big flash in the pan, but instead must have a long-term gravitas that shapes our land and our society well into the future.”
While youth-focused projects lead this funding round, Rewilding Britain is also using the Rewilding Innovation Fund, enabled by donations from charitable trusts, companies and private donors, to advance plans to reintroduce lost species. Among the eight other projects in the current funding round are feasibility studies for returning white storks to London, pelicans to Norfolk, and Eurasian elk to the Fens. They are also supporting potential lynx reintroductions in northern Britain. These initiatives can help to inspire the next generation with visions of a wilder future.
Miles Richardson, a professor of nature connectedness at the University of Derby and author of The Blackbird’s Song, argues that while environmental policy and funding often focus solely on the symptoms of the accelerating environmental crises – restoring habitats, introducing species and reducing carbon emissions, for instance – they often miss the root cause.
He said: “There is a largely unseen crisis of human-nature disconnection so a paradigm shift is needed.”
Putting young people at the heart of rewilding could spark exactly the kind of deep-rooted change that Britain’s depleted landscapes and nature-disconnected communities sorely need, he added.
