Rewilding - can environmental offsetting help?

As George Monbiot's book does the rounds amongst enthusiastic and hopeful conservationists, one volunteer at least has indicated a desire to create a Rewilding area and asked me if there is a suitable piece of farmland on which to create an area.

First response:  almost every landowner I know locally will need to be compensated with an equivalent amount that they would otherwise gain from having the land in production. Two wet years have put them under serous financial pressure and the uncertainty around CAP Reform exacerbates this concern.

What about the Environment Bank pilot in Essex?

The principle here is that money raised from developers in planning applications is paid into a bank from which a landowner can draw to pay for managing a site for wildlife in perpetuity.  Sounds fantastic but it is just not taking off.

Why ?

- its not mandatory for developers to contribute, local councils aren't enforcing it
- there are geographical (borough) restrictions making it hard to find suitable sites
- landowners aren't registering an interest in any numbers : reasons vary from just not getting it on their radar (lack of encouragement by Defra?),  reluctance to commit to a land use for a long period, suspicion, thinking things are hard enough without this extra hassle for biodiversity

 Its still possible.  Defra may sharpen up the incentives and the EA might get some clout to encourage a farmer to use that soggy corner of the field by the river to carry out out water filtration and flood regulation all with added benefits for biodiversity and as compensation for that former lovely piece of scrub that is now a building site.

the squeezed middle

Sometime I feel that I fight a lonely battle on which species we should be watching. Several years ago, an active conservationist and chairman of the Essex and Suffolk Dormouse Project gave me the concept of the 'squeezed middle'.
On one hand we have species that adapt very well to the man-made environment, thank you. Woodpigeon, many corvids, brown rat, muntjac, red fox. You could even include badger and blue tit but with caution - remember what happened with the house sparrow, these species could have their fortunes reversed.
At the other end we have the species which are benefiting from considerable focus and funding, partly because they are engimatic (water vole, barn owl), also because they were in great danger of local extinctions - water vole again, great-crested newt, many bat species.

Its those in the middle that worry me. They may be slowly slipping away but don't always get the attention and focus: missle thrush, linnet, house martin, many butterflies and probably a few mammals too, including hedgehog. Yes, with hedgehogs and song thrushes we try to engage the public in surveys and with some success. But the habitat they need for breeding - especially scrub, gets very little protection. Very few people worry when a site of scrub is cleared but that may be the last hiding place for a hedgehog or the last nesting site for a song thrush or dunnock.  We accept the loss of farmland to a new housing development but what about that big patch of brambles with its blackcaps and dunnocks in spring, its commas, ringlets and gatekeepers in the summer?  the ecological report revealed that there were no rare species. But it was another case of gradual erosion of the diversity of species in the squeezed middle for which there was very little lament.