I HAVE a beaver in my bonnet. The source of this strange condition is a revolutionary idea spreading across the UK, one that could transform our landscapes and collective futures. Its name: rewilding.

Have you ever driven across our moorlands in North and West Yorkshire and thought, this is the way nature intends the land to be? A peaty world of heather and mud, not without its own beauty and grandeur from a human perspective, but relatively sparse in terms of the species it supports. Nature, however, if we let such landscapes grow wild, has other ideas.

Long ago, before global warming and our current climate emergency, huge swathes of the UK were wild forest and wetland, supporting an incredible density of creatures and plants. We humans traded that Eden-like world as the price for our flawed conception of progress through toxic industrialism and the development of a consumer society.

How ironic then – like naughty children forced to run crying home to Mummy – that we as a species are obliged by the climate crisis we created to seek help from our only real mother, nature.

Recently the think tank and pressure group Rewilding Britain produced a ground-breaking report on how our Emerald Isle could shine anew.

They have proposed that a quarter of the UK’s land be restored to nature, making a massive contribution towards cutting the nation’s carbon emissions to zero, simply through rewilding

Other benefits include reducing flood risks and creating huge numbers of jobs.

The plan is actually a continuation of the status quo with a novel twist. Rewilding Britain is calling for billions of pounds in farm subsidies to be redirected towards creating native woodlands and meadows and restoring peat bogs and salt marshes. If ever there was a win-win proposal, this is it. Wildlife would expand, farmers would not lose money and food production need not be threatened.

Currently public subsidies to landowners and farmers total £3bn a year, with a pitiful 13% going to environmental schemes. Rewilding Britain’s plan anticipates £1.9bn used for holding back climate disaster and helping our native wildlife to thrive. They estimate the scheme would create 2m hectares (4.94m acres) of new woodland and 2m hectares of species-rich meadows, and ensure full protection of the UK’s 2m hectares of peat bogs and heaths.

The payback would be that these ecosystems would absorb and store carbon dioxide equivalent to 10% of the UK’s annual emissions. Link that to a massive growth of renewable energy through targeted state investment – a cornerstone of current Labour and Green Party thinking – and renationalisation of energy providers so they no longer squander the earth’s future for shareholders’ profits, and we might be heading in the right direction.

However, much as I applaud the proposals of Rewilding Britain, it is hard not to fear they are naive about the opposition such a scheme faces. After all, Britain is owned by powerful people with huge resources to back up their claim to exploit our country in any way they find profitable.

In World War 2 unproductive farms were confiscated by the state and re-assigned to new managers to aid the national good.

Is it too far-fetched to take the same approach to landowners who do not get on board with rewilding? The current climate crisis threatens every one of us, rich and poor. We need a new consensus, as occurred in wartime, to defeat the enemy of catastrophic climate change.

I predict rewilding will be seen as common sense within a decade or too. What’s not to like? We sit back and let nature take the strain and gain all the benefits. All we need do is change our collective mindset when it comes to land ownership and embrace the reality that Mother Earth belongs to us all, not just privileged, hereditary elites who have failed as custodians of our land and future.

How will we know this change has occurred? We’ll hear it in the rustle of new leaves, the cheep of flocking birds, see it in dazzles of blossom and wild flowers. If we’re really lucky we might even see it in the lodge of a neighbourhood beaver.