Carrie Symonds and the cult of rewilding

Carrie Symonds is to join the Aspinall Foundation as its new head of communications, in a move very much on-brand for the Prime Minister’s squeeze. Symonds has been credited with Boris Johnson’s metamorphosis from pro-liberty, free market Brexiteer to environmentalist — a strategy that she may have spotted as working rather well for disgraced former Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi, who changed his image from that of a love rat to rat lover, frequently sharing snaps of himself with adorable animals on Instagram. 

So what will Carrie’s call to the wild entail? The Aspinall Foundation works with conserving and rewilding endangered animals, and runs two centres in the UK, whilst also collaborating with others in Europe, with the intention of helping and releasing enough animals to be able to close the centres within 25 years. A noble ambition with so much of the world’s wildlife in danger from loss of habitat, climate change, or finding itself as an entrée on the menu of London’s latest pop up restaurant. 

Conservation work for endangered species has become something of a cause celebre for, well, celebs, and rewilding in particular certainly interests a section of the UK’s urban population for whom seeing a cow constitutes a brush with nature.