{"id":30553,"date":"2022-04-01T12:51:41","date_gmt":"2022-04-01T12:51:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/themint.kinsta.cloud\/?p=30553"},"modified":"2022-04-01T15:06:51","modified_gmt":"2022-04-01T15:06:51","slug":"the-nature-of-the-beast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themintmagazine.com\/the-nature-of-the-beast\/","title":{"rendered":"The nature of the beast"},"content":{"rendered":"

Verity<\/strong> delves into the environmental economics undergrowth.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Our peaceful piece of suburbia is feeling particularly tame at the moment.\u00a0 A far cry from the perilous encounters to be had in the new, wilded English countryside.<\/p>\n

Our adventure began with Arabella Bush\u2019s letter which arrived out of the blue two months ago. We were schoolgirls together at Camberwell Ladies College where she was well known for spending hours with her nose in Debretts. Her early research had clearly paid dividends and she had married into an estate.<\/p>\n

A planned visit from Sir Partha Dasgupta, the Cambridge economist, had prompted her letter. She needed someone economically literate to entertain him and had remembered our old friendship.\u00a0 Dasgupta wanted to experience real Natural Capital for himself having just published 600 pages on its economics for Her Majesty\u2019s Treasury.<\/p>\n

I was not sure how to respond to her letter. For a start Dasgupta might be a top Cambridge economist but his previous research in environmental economics was minimal. This was an area that I had worked on extensively in the 90s with the lovely David Pierce. I was clearly much better qualified for this work and apparently, I was on HMT\u2019s list of candidates to do this work.\u00a0 So this invitation was somewhat bitter-sweet.<\/p>\n

However Thomas, my husband, was very excited by it.\u00a0 He had read Arabella\u2019s bestselling book about the rewilding of her Kept Castle Estate \u2013 who knew she could write? And he was very keen to visit. Apart from anything it would save us the quite hefty cost of the paid \u201csafari\u201d.<\/p>\n

So on a rather lovely day we arrived at the castle to be welcomed by Arabella with her many unruly dogs.\u00a0Arabella seemed to keep her dogs as wild as her estate.\u00a0 She eventually managed to call them off and we joined Dasgupta for a welcome drink.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Surprisingly he was charming and even seemed to know about my work. What a joy to spend time again with someone who spoke the same language.\u00a0 Meanwhile Thomas fawned over Arabella like she was some pop star.\u00a0 She was showing him all the family portraits covering the 800 years of the family\u2019s pedigree.\u00a0 Apparently the family had a longer pedigree than the dogs.<\/p>\n

Eventually Arabella dressed head to toe in tweed, loaded us into her old Land Rover with a substantial picnic.<\/p>\n

The \u201csafari\u201d was impressive.\u00a0 The landscape was more African bush than English countryside.\u00a0 Herds of cattle roamed free and the range of birdlife was astonishing.\u00a0 Arabella gave a remarkably well-informed commentary.\u00a0 Thomas was in continuous raptures and Dasgupta even seemed excited, unusual for a Cambridge academic.<\/p>\n

We eventually stopped at a glorious location with a view towards the sea, which Arabella announced was our picnic spot.\u00a0 She then set out a spectacular spread of country fare which she laid out on a blanket of ancient tweed.<\/p>\n

It was then that we were joined unexpectedly by the European Bison. This huge imposing beast trotted over to us flaring his nostrils. Clearly he thought he owned this spot.<\/p>\n

Chaos ensued.\u00a0 Arabella screamed and ran for it. Clearly this was a level of wilderness too much for her.\u00a0 Dasgupta had been sitting down and now tried his best to crawl away as fast as possible through the undergrowth leaving his dignity behind.\u00a0 Thomas and I were just frozen to the spot staring at this huge beast as it began to eat our picnic.<\/p>\n

It was then that we heard the strange sound of clicks, coughs and splutters. Turning I saw the source. A man with a long beard who looked as wild as the bison.\u00a0 He appeared to be communicating with the beast. The bison stopped eating, bent one knee as if acknowledging the man and began to back away.\u00a0 It was a masterful display of calm and communication.<\/p>\n

The man took our arms and guided us gently but firmly towards the land rover.\u00a0 As he did so, he spoke reassuringly into our ears with a warm burr to his accent: \u201cMy name is Ted and I learnt this technique from aboriginals during my time spent in the Australian outback.\u00a0 I know this place well as I was the gamekeeper here as was my father and his father.\u00a0 Please do not tell Arabella, as I am living wild on the estate. She evicted me from my estate cottage when she wanted it for a B&B\u201d.\u00a0 Then he left us as mysteriously as he had arrived.<\/p>\n

The rest of the day is somewhat of a blur.\u00a0 We were in shock.\u00a0 Dasgupta crawled over to join us still clearly in fear for his life. Arabella eventually re-appeared with soiled tweed. She had tripped over in her flight and landed face down in dung.\u00a0 Somehow we made it back to the castle, made our apologies and headed home.\u00a0 Maybe Natural Capital has more value theoretically than when it is up close and personal.\u00a0 Our apartment does seem mercifully safe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Verity delves into the environmental economics undergrowth.\u00a0 Our peaceful piece of suburbia is feeling particularly tame at the moment.\u00a0 A far cry from the perilous encounters to be had in … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30554,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3,1737,56],"tags":[2129,2110,478,2124,221],"class_list":["post-30553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-columns","category-environment","category-food-farming","tag-dasgupta","tag-mar-2022","tag-natural-capital","tag-rewilding","tag-verity-bastion"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themintmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themintmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themintmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themintmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themintmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.themintmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30553\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themintmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themintmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themintmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themintmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}