Guiding principles for rewilding

2019

University of Cumbria experts Dr Andrew Weatherall, Dr Lisa Fenton and Dr Ian Convery contributed a write up of their panel discussion on rewilding from the recent Timber Fest (three days of music, art and performance held in the heart of the National Forest to celebrate 'the transformative impact of forests'). The article featured online in the August 2019 edition of The Ecologist

1 This paper is concerned with the concept of rewilding. This nascent and increasingly popular notion has generated lively debate, from conservation biology to the social sciences. Section 1 will present the uses of the terms in academic texts so far. Section 2 will look at how one of the most prominent rewilding organizations in Europe -Rewilding Europe (RE) -attempts to use the theory in the implementation of rewilding projects, and section 3 will examine the tensions that Rewilding Europe 1 has encountered on the ground, specifically in the Romanian Danube Delta 2 . The last section will show how the difficulties encountered on the ground contribute to the emergent meaning of rewilding. There, I propose understanding rewilding in both ecological and semiotic terms.

Biological Conservation, 2019

Rewilding is emerging as a major issue in conservation. However, there are currently a dozen definitions of rewilding that include Pleistocene rewilding, island rewilding, trophic rewilding, functional rewilding and passive rewilding, and these remain fuzzy, lack clarity and, hence, hinder scientific discourse. Based on current definitions, it is unclear how the interventions described under the rewilding umbrella differ from those framed within the long-standing term 'restoration'. Even projects held up as iconic rewilding endeavours invariably began as restoration projects (e.g., Oostvaaderplassen; Pleistocene Park; the return of wolves to Yellowstone, etc.). Similarly, rewilding organisations (e.g., Rewilding Europe) typically began with a restoration focus. Scientific discourse requires precise language. The fuzziness of existing definitions of rewilding and lack of distinction from restoration practices means that scientific messages cannot be transferred accurately to a policy

Annual Review of Environment and Resources, 2013

Rewilding is being promoted as an ambitious alternative to current approaches to nature conservation. Interest is growing in popular and scientific literatures, and rewilding is the subject of significant comment and debate, outstripping scientific research and conservation practice. Projects and research are found the world over, with concentrations in Europe, North America, and on tropical islands. A common aim is to maintain, or increase, biodiversity, while reducing the impact of present and past human interventions through the restoration of species and ecological processes. The term rewilding has been applied to diverse concepts and practices. We review the historical emergence of the term and its various overlapping meanings, aims, and approaches, and illustrate this through a description of four flagship rewilding case studies. The science of rewilding has centered on three different historical baselines: the Pleistocene, the Holocene, and novel contemporary ecosystems. The ...

2019

foaf:name, 2019

The Dutch conservation area Oostvaardersplassen was initiated as a rewilding project within the Netherlands' protected area network. It came under the spotlight when management strategies and practices were criticized by scientists, conservation practitioners, and the public, from a number of perspectives-not all of which were compatible. This article reviews the origin, evolution, and application of the rewilding concept and examines the Oostvaardersplassen project as a case study. Our assessment demonstrates that the area was never an appropriate site for rewilding, beset by rudderless management, and led to a situation that was ecologically and ethically untenable. The case study is used to illustrate humanity's evolving role in environmental protection where advances in the understanding of ecological complexity, animal behavior, and sentience, cannot be ignored when addressing environmental protection, problem solving, and management. Finally, it lays out options for the future in the absence of the three Cs of rewilding, the Cores, Corridors, Carnivores, and introduces the concept of the fourth C, Compassion.

Environmental Values, 2018

In this paper, I (1) offer a general introduction of rewilding and (2) situate the concept in environmental philosophy. In the first part of the paper, I work from definitions and typologies of rewilding that have been put forth in the academic literature. To these, I add secondary notions of rewilding from out- side the scientific literature that are pertinent to the meanings and motivations of rewilding beyond its use in a scientific context. I defend the continued use of rewilding as a single term, despite its seemingly disparate usages, and I advance a clustered concept of eight overlapping characteristics as a way to conceptualise these. I argue that this breadth helps in understanding the wider interest in rewilding as an emerging environmental phenomenon. In the paper’s second part, I turn to three key issues in environmental philosophy in order to connect rewilding with the historic themes of: (1) the exclusion of humans from wild or wilderness places, (2) the ontological purity of wilderness areas through their non-human origins and history, and (3) cultural landscapes and notions of place. I suggest