Use Less Space: Rewilding

Teacher Tips

Hook

• Display the picture and give the question “If humans disappeared, what would happen to this place in 50 years?” a full minute before you take feedback. Learners will describe nature taking over, which is exactly the point: the missing ingredient is space, not effort. There’s no need to correct anyone yet, as the reveal confirms it.
• The pivot is the explanation that humans have spent thousands of years building homes, roads, farms and cities. It helps to finish with “Every new field, housing estate or motorway gives us space, but where does the wildlife go?” and pause. When you reveal that wildlife would take back over, leave the three facts on screen for a few seconds of quiet reflection. The last one, that many animals now survive in isolated patches, is what Pathway 2 goes on to call habitat fragmentation.
• The speaker notes carry the delivery options, so they’re worth reading before you run the spectrum activity. Read each pair of statements and have learners show where they stand between the two extremes. You might ask a learner at each end and one in the middle to explain their position, and let anyone move if they hear a good argument.
• There’s no need to settle any of the statements. The takeaway is that there’s rarely a definitive answer: how we share land is a genuine debate, and that’s what the session goes on to explore.

ITZA Pathways

• Pathway 1 (Rewilding Our World) covers ecosystem engineers, the return of beavers to Scotland, and how one keystone species can trigger a trophic cascade. Pathway 2 (A Guide to Urban Rewilding) covers habitat fragmentation, why species like hedgehogs are threatened, and how cores and corridors help wildlife in cities.
• As you circulate, you might ask “How does this change what you see when you look out of the classroom window?” It helps to push for something specific outside, such as a hedge, a patch of grass or a car park, and ask “What is it to wildlife: a core, a corridor, or neither?”
• It’s worth checking learners can answer both halves of the beaver question: “Why were beavers absent from Britain for over 400 years?” and “What changed at Knapdale?” A learner who only says “they came back” hasn’t yet got the second half.
• The trophic cascade drag-and-drop asks learners to put the stages in order. You could ask them to explain it as a domino effect in their own words: “What’s the first domino, and what’s the last?” A learner who can give their own example chain, such as a returning predator, fewer grazers, more trees, more birds, has understood it. One who has only memorised the order hasn’t.
• The beaver film is a good moment to gently correct “rewilding means leaving nature alone”. At Knapdale, bringing beavers back took deliberate planning, so you could ask “What did people have to do before they could step back?”

Classroom Activity

• It helps to put learners in groups of three or four and display the situation slide: the council has bought 100 hectares of old sheep farm next to a town, and each team has to rewild it. Start with “What is wrong with this land for wildlife?” and let them work through the four cards (bare hills, straight river, cut-off woods and local people), as each one is a problem their plan will need to solve.
• Learners write four headings in their notebooks (Habitats, Species, Join it up and People) and answer them as their plan. The hints on the slide steer them well, and the help guide slide has extra prompts for groups who get stuck, so you might leave it on screen while they work. The slide speaker notes are there to support you as you circulate.
• On Habitats, “Where can nature regrow by itself?” is the one to ask. Learners may hear “let nature lead” as “do nothing”, so you might add “Where might it need a hand first?”, which links back to Knapdale.
• On Species, you might push past naming an animal to the mechanism: “What is the first domino in your trophic cascade?” For groups who want to go further, the help guide asks whether an ecosystem engineer, like a beaver, could reshape the river.
• On Join it up, it’s worth checking that groups have linked the three woods rather than only restoring them. “What would help animals cross the busy road?” and “How could corridors link the cores?” are the questions to use.
• Some plans will forget that people use the land too, and the footpath and school next door are the clues. You could ask “Who already uses this land?” and “How could wetlands and woods protect the town from floods?” Rewilding is done alongside people, not against them.
• After about six minutes, the storm hits: the river bursts its banks, the town floods, and locals ask “Is rewilding the problem?” Groups show how their plan could protect the town and may change one decision if they need to, saying why. Changing nothing is fine if the plan already holds up, as long as they can explain how.
• For the feedback, one or two groups share in 45 seconds, and the three sentence frames on the slide help keep it short. The class gives a thumbs up or down and asks one “What if...?” question. If the thumbs are mixed, you might ask someone on each side why.
• The debrief slide gives you two questions to close with: “How is rewilding different from just leaving land alone or planting trees?” and “Which change in your plan has the biggest ripple effect, and why?”

Key terms you may need:

1. 1Rewilding: restoring land so nature can largely look after itself, usually by bringing back habitats and key species, then stepping back. It’s planned and active first, then hands-off.
2. 2Keystone species: a species with a much bigger effect on its ecosystem than its numbers would suggest. Remove it or bring it back and the whole system changes (the beaver is the session’s example). The Species hint (“a keystone species starts a domino effect”) is built on this idea.
3. 3Trophic cascade: a chain reaction through the food web. A change at one level knocks on to the levels below, for example a returning predator, fewer grazers, more trees, more birds. This is the “domino effect” in the slides, and the help guide uses the term directly.
4. 4Ecosystem engineer: a species that physically reshapes its habitat in ways that create or change habitats for others. Beavers are the example, as their dams slow rivers and create wetlands, which is why the help guide asks whether one could reshape the straight river.
5. 5Cores and corridors: a core is a good-sized patch of habitat where wildlife can live and breed. A corridor is a strip of habitat that links cores so animals can move between them, such as a hedgerow, a river bank or a green bridge over a road. The help guide on the slide 12 asks “How could corridors link the cores?”
6. 6Habitat fragmentation: habitat broken into small, isolated patches by things like roads, buildings and farmland. The cut-off woods card is a worked example: three tiny woods split by a busy road.
7. 7Wetland, woodland, meadow: the three missing habitats named in the help guide on slide 12. They’re worth a quick check that learners can picture each one.

Plenary

• Part 2 asks what surprised learners about how much space wildlife has lost, and whether it changes how they see their own area. You can push for a specific place they know, such as the school grounds, a local park or the route home, rather than a general "wildlife needs more space".
• The lock-in is from Isabella Tree, an author and conservationist who wrote about rewilding her family's farm in Sussex. It talks about stepping back and letting nature take the driving seat. It's worth setting it alongside what they've learned today: nature often needs a hand to get going first, by restoring habitats and reintroducing species, before we step back. Rewilding is planned and active, then hands-off. Try asking "What had to happen at Knapdale before anyone could step back?"
• If there's a spare minute, you could try this challenge: "A classmate says small actions like bug hotels are pointless next to miles of concrete. How would you respond, using what you've learned?" The strongest answers use corridors: small habitats join up.