Nature already knows how to be resilient
- TreeSisters
- 12 minutes ago
- 3 min read
Amongst the various heatwave warnings and wildfires that have raged in the UK alone this summer, there’s a rather beautiful story coming out of Somerset.
While much of the surrounding countryside has turned crisp and brown, the National Trust-run Holnicote Estate is still green. Aerial photos highlight the stark contrast between this area and its neighbouring plots. Its rivers and wetlands have continued to hold water, providing a lifeline for wildlife and helping the landscape withstand conditions that have put huge pressure on the land around it.
Holnicote has been experiencing the same heat and dry conditions, but what makes it different is the landscape itself. Since 2012, two significant rewilding projects have restored the estate’s wetlands and rivers, helping to build resilience to drought, wildfires and flooding.
Rivers have been allowed to follow more natural courses, while wetlands have been restored so that water can spread across the land and soak into the surrounding wetlands and soils rather than being moved away as quickly as possible.
And this changes what the land is able to do.
When rain comes, there is somewhere for the water to go. When the rain stops, that water remains in the landscape for longer. Wetlands provide habitat and food for countless species, while healthier soils and vegetation help the whole system hold together.
None of this is new technology. It’s not something humans have invented. It’s what the landscape already knows how to do.
Ben Eardley, the project manager at the Holnicote Estate, said:
“Nature is providing solutions to some of the biggest challenges facing society today. For generations as a nation we’ve drained wetlands, straightened rivers and moved water off the land as quickly as possible. Here, we’ve reversed that approach and the results are remarkable.
“By reconnecting river systems with the surrounding area and creating natural sponges in the landscape, we’ve created a system that stores water during drought, keeping wetlands and the surrounding habitats healthy, and slows water during storms and periods of extreme rainfall, helping to protect villages from the risk of flooding downstream.”
What can Nature teach us about resilience?
Resilience is often talked about as something we need to create. How do we make our landscapes more resilient to drought? How do we protect communities from flooding? How do we adapt to more extreme weather?
And there are times when engineering and human ingenuity have an important role to play. But what if some of that resilience is already present in living systems, and our job is to restore the conditions that allow it to work?
More than 90% of the UK’s wetlands have been lost. That isn’t simply the loss of somewhere for birds and insects to live. It means losing some of the natural systems that store water, filter it, support soils and help landscapes cope with extremes. And when we dismantle those systems, we lose the intelligence held within their relationships too.
That intelligence is everywhere in the living world. A forest is not simply a collection of trees, but a wider living system shaped by countless interactions between trees, fungi, soil, water and wildlife. The same is true of wetlands, which respond to changing water levels, as well as diverse ecosystems, which can absorb disturbance and continue to function. These systems have been responding to change and what’s happening around them for an incredibly long time. And in an increasingly volatile climate, this is something we should be paying far more attention to.
Restoration, rewilding, resilience… they all come back to the same truth: that we don’t always need to have all the answers. Sometimes we need to restore what we have disrupted and give Nature the conditions to do what she already knows how to do.
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