Wilderculture
Rooted place-based regeneration catalysing global impact for people and planet.
Building Thriving Bioregions Across UK Uplands
We catalyse regenerative transformation by empowering individuals, landowners, and communities to create ecological restoration, sustainable food systems, and resilient economies. Our vision: interconnected bioregions aligned with their unique cultural and ecological essence.
Upland Regeneration
UK uplands face ecological degradation, economic marginalisation, and community disconnection. Wilderculture CIC is responding to these challenges with a regenerative philosophy—WILDER—that integrates agroecological farming, ecological restoration, and resilient local economies. Unlike rewilding, our ROOTED framework fosters thriving bioregions where humans are keystone species, weaving cultural heritage with sustainable solutions. With fifteen years of expertise, we're catalysing transformation across six UK upland regions—from the Lake District Fells and the Yorkshire Dales and Bowland to the Scottish Southern Uplands and the Highlands. Discover our unique approach.
Imagine a wilder landscape where people, place and planet regenerate together.
Our Guiding Philosophy
Wildness
Letting the elemental conditions of each place—its geology, hydrology, climate, and ecological history—lead the design, rather than imposing methodology developed elsewhere.
Diversity
Building complexity through diversity and conductance: many species, varied practices, and distinct enterprises, connected through the relationships that make a system coherent.
Interbeing
Fostering deep connections between people, land, and ecosystems for mutual resilience.
Eldership
Growing the systems-thinking capacity that wicked problems require—the ability to hold the whole picture without collapsing into the simplicity of one corner of it.
Lineage
Recovering the residual knowledge held in these places—place names, surviving practices, heritage breeds, oral histories—and weaving it forward into living practice.
Regeneration
Building the capacity of living systems — including human communities — to evolve and thrive on their own terms, so that the intelligence of a place stays with the people who live in it.
From Farms to Bioregions
Fifteen years of supporting regenerative farmers across UK uplands has taught us that lasting change happens when communities are active partners in landscape regeneration. Our ROOTED Framework weaves cultural heritage with sustainable solutions, positioning humans as keystone species within thriving bioregions.
Now we're scaling this proven approach through deep bioregional transformation. Our goal by 2046: measurable regeneration across six UK upland regions and one million hectares—with a global community of citizens taking the same work into their own places.
Global Culture Building
This requires a dual approach: deep bioregional development nested within global community building—because local transformation thrives when supported by a worldwide regenerative movement.
Two Scales, One Mission
Six Regions. Depth Over Breadth.
We work intensively across six carefully chosen UK upland regions — the Eastern Highlands, West Highlands & Islands, Scottish Southern Uplands, Northern English Borderlands, Lake District Fells, and Yorkshire Dales & Bowland. Rather than spreading thin, we go deep: partnering with landowners and communities to restore landscapes, rebuild local economies, and demonstrate what regenerative systems actually look like in practice.
A Global Community. Responding Locally.
Landscape-scale change needs cultural soil to grow in. Alongside the place-based work, we're cultivating a global community of practitioners who are embodying regenerative principles wherever they are — building the collaborative networks, shared values, and practical knowledge that bioregional transformation depends on.
This dual approach creates exponential change: deep place-based learning that can flourish anywhere, supported by the collaborative culture essential for lasting transformation.
Building Thriving Bioregions
Wilder Landscapes
We regenerate uplands through agroecological farming and ecological restoration, drawing on decades of action research. Our WILD mapping approach helps design resilient systems for biodiversity, carbon sequestration, and food production that work with the unique character of each landscape.
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Wilder Cultures
We empower communities to rediscover their ecological and cultural roots through our Rooting to Place process, fostering regenerative cultures that revive heritage, build collaborative capacity, and address rural disconnection.
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Wilder Economies
We help build resilient local economies that keep wealth circulating in place — channelling capital into regenerative projects and prioritising sustainable food, fibre, and services rooted in the bioregion.
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A Regenerative Future
By 2046, our aim is one million hectares regenerating across six UK upland regions—land, livelihoods, and culture recovering together—alongside a global community taking the same work into their own places.
Partnering with communities, we're building regenerative systems that restore landscapes, strengthen local bonds, and boost economic resilience. We focus on depth rather than breadth, learning the deep patterns of bioregional regeneration through intensive development across six UK upland regions. Meanwhile, our global community work cultivates the "cultural soil"—regenerative mindsets and collaborative networks worldwide—ensuring these proven patterns can be planted anywhere and our expertise leveraged for transformational impact at scale.
"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete."
R. Buckminster Fuller
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But Bioregional Success Requires Global Cultural Foundation
Landscape transformation needs thousands of people embodying regenerative principles in daily life. That's why we're building a global Wilder Community of regenerative practitioners implementing place-based solutions worldwide—creating the cultural soil that makes bioregional regeneration possible.
