A decade ago, the concept of rewilding captured the public imagination as a response to the growing seriousness of the climate and biodiversity crisis. The word seemed to encapsulate not only what needs to be done, but where it has all gone wrong; after all, we live in a world that has been “dewilded”.
The word “rewilding” originated in the United States in the 1980s, used by conservationists concerned with the ‘three Cs’ – cores, corridors and carnivores – but it has since taken on meaning in the popular lexicon as pretty much anything that might give nature a boost. Media references to rewilding include everything from planting trees and bee-friendly gardening to more traditional forms of nature conservation such as reintroducing missing species or removing those which are invasive.
Rewilding has also been subject to a backlash. Early proponents of the idea walked back their support as opposition grew from certain quarters. Rewilding was portrayed as no different from land abandonment, while its emphasis on self-sustaining ecosystems irked those who feel that human management is, and always will be, needed in order for biodiversity to flourish. For some, it was an emphasis on carnivore reintroduction that made it untouchable, believing such ideas have no place in long-domesticated landscapes like Ireland.
Many conservationists demurred. Rewilding means nothing, offers nothing new, is not applicable to us given our history and landscape and is a word best avoided lest it antagonise those whose support is needed if we are to reverse the growing tide of extinction. Rewilding has even been accused of being “anti-people”.
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All of this, however, overlooks the fact that rewilding is a concept not only founded in ecological science but one that is also now firmly rooted in approaches, academic as well as practical, to addressing the biodiversity crisis. A milestone came in 2021 with the publication of 10 “guiding principles for rewilding” by a group of 33 academics in the peer-reviewed journal Conservation Biology.
In this paper, the authors also proposed a definition of rewilding as “the process of rebuilding, following major human disturbance, a natural ecosystem by restoring natural processes and the complete or near complete food web at all trophic levels as a self-sustaining and resilient ecosystem with biota [species] that would have been present had the disturbance not occurred”. The paper emphasised this would require a “paradigm shift in the relationship between humans and nature”.
Steve Carver is professor of rewilding and wilderness science at the school of geography in the University of Leeds, UK, and was lead author of the aforementioned paper. He is also director of the Wildland Research Institute and co-chair of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s rewilding thematic group.
He says that in many respects the science of rewilding is “still in its infancy”, but that “in simple terms it’s giving nature the space and time to dictate its own ecological trajectory. It’s not based on some predetermined outcome, on what we want things to look like. There’s a distinction there to be made between rewilding and ecological restoration, where you could say that all rewilding is restoration but that not all restoration is rewilding”.
This points to one of the more persistent debates in this topic, as the field of ecological restoration has its own history, corpus of published research and institutional bodies, leading many to claim that rewilding has nothing additional to offer. Indeed, a number of analyses have been carried out into their differences and there can be little doubt that there is substantial overlap.
One study, published this year, concluded “the goals of ecological restoration and rewilding have a common scope: the recovery of ecosystems following anthropogenic degradation”. The two can therefore be seen as complementary and not in competition with one another. An example might be where worked out peatlands in the midlands are being rewetted. This will not restore the raised bog habitat that was there before industrial excavation as the damage has been too extensive. But, by repairing the hydrology, it is kick-starting ecological processes such as carbon storage while allowing new habitats to develop under their own steam. There is no defined end point. This is rewilding.
You’re looking at an approach where you’re trying to minimise as much as possible all human intervention and management … and you’re looking at self-organising; the philosophy that nature knows best
— Nathalie Pettorelli
Carver stresses that any approach needs to be “context specific”. He is adamant that rewilding does bring something new to the party. “Ecological restoration is human-led, nature-enabled. Us deciding what we want nature to do … whereas rewilding is more of an eco-centric approach which is nature-led and human-enabled.”
This eco-centric approach may be where rewilding succeeds in getting people’s backs up. The idea that nature should not be allowed to get ‘out of control’ or that land should ‘go wild’ has deep roots. Nevertheless, in challenging this mindset, rewilding has identified one of the leading drivers of biodiversity loss: humanity’s seeming inability to see healthy natural ecosystems as anything more than wasteland.
Carver says that he’s not happy that the word rewilding has been “hijacked” by some initiatives that he does not believe qualify (he says the idea you can rewild your lawn by not mowing is “nonsense”), but “it is here to stay and has very much found a home in Europe”.
This sentiment is echoed by Prof Nathalie Pettorelli at the Zoological Society of London and co-editor of the book Rewilding (Cambridge University Press, 2019) in which she wrote that rewilding represents a “transformative approach to conserving biodiversity”.
She tells me that “what’s different about it is that you’re looking at re-establishing natural processes. What you’re trying to do is to put those ecosystems which have been degraded in a situation where they’re getting more ecologically complex, which means more interaction between species, more self-sustaining … so you’re looking at an approach where you’re trying to minimise as much as possible all human intervention and management … and you’re looking at self-organising; the philosophy that nature knows best”.
Pettorelli says rewilding met early resistance within the academic community, with some refusing to use the word, but since then it has become established. “Rewilding can help to identify key questions around how you tackle degradation, how you recover nature, the pros and cons of various approaches,” she says.
Much of the debate has centred on nailing down an accepted definition, something Pettorelli believes still needs more work. “Trying to define rewilding as something that enables something to be what it should have been if the disturbance wasn’t there is really not helpful in the context of climate change.” Nevertheless, she says today it’s much clearer than it was. “If I remember 10 years ago it was not so easy to understand what people were talking about. Now, most people are familiar with the term and know the big principle that characterises rewilding.”
Like Carver, she stresses that we need to foster a range of approaches: “I don’t think we just need to do rewilding and nothing else. But what it does in comparison with what has been there before, is that it makes you think about an ecosystem instead of thinking about a species list.” She compares the philosophy to having a vintage car: if you are restoring the car, you are going to be concerned with getting all the original parts exactly right; with rewilding “you just want it to go!”.
Earlier this year, research led by scientists in Spain and Portugal suggested that 117 million hectares, or a quarter of the European land surface, “holds potential for rewilding” and, in so doing, can make a substantial contribution towards meeting existing biodiversity targets, such as under the EU’s Biodiversity Strategy.
The study highlighted large areas of Ireland which are sparsely populated. This, in turn, leads to questions about social acceptability of rewilding, which clearly requires engagement and participation from local communities if it is to succeed. But this is valid for any form of land use change or more traditional nature conservation and is hardly a challenge that is either new or unique to rewilding.
Indeed, the challenges across the board are steep, which is why radical ideas like rewilding are essential. As a tool for nature recovery, Pettorelli thinks “we’re on the right track. Rewilding has entered mainstream academia and a lot of people are using it as a way of thinking. Rewilding is becoming more inclusive and is giving people opportunities to engage at a local scale”.
She feels politicians need to be braver in taking more ambitious approaches, but “the general public and the scientific community are quite on board with rewilding”.
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