Wild plant foraging in early twenty-first century Britain: implications for sustainable extraction, conservation and the contemporary valuation of nature

Globally, wild plants face significant threats from habitat loss, land transformations and climate change and remain under-assessed for conservation purposes. Within this category, wild food plants are increasingly viewed as having an integral role to play in future-proofing global food security due to their genetic diversity, resilience to pathogens and adaptations to local environmental conditions. While they continue to provide essential sources of nutrition to communities around the world, trends in gathering wild food plants in post-industrial countries in the Global North indicate it is their cultural value that is gaining significance. Research has observed a resurgence in foraging among a younger demographic of predominantly urban professionals, influenced by global gastronomic and health trends, and a desire for novel ways of connecting to nature and cultural heritage. As an emergent social trend foraging is a unique form of socio-environmental practice with implications for sustainability, human-nature connections, and how nature is valued. Drawing on interdisciplinary theories and methods, this thesis empirically explores the implications of foraging to conservation, and its significance to people and nature in a coastal region of southeast England. Firstly, I identify the different forager groups visible today through an ethnobotanical assessment of their knowledge and practices. I show how these practices reflect historical and contemporary recreation and food traditions which are responding to socio-environmental change. Secondly, I examine foraging field courses as an experience of nature in the context of conservation strategies. I employ ethnography to analyse the experiences of participants on foraging field courses identifying as 'foodies'. Contrary to stereotypes in the media, that implicate 'foodies' in unsustainable foraging practices, I argue that their relationships to wild foods, when examined through the experience of learning to forage, complicate the view of what connection to nature looks like; this suggests new opportunities with which to view foraging as a sustainable and direct form of human-nature experience. Thirdly, I examine the environmental impact of foraging using a threat assessment methodology to assess the risks of commercial foraging to wild food plants, finding that ecological risks are presently low but social and cultural risk factors are significant barriers to longer-term sustainability of foraging. Finally, I examine these sociocultural barriers drawing on ethnographic analysis to explore the political-ecological issues of foraging locally. I suggest that these conflicts highlight contrasting ethical positions in relation to the role of humans in nature and propose a way to bridging the divide between foragers and authorities through co-production of a voluntary foraging code. Overall, this research provides insights into foraging as an emergent social trend arguing that it has significant value to conservation, people and sustainable resource use.