Rewilding is all about giving nature the opportunity to recover on its own by creating large core nature areas, connecting them up with wildlife corridors, and returning important missing species, known as keystone species.
These ideas are fundamental to Rewilding Sussex and our new logo. At the heart of Rewilding Sussex’s mission is to help connect people and nature. We want wildlife moving between Sussex’s nature and rewilding areas as freely and successfully as possible. We also want people to be doing that as well. The bridge in our logo, and the people and wildlife using it, is there to capture that.
We also want to help return keystone species to Sussex. The term ‘keystone species’ comes from the keystone of a bridge, it sits at the top and holds the two sides of the bridge together. The beaver is also a great example of a keystone species and ecosystem engineer. By damming rivers it increases wetland which is a very important habitat for a lot of species. We’re delighted that beavers are soon to be returned to Sussex at Knepp Wildlands and the National Trust’s Valewood!
We’ve also included the pine marten as another key species we would like to see returned to Sussex (if viable). The pine marten is an important predator of squirrels, and some really interesting research in Ireland and Scotland has highlighted that pine marten can help red squirrels survive alongside grey squirrels. This could be described as “an enemy who is a bigger enemy of another enemy can also be my friend” (confusing, we know!).
Our logo is complex and detailed. We know logos are supposed to be simple and an easily memorable symbol, but we’ve chosen to tell a story and ‘keep it complex’- much like the ecological systems that rewilding aims to restore.
People and nature are wonderfully diverse in our needs and desires, roles, and functions, and we wanted to capture that in our logo. We’ve loved the creative process of it all coming together, and we are hugely grateful to Sarah Mitchell for bringing it to life for us. We hope you like it too and please let us know what you think!
By Chris Sandom