Derek Gow is a farmer, nature conservationist, and author.
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Reintroducing European bison to Britain, despite their absence from its history, could help restore ecological balance by fostering biodiversity and reversing some of the damage caused by industrial farming practices.
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Derek Gow is a farmer, nature conservationist, and author of Bringing Back the Beaver (Chelsea Green, 2022) and Birds, Beasts and Bedlam (Chelsea Green, 2022). Born in Dundee, Scotland, he left school when he was 17 and worked in agriculture for five years. Inspired by the writing of Gerald Durrell, Gow jumped at the chance to manage a European wildlife park in central Scotland in the late 1990s before developing two nature centers in England.
He now lives with his children, Maysie and Kyle, on a 300-acre farm on the Devon/Cornwall border, which he is rewilding. Gow has played a significant role in the reintroduction of the Eurasian beaver, the water vole, and the white stork in England. He is currently working on a reintroduction project for the wildcat.External
Rewilding Pioneer Derek Gow: ʻWeʼve Left Very Little Room for Nature to Exist at Allʼ
Big Issue | January | 2025
Derek Gow is a farmer turned nature conservationist in the process of rewilding of his 300 acre farm. This is what an average day looks like for him
The Guardian | March | 2024
Former sheep farmer Derek Gow is on a mission to rewild Britain. Having switched sides from team sheep, he wants to reintroduce its mortal enemy…
Economist | October | 2023
Until 2019 Derek Gow farmed 121 hectares of Dartmoor, in Devon, with 1,500 breeding sheep and 120 cows. But he abandoned traditional agriculture after the last of the curlews, a type of bird, vanished. “In the end, you just begin to realize that everything you’re doing is wrong,” says the farmer-turned-conservationist.
Co-authors: Sam Knight | The New Yorker | September | 2021
Derek Gowʼs maverick efforts to breed and reintroduce rare animals to Britainʼs countryside.
Publications by this author
Turning My Farm into an Ark for Lost Species
Chelsea Green Publishing | June | 2022
Derek tells us all about the realities of rewilding; how he reared delicate roe deer and a sofa-loving wild boar piglet, moved a raging bison bull across the country, got bitten by a Scottish wildcat, returned honking skeins of graylag geese to the land and water that was once theirs, and restored the white stork to the Knepp Estate with Charlie Burrell and Isabella Tree.
The Story of One Man’s Quest to Rewild Britain’s Waterways
Co-authors: Isabella Tree | Chelsea Green Publishing | January | 2022
Bringing Back the Beaver is farmer-turned-ecologist Derek Gow’s inspirational and often riotously funny firsthand account of how the movement to rewild the British landscape with beavers has become the single most dramatic and subversive nature conservation act of the modern era. Since the early 1990s—in the face of outright opposition from government, landowning elites, and even some conservation professionals—Gow has imported, quarantined, and assisted the reestablishment of beavers in waterways across England and Scotland.
In addition to detailing the ups and downs of rewilding beavers, Bringing Back the Beaver makes a passionate case as to why the return of one of nature’s great problem solvers will be critical as part of a sustainable fix for flooding and future drought, whilst ensuring the creation of essential lifescapes that enable the broadest possible spectrum of Britain’s wildlife to thrive.
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Interview | March | 2024
Derek Gow is a former farmer turned passionate nature conservationist. A recognized expert in species reintroduction Derek played a significant role in the reintroduction of the Eurasian beaver, the water vole, and the white stork to England. Heʼs also the author of the insightful books Bringing Back the Beaver and Birds, Beasts, and Bedlam.
Derek is deeply involved in the rewilding of his expansive 300-acre farm. In this episode of Oxygen Conservation, Rich and Derek embark on a profound journey to explore the factors that have shaped our present environmental challenges, and discuss the crucial next steps needed for there to be any hope for us and our natural world.
Interview | January | 2022
Alexa Fermenich of Lifeworlds podcast talks to Derek Gow.
With his characteristic sharp-witted, no-nonsense approach and radiating descriptions of nature’s landscapes, Derek Gow is a force to contend with. He’s been one of the most vocal actors in the reintroduction of missing keystone species in England such as the beaver, the water vole and the white stork, butting heads with obnoxious lobbyists and government officials, and rewilding his 300-acre farm on the Devon/Cornwall border where a gang of Eurasian lynx, wild boar and harvest mice make their homes.
Their conversation ranges from the obstacles that prevent society from re-introducing critical species, all the way to Elizabethan fat bishops and voles. What is the mindset that sees all land as ‘mine’? When were wolves seen as Gods, and what would it have been like to be a medieval traveler coming across one of these creatures “sodden like a Michelin man on a country path”? What barbarities have we committed against other species, and why should you think twice when buying herds of prehistoric Heck cattle?
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