New rewilding project teaches tour guides to offer fresh look at travel

Level: Advanced

1
  Warmer
Put these places in order of how natural it is for animals and plants to live there (1 = not natural,
5 = completely natural). Give reasons for your choice.
1. a. farms

2. b. forests

3. c. zoos

4. d. safari parks

5. e. parks

2
  Key words
Fill the gaps in the sentences using these key words from the text.

bison    carnivore    encounter    ethics    extractive
geek    handful    herbivore    intake    rejuvenate
remote    resettlement    rewilding    roam    sustainability

1. is the process of restoring an area of land to its natural state.

2. If people something such as an organization, system or place,

they make it good or effective again.

3. If a place is described as , it is a long way from towns or people.

4. If you a wild animal, you meet it by chance somewhere.

5. A/An is a large wild animal like a cow with long hair and a large
head.

6. industries take raw materials from the earth.

7. is the process of using methods that do not harm the

environment.

8. A/An is all the people who join a course at the same time.

9. is the process of moving people from one area to another.

10. A/An is an animal that eats other animals.

11. A/An is a very small number of people or things.

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 New rewilding project teaches tour guides to offer fresh look at travel
Level: Advanced

12. When animals , they move from place to place without a

particular purpose.

13. A/An is an animal that eats only plants.

14. A/An is someone who is boring, especially because they are

very interested in only one thing, for example computers.

15. are the set of principles that people use to decide what is right
and what is wrong.

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 New rewilding project teaches tour guides to offer fresh look at travel
Level: Advanced
The environment and tourism to see how he’s protecting his sheep against
can benefit from a programme wolves? It’s focused on economic sustainability
within a wild area.”
teaching tour guides about
returning nature to a wilder state 5 To start, trainees attend online webinars and
can then apply to participate in a five-day field
Sophie Yeo training programme, which is scheduled to take
22 January, 2021 place later in 2021 in Italy’s Central Apennines.
There is a third stage for more specialized
1 Tour guides across the world are being taught training, including skills such as birding,
about rewilding as part of a new training photography and wildlife-tracking.
programme that aims to create economic
6 The programme’s first intake, of 40 students,
opportunities within wilder landscapes.
started in October 2020, with a second round
The training is run by not-for-profit organization
of training now under way. A third round is
Rewilding Europe, which is working to return
scheduled for November, 2021. Rewilding
nature to a wilder state across eight regions
Europe will measure the impact of its approach
of Europe by removing human management
by surveying the tourists taken on by their
and reintroducing certain species. This vision
graduates and comparing that with tourist
includes rejuvenating the tourism industry by experiences from before the training.
attracting visitors to remote areas, such as
the Southern Carpathians in Romania or the 7 While the programme focuses on Europe’s wild
Velebit Mountains on the Croatian coast, with areas, the current round of trainees includes 50
the possibility of encountering wild animals students from 20 countries, including the US,
including lynx and wolves – and creating jobs Hong Kong and the United Arab Emirates.
within local communities. 8 Petra Draškovič Pelc is a guide and
2 In 2017, Rewilding Europe set up the European photographer from Slovenia, who graduated
Safari Company, a travel agency designed after the first round of training. She works in
to bring tourists to its rewilding projects. the Kočevsko region, where she says nature
It now runs 40 safari packages, including has been left to return to a wilder state since
bison-tracking in Poland’s Oder Delta and the resettlement of the Gottschee people during
bear-watching in Croatia. Its operations the Second World War. Lynx were reintroduced
manager, Aukje van Gerven, who is based in 1973. “I liked the idea of connecting to
in the Netherlands and is running the training enthusiastic individuals who work in tourism
programme, says tourism can help to replace across Europe, to bring new knowledge to my
the income once generated through extractive guests and to explain nature and its functions
jobs, such as forestry. better,” she said.

3 “In all the rewilding areas we work in, there are 9 While the UK may have fewer wild carnivores,
villages and towns, where people are living and it still has a handful of trainees who hope to bring
working,” she said. “If it goes wild, it means this rewilding approach to their work, including
there shouldn’t be any more forestry there, and participants from Somerset, Cambridge and the
in most of them, there’s a lot less hunting than Knepp Estate in West Sussex.
in the past. So how do the people in that area 10 Knepp is among the best-known examples of
survive?” For van Gerven, the training is not rewilding in the UK: longhorn cattle, Tamworth
just about creating jobs in tourism but teaching pigs and Exmoor ponies now roam what was
guides how to forge links between rewilded once a 1,400-hectare farm. Rina Quinlan,
landscapes and the community. a self-described “large herbivore geek” who
works there as a seasonal guide, is enrolled
4 “If I go wolf-watching with my clients,” she said,
in the current training scheme. She is looking
“am I literally just going wolf-trekking, or will
forward to learning about the ethics of wildlife
I visit the local honey producer to see how
tourism and how to tell better stories about
they are using fencing to make sure the bears
rewilding to the tourists that will eventually
in the area are not eating the honey the bees
visit the estate.
are producing? Will I visit the local shepherd,
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 New rewilding project teaches tour guides to offer fresh look at travel
Level: Advanced
11 “With rewilding, it’s not just about the individual
species, although that’s definitely a highlight of
any tour,” she said. “I think this idea that you’re
visiting this landscape – and that it’s part of a
wider picture – is something I haven’t found in
the UK, in terms of training.”
© Guardian News and Media 2021
First published in The Guardian, 22/01/2021

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 New rewilding project teaches tour guides to offer fresh look at travel
Level: Advanced

3
  Comprehension check
Answer the questions using information from the article.
1. Why are tour guides being taught about rewilding?

