{"id":30478,"date":"2022-05-20T10:13:00","date_gmt":"2022-05-20T09:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/?p=30478"},"modified":"2025-06-29T10:59:09","modified_gmt":"2025-06-29T09:59:09","slug":"national-trust-no-more-re-wilding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/national-trust-no-more-re-wilding\/","title":{"rendered":"National Trust – No more ‘re-wilding’!"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>
The National Trust paid over the odds for Thorneythwaite Farm, separating it from its farmhouse, intending to send this good farmland ‘wild’. It’s destructive, it’s irresponsible.\u00a0 We intend to move a Resolution at this year’s AGM condemning ‘re-wilding’ and ‘re-wetting’.\u00a0<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Resolution for National Trust Annual General Meeting 2022<\/strong><\/p>\n

Re-wilding of National Trust Land<\/h2>\n

\u2018Be it resolved that this AGM deplores re-wilding or re-wetting of National Trust farmland, or acquisition of farmland for that purpose, especially at this time of food insecurity, and calls on the Trust to re-dedicate its farmland to farming.\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

Supporting Statement:<\/strong>
\n‘There have been too many reports of the Trust buying farmland and promptly re-wilding it, or separating a farmhouse from its land and \u2018wilding\u2019 the land.\u00a0 At the 2021 AGM a Trust officer boasted of a re-wetting project.\u00a0 Even then the United Kingdom was said to be importing around half our food.\u00a0 Yet food imported from abroad and processed here, such as tea, counts as \u2018UK food\u2019.\u00a0 When that is taken into account, the UK is only some 20-25% food secure.\u00a0 The Russo-Ukraine war on top of the pandemic shipping crisis must serve as a warning about food insecurity and drive us to grow and raise as much of our own food as we can. Re-wilding and re-wetting may be fashionable environmental fads, but they are surely irresponsible. The National Trust should again encourage farming on its farm land.’<\/p>\n

Any and every member of the National Trust who has been a member since January 2021 can and should sign the resolution. Download the pdf here:\u00a0 ResolutionsNT22A<\/a> <\/b>\u00a0.\u00a0 Then print it off, sign it, print your name, address and postcode and your National Trust membership number.\u00a0 Then send it to: Christian Voice, Wernlwyd, Pen-y-bont, CARMARTHEN, SA33 6QN, by 25th May 2022.\u00a0 Or scan it and email it to info@ukcv.org\u00a0 \u00a0We have a NT deadline to meet!\u00a0 Thank you!<\/p>\n

Parallel Resolution<\/h2>\n

The Resolution comes with a parallel Resolution calling for the National Trust to stop participating in Gay Pride events.\u00a0 You can sign both or either.\u00a0 (The PDF above has the Re-wilding Resolution at the top instead of the Gay Pride one, as on the ‘No more Gay Pride’ post .)<\/p>\n

The Trust was criticised in the press in 2016\u00a0HERE<\/b><\/a>,\u00a0HERE<\/b><\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0HERE<\/b><\/a>\u00a0for buying up Thorneythwaite sheep farm in the Lake District in order to \u2018rewild\u2019 it. Elsewhere,\u00a0according to Farmers Weekly<\/b><\/a> the Trust\u2019s tenant farmers have complained the Trust is putting what it thinks is \u2018the environment\u2019 above food production.\u00a0 It was Mike Innerdale, the Trust\u2019s regional director for the north, who gave the presentation to the 2021 AGM in which he spoke of \u2018wetting-up our farmland\u2019 and a \u2018drive to net zero\u2019.<\/p>\n