The word rewilding can conjure up images of going back in time to a landscape of wild animals and deep forest. Its popularity is growing in the UK, but how exactly do you go about rewilding, and why is it being linked, in some cases, to greenwashing? The FT’s Leslie Hook visits two properties at different stages of the rewilding process to discover more.

Rewilding, or re-wilding, activities are conservation efforts aimed at restoring and protecting natural processes and wilderness areas. Rewilding is a form of ecological restoration with an emphasis on recreating an area’s “natural uncultivated state”. This may require active human intervention to achieve.