In a small town in East Sussex, London, dogs are walking with a purpose. The dogs in the town, walking along the paths of an urban Nature reserve, carry backpacks that sprinkle wildflower seeds to help with reforestation of the area.
Termed “wolf reseeding”, the project is run by the Railway Land Wildlife Trust. According to reports, wolves which were known to roam large areas, would mistakenly pickup seeds and wildflowers on their fur and scatter them miles away. This used to help in forestation or ‘rewilding’. According to the British Broadcasting Channel (BBC), this project was started to replicate the activity of wolves, which went extinct in Britain in around 1760.
In an interview with British daily newspaper The Guardian, Dylan Walker, the manager behind this project said, “We’re really interested in rewilding processes, but they often involve reintroducing big herbivores like bison or wild horses. In a smaller urban Nature reserve, it’s really hard to do those things. So, to replicate the effect that those animals have on the ecosystem we aimed to utilise the vast number of dog walkers that are visiting the Nature reserve daily.”
This project entails dog walkers picking up the backpacks with wildflower seeds from the staff present at the reserve, which have holes in them to help scatter or sprinkle the seeds onto the ground as the dogs explore and go on their walks.
“We mixed the seed with sand not only to help the seed go further, but it also proves to be really helpful in allowing us to track where the dogs are depositing the seeds as well,” Walker added.
