Start with the scrub

When you walk into a fell valley, the first sign of rewilding is often not a dramatic animal but the quiet spread of scrub. Tidy, grazed pastures give way to thorny thickets, and that change is the foundation of everything else. Look for hawthorn, blackthorn, gorse, bramble, and the first birch and willow seedlings pushing up through bracken. These are nurse plants: they shelter tree saplings, insects and nesting birds from wind and browsing.

• Thorny nurseries: dense hawthorn and blackthorn protect oak, rowan and ash seedlings from deer and sheep.
• Gorse and bracken: gorse fixes nitrogen and provides early nectar; bracken can indicate past heavy grazing, but its spread can also shade out young trees.
• Birch and willow: these pioneer trees arrive first on wet ground. Their catkins feed insects, and their roots stabilise beck banks.

If you see a mosaic of heights and ages — not a uniform carpet of heather or grass — the valley is beginning to regenerate.

Deadwood: the slow pulse of a valley

Deadwood is easy to miss, but it is one of the richest signs of a recovering ecosystem. Fallen trunks, snapped branches, standing dead trees and root plates all tell you that the valley is not being tidied away. Fungi soften the wood; beetles bore into it; woodpeckers, bats and pine martens use the holes. A nurse log — a fallen trunk left to rot — becomes a seedbed for mosses, ferns and even tree seedlings.

• Fungal brackets and mushrooms: look for birch polypore, beefsteak fungus and honey fungus on standing deadwood.
• Beetle exit holes: tiny round or oval holes in bark show saproxylic beetles at work.
• Woodpecker excavations: rectangular or round holes, often on decaying trunks, mean greater spotted or green woodpeckers are feeding.

In a rewilding valley, deadwood is left in place. If you see logs stacked or burned, the ecosystem is still being managed rather than left to its own slow cycles.

Tracks and signs of predators

Predators are often the last piece to return, so their tracks are a strong signal. You may not see an otter or pine marten, but you can read their presence. Spraint — otter droppings — is left on flat rocks or grass tussocks beside a beck, often with fish bones and a distinctive sweet, musky smell. Pine marten scat is similar but often contains fur, feathers and berry pips, and is left on logs, walls or track junctions.

• Prints: otter prints show five toes and a wide pad, often in mud or sand. Badger prints have a broad kidney-shaped pad and five toes in a line. Fox prints are narrower and more diamond-shaped.
• Kills and pluckings: piles of feathers, plucked fur or a half-eaten fish on a bank show where a predator has fed. Raptors leave pellets of fur and bone beneath a favourite perch.
• Scratching and scent-marking: badgers leave shallow latrines; foxes leave scats on prominent rocks or tussocks; pine martens scratch bark and leave scent marks.

Take care not to disturb these signs. A quick photo and a note of location is enough.

Water, wetland and the return of natural chaos

Water is the engine of a rewilding valley. In a recovering beck, you will see pools, riffles, undercut banks, fallen branches and natural woody debris. If beavers are present — in a few carefully monitored catchments — you may find dams, canals and gnawed stumps. Even without beavers, a healthy beck behaves messily: it erodes one bank, deposits gravel on another, and floods onto a wetland in winter.

• Dragonflies and damselflies: their presence suggests clean water and abundant insect life.
• Amphibians: frog spawn, toad tadpoles and newt larvae in shallow pools are good signs.
• Gnawed wood: beaver-felled trees show a characteristic hourglass shape and tooth marks. Look for canals leading away from the water.

If the beck is straight, canalised and bare of wood, rewilding is still a distant prospect. Natural water is messy, and that mess is life.

Reading the valley over time

Rewilding is not a single event but a slow process. To read it, look for age classes: seedling, sapling, young tree, mature tree, deadwood. A valley with only mature trees and no seedlings is not regenerating. A valley with a mix of ages is. Look for browse lines — the height to which deer or sheep have nibbled — and for dung, wallows and trampled paths. High grazing pressure keeps scrub in check; low pressure lets it expand.

• Compare valley bottom with hillside: wetter, lower ground often recovers first because it is harder for livestock to reach.
• Use photo points: take a photo from the same spot each season or year. Change is easier to see in comparison.
• Note seasonal signs: spring birdsong, summer flowers, autumn fungi, winter tracks. Each season reveals a different part of the story.

Remember that rewilding is not always linear. A dry summer, a hard winter or a disease outbreak can set things back. Patience is part of the skill.

Skills for the curious walker

You do not need to be a biologist to read a valley. You need quiet feet, sharp eyes and a willingness to look twice. Walk slowly, pause often, and use binoculars to watch without disturbing. Keep to paths where erosion is a risk, and follow the leave no trace principle: take nothing but photographs, leave nothing but footprints. Record what you see — a notebook, a phone note or a sketch — and return to the same spots. Over time, you will build your own picture of how a valley recovers.

The signs are all there: scrub, deadwood, tracks, water and time. Learn to read them, and every fell walk becomes a lesson in wildness returning.