2. What will attract tourists to remote areas?

3. What type of jobs could tourism replace in areas where rewilding projects have been introduced?

4. According to Aukje van Gerven, what does the training programme aim to teach tourist guides?

5. What kind of skills could be included in the third stage of the training programme?

6. When were lynx reintroduced to the Kočevsko region of Slovenia?

7. How does Petra Draškovič Pelc plan to bring new knowledge to visitors to her region?

8. What types of animal roam across one of the rewilded areas in the UK?

9. What did the Knepp Estate use to be?

10. What type of animals is Rina Quinlan particularly interested in?

4
  Using key language

Match the verbs in the left-hand column with the nouns or noun phrases in the right-hand column.
1. attract a. income

2. create b. an old industry

3. set up c. the impact of something

4. generate d. jobs

5. attend e. a new company

6. rejuvenate f. links between organizations or people

7. forge g. visitors

8. measure h. an online webinar

5
  Discussion
Discuss these statements.
• “Reintroducing carnivores like wolves and lynx is irresponsible because they could kill farm animals.”
• “No tourism at all is better than too much tourism.”
• “All countries need wild areas so that animals and plants can live and grow without human
interference.”
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 New rewilding project teaches tour guides to offer fresh look at travel
Level: Advanced

6
  In your own words
The text refers to rewilding projects in Croatia, Poland, Romania, Slovenia and the UK. Find further
examples online of rewilding, either in your country or in another country not mentioned in the
text. Write a short paragraph (up to 150 words) to describe the projects and the animals they will
reintroduce. If relevant, refer to the number of people involved in the project or projects and the
potential costs.

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 New rewilding project teaches tour guides to offer fresh look at travel
Level: Advanced – Teacher’s notes

Article summary: The article describes how

rewilding certain areas might encourage Key:
tourism and bring economic growth to those 1. rewilding
areas. 2. rejuvenate
3. remote
Time: 60 minutes 4. encounter
5. bison
Skills: Reading, Speaking, Writing 6. extractive
7. sustainability
Language focus: Vocabulary 8. intake
9. resettlement
Materials needed: One copy of the
10. carnivore
worksheet per student
11. handful
12. roam
13. herbivore
Note: The difference between safari parks 14. geek
and zoos is that most zoos cage animals
15. ethics
for exhibition, whereas safari parks let their
animals roam free resembling a real wildlife
environment. 3. Comprehension check

The answers given are only suggested answers and

students may correctly answer the questions in different
1. Warmer ways, e.g. in number 3, they may say ‘jobs which took
things from the forests’, and in number 7, they may say
There is no correct answer to this activity as the order ‘by helping them to understand nature’ or similar.
will depend on each student’s individual ideas. Check
that students understand the meanings of the words. Key:
Make sure that students give reasons for their choice. 1. to create economic opportunities within wilder
You could also ask students to think of at least one landscapes
advantage and one disadvantage for each place. 2. the possibility of encountering wild animals
For example, In zoos, animals can’t roam free but 3. extractive jobs such as forestry
at least they’re safe from poachers. 4. how to forge links between rewilded landscapes and
the community
2. Key words 5. birding, photography and wildlife-tracking
6. in 1973
Ask students to do the exercise individually and 7. by explaining nature and its functions better
then compare their answers in pairs or small groups. 8. longhorn cattle, Tamworth pigs and Exmoor ponies
Encourage students to use some of this vocabulary 9. a 1,400-hectare farm
actively by asking them questions such as ‘What are 10. large herbivores
the advantages and disadvantages of living in a remote
area?’, ‘Can you think of any examples of people 4. Using key language
who are geeks?’ and ‘Have you ever encountered
a dangerous animal in the countryside?’ The words Students could be asked to do this exercise individually
carnivore and herbivore are included in the text, but you and then compare their answers in pairs. Point out that
could also introduce the word for an animal (or person) if you measure the impact of something, you find out
that eats ‘everything’ – omnivore. exactly what effect it has had. Ask students if they have
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 New rewilding project teaches tour guides to offer fresh look at travel
Level: Advanced – Teacher’s notes

attended an online webinar and, if so, to describe what

was discussed during the webinar. Ask them what would
help to create jobs in their town or city and which old
industries could be rejuvenated.

Key:
1. g
2. d
3. e
4. a
5. h
6. b
7. f
8. c

5. Discussion

Allow students time to note down their ideas about each

statement and encourage them to say why they agree or
disagree with each one.

6. In your own words

Entering the phrase ‘rewilding in … [their country]’ in a

search engine will enable students to find a large number
of links to websites that give information about this
topic. Encourage them, if possible, to include statistics
in their report. This activity is probably best done as a
homework task.

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