A right to roam – but for whom?

Skylark. Image: .

As awareness of animal sentience grows the moral and practical case for limiting public access to wild habitats needs to be made.

Non-human animals are sentient beings capable of experiencing pleasure, pain, and a range of emotions.

Walking along a trail in a National Park forest, a visitor notices an adjoining path with a low wooden beam across it, inscribed with the simple message, ‘No Admittance: Wildlife Refuge.’ 

The visitor continues on the main path and in doing so, both they – and the thought behind the sign - acknowledge that just as humans need rest and recuperation, so wildlife does too. 

It is increasingly understood that for wildlife to thrive, it is vital that areas exist in which animals can live unstressed by human disturbance. Such refuges are commonplace in the Veluwe Forest in the Netherlands.

Rights of wild nature

There are no barbed-wire fences, and no hoo-ha about humans being excluded; the refuges are simply accepted and respected for the concerns they represent.     

Habitat loss and fragmentation, and the growth of transport infrastructure, has limited territories and curtailed migration, maiming and killing many who do venture beyond their home turf. Human disturbance further constrains and distorts wild animals’ freedom of movement. 

Set against increased demands for extensions to countryside access by right to roam (R2R) campaigners in England, we might usefully ask, a right to roam for whom? We must recognise the rights of wild nature alongside calls for human-rights of access to the natural world. 

Wildlife imperilled 

Both the Netherlands and England are small countries with high urban population densities and busy National Parks.

In England nature remains in free-fall, principally the outcome of industrial farming and otherwise extensions of the human footprint occurring over a period of fifty years; the mere blink of an eye in evolutionary terms. 

But, how many people are aware of the critically dangerous situation our wildlife is facing? Recent rises in dog ownership from 8.3 million in 2008 to 11 million in 2023 on its own places an increasingly threatened number of species such as ground nesting skylarks, lapwing and curlew in greater jeopardy. 

The conservation lead in a national park in the south west of England expressed dire concern that the last two pairs of curlews on Dartmoor might not survive the tourism onslaught that occurs every Easter and May – just as the birds are beginning to breed. 

This is replicated across a growing number of landscapes. Given calamitous species’ losses it seems reasonable to at least retain selected habitats as wildlife refuges where wild creatures are afforded protection; where humans - and their dogs - have limited rights of access or are excluded. 

Sentient animals’ rights

Non-human animals possess inherent worth and agency in their lives. They are sentient beings capable of experiencing pleasure, pain, and a range of emotions. 

Safeguarding their habitats from being ‘roamed by humans’ acknowledges their autonomy and recognizes their moral right to live without unnecessary human interference. But wildlife cannot speak for itself, so needs us to make these calls and set aside areas purely for wild nature. 

Non-human animals are sentient beings capable of experiencing pleasure, pain, and a range of emotions.

The human right to roam

The R2R is, according to campaigners, the right to reconnect, whereby, "nature is no longer presented like a museum piece, to be observed from afar behind a line of barbed wire. Instead, it becomes something to be immersed in, a multi-sensory tangible experience whose smells, sounds, sightings can have profound effects upon the minds of beholders.” 

We might ponder what those last few curlew might have to say, were they given a voice. What rights could and indeed should we afford non-human actors in any landscape, and how do we begin to agree on the kinds of advocacy required to begin to enact those rights? 

Many in our urban communities particularly have lost their sense of being live participants integral to the natural world; the more wildness we continue to lose, the less people have a chance to experience, relate, connect, or benefit from nature. 

Simply demanding access to  – whatever and wherever -  does not in and of itself, however, lead to connection.

We don’t mean to infer that we accept the rights and duties associated with existing patterns of landownership and public access, but are challenging the apparent R2R paradigm of ‘all access good, restricted access bad'.

Further, we believe that with an improved understanding of the rights of non-human animals to roam and be undisturbed, we will have far greater practical success in rebuilding and restoring landscapes and habitats that are resilient and sustainable; places where native wildlife can rebound. 

Only through exploring mutually enhancing access mechanisms - founded upon upholding the rights of non-human and human animals alike – can genuine co-habitation for future generations of all animal-kind become realisable.

Learning from nature

We all recall how under the lockdowns of 2021 and 2022 wild species soon became objects of fascination in our daily lives. 

From our windows, gardens, pavements and cities, we tuned in to birdsong; in the absence of machines, birds need to sing less loudly, saving energy, essential if you have to work hard to keep yourself and your offspring fed. 

Animals played out apparently audacious forays into urban settings; goats eating ‘our’ hedges in Llandudno, dolphins appearing in the Venetian lagoon.

The lessons were immediate, astonishing, but soon forgotten. We must remember how easy it is for natural processes to recover when given the right conditions. Give nature space, and we are paid back tenfold, even when we do not witness or take part in those processes. 

Consider the regeneration of Ennerdale in the Lake District, or the replacement of civic verges with pollinator rich wildflower mini-meadows in an increasing number of boroughs including the trail-blazing work of Scouse Flowerhouse across Liverpool and the North. 

Saving non-human others and ourselves

The issue of countryside access has, we believe, become far too over-simplified. With all that we know about our failure to protect and enhance Britain’s wildlife, including species on the brink of extinction, campaigns centring on extending R2R legislation lack the necessary in-depth reflection around the potential effects such access would have on wildlife. 

Given the dire state of nature in England, any discussions around placing human needs ahead of that of any other living animal must be far more nuanced. 

As we move forward and the climate crisis becomes an ever more pressing existential threat to wildlife, protecting refuge areas – and creating new ones – will be pivotal for species’ survival. 

As we have seen, this is an accepted principle in the Netherlands, as indeed, in many other countries. Why should this be contentious for England? 

However compelling the ethical case for prioritising the few and becoming scarcer wild animals over growingly abundant human ones, ultimately it is not just in nature’s interest to create discrete spaces for them alone. Without wildlife, human life will become a much more arduous if not impossible venture. 

These Authors

Dr Karen Lloyd is a researcher and Writer in Residence with Lancaster University's Future Places Centre and author of Abundance: Nature in Recovery (Bloomsbury, 2021), longlisted for the Wainwright Prize for Writing on Conservation, 2022. Ian Convery is professor of environment and society at the University of Cumbria and is co-chair (along with Steve Carver) of the IUCN CEM Rewilding Task Force. He is also IUCN CEM chair for Western Europe. Dr Simon Leadbeater manages woodland and runs a small farm animal sanctuary tweeting as @OurSacredGrove. Sally Hawkins is a post-doctoral research associate at the University of Cumbria and lead editor of Routledge Handbook of Rewilding (2023). Steve Carver is professor of rewilding and wilderness science in the School of Geography, University of Leeds and director of the Wildland Research Institute. He is co-chair (along with Ian Convery) of the IUCN CEM Rewilding Task Force.

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