In the Forest of Dean the abundant natural resources of wood and strata of iron ore and coal, brought foresters, miners and prospectors from around the world, pioneering people, resilient, self-reliant folk who forged a livelihood and battled for rights to land.  The Forest’s rivers were crowded with barges and ships carrying their produce. The world has changed but these qualities in this unique landscape of 20 million trees could invite in a new era of pioneering that brings in much needed harmony between people and landscape. We might soon have a UNESCO Biosphere here now that the Council has unanimously approved the application to the UN. 

Bioregioning then is the journey towards grounding our ‘everything-at-any-time’ globalised economy in the uniqueness of where we live, the richness of the soil we stand on, returning to each of us, each of our organisations the responsibility for caring collectively for our local and living earth that nourishes us in return.

Learning Landscapes

More than 50 years ago the famous American environmental scientist Dana Meadows and colleagues at MIT, warned of environmental and economic collapse if current trends of growth and consumption continued (The Limits to Growth Report, 1972). Her modelling was tested again two years ago and shown still to be correct. Dana recommended that every bioregion on earth establish its own ‘bioregional learning centre’ to understand how to change course.

Wylderne Bioregioning is our answer to Dana’s far-sighted insight. We see our role as providing a focal point for where the community from young to old can build its understanding of how the Forest works as a living system, to observe the effects that climate change is having on its plants, trees and wildlife, and to use this data to decide together what actions to take that will benefit the whole living place. We will also provide the learning space for business to re-think its role too.

We are learning professionals qualified in outdoor learning, organisational development, coaching, regenerative practice and ecoliteracy.

What is Bioregioning?

The word ‘bioregion’ brings two words together that are mostly separated in our modern world: ‘bio’ as in nature, but embracing all life, and ‘region’ the political constructs and boundaries that we place on the natural landscape that often ignore its natural features and the ways that regions work as living systems.

We express it as a verb, that is ‘bioregioning’, to acknowledge that life is not static, but always changing and evolving. Bioregioning goes beyond our aim to do less harm to nature, to a new way of seeing ourselves in our place as living and thriving alongside all other living things, no less or more important than any other life, though with a unique role, because we uniquely can see how things fit together.

Bioregioning is therefore a process of learning, even re-learning how to live in a particular landscape, a place from which we might draw a sense of belonging, a place however temporarily, we might call home. The Forest of Dean is just such a place. 

We draw on patterns rooted in its deep history: its geology, hydrology, climate, migrations, economy, ecology, more than on its popular myths, to understand how the place has worked over time to nourish life, and what value it has consistently brought to, and received from, the wider landscapes, watersheds, cultures it sits within.