WHAT exactly is rewilding? The buzz word batted around environmental forums comes with shades of definition, everything from ‘plant a wildflower meadow’ to ‘let loose the lynx’.

But one thing ecologist John Hartshorne is sure of: now is the time to stop and take stock of how our uplands could be better used.

With Brexit negotiations rolling and huge question marks hanging over the shape of future British farming policy, this is the time to get off the (doomed) track we’re on.

“The way I look at it, rewilding is ‘repair’,” he said. “It means a restoration job on something that’s broken, and that’s particularly the case in the UK, where 70 per cent of our land is managed for farming in one shape or another.

“But we’re looking at a 56 per cent decline in the number of wild animals across all species since the 1970s, and it’s likely to go over 60 per cent beyond 2020 – it’s worth reading the State of Nature Report , which dozens of nature organisations contribute to.”

Britain is at a juncture, and certainly as far as farming is concerned. Does the Government plan to match-fund the level of subsidies farmers receive now and, indeed, often need to actually survive?

He said: “The whole future of countryside management is going to change massively, I think, with us leaving the European Union, so this is a good time to take stock.”

A conservationist all his working life, John started out as a horticulturalist at Kew Gardens. He then trained as a teacher, got his Masters degree in ecology and then for many years was head of science at Hexham’s Queen Elizabeth High School.

Today, he and his partner, fellow ecologist Deborah Brady, run Albion Outdoors from their home in Otterburn. Teaching children how to appreciate their wider environment and running data-gathering projects that provide an accurate picture of our countryside are grist to their mill.

One of Deborah’s current commissions is to act as an independent arbiter for Lynx UK Trust’s consultation over the proposal to release six wild lynx into Kielder Forest.

The trust’s argument is that the apex predator, which died out in Britain 1300 years ago, needs to be reintroduced to restore the natural order of things – the lynx’s prey of choice are the roe deer the Forestry Commission has to cull nowadays to keep in check.

John points to the poor biodiversity of Northumberland and Britain as a whole. The need for rewilding is a no-brainer, he says.

“We have a failing ecological chain,” he said. “We need to improve it and restore habitats to the state they would have been historically, before we had this massive decline.

“It’s all about how we manage the land.”

The Borders Forest Trust is leading the way with its Carrifran Wildwood project to restore the ecology in the southern uplands of Scotland. During the past 15 years, it has bought up six contiguous estates to create a vast tract of land in which nature is being given free reign.

“What they are trying to do is allow nature to restore itself,” he said, “to allow the diversity to flourish that was there before we started to manage the uplands solely for sheep and grazing.

“Historically the uplands were wooded. Yes, we had peat bogs, but the majority of it was forest, and not like Kielder Forest is today with its miles of Sitka spruce. There was a real diversity of trees and the wide range of habitats they hosted.

“So the Borders Forest Trust has planted one-and-a-half million trees and is slowly restoring the environment back to its original wooded state.”

The ultimate aim isn’t preservation, as such – the intent isn’t to create a museum of the way it used to be.

“Rather, it is to reintroduce a working landscape that isn’t dependent on a single species.

To that end, there is talk about reintroducing stock such as pigs, and in particular the ancient breed of Tamworth pigs, currently listed as ‘vulnerable’ in the UK by the Rare Breeds Survival Trust.

There is many a worthy environmental project running in Tynedale too, he added. Among them, Living Wild at Kielder and Revitalising Redesdale, and a myriad of programmes focused on badgers, beavers, water voles, otters, red squirrels and ospreys, to name but a few.

John said: “To the purist, the ultimate aim of rewilding is to re-establish nature so it can look after itself and that’s what they are trying to do in Scotland – re-establish the level of biodiversity to what it was before they started chopping all the trees down.

“Realistically it will be about achieving a happy medium, but we should be in no doubt, there is a moral imperative on us to do something, to act.

“Humans have a huge impact on this planet and we have an impoverished ecosystem as a result, but in my view, I’m part of the natural world and not in dominion over it.

“We need to repair the damage.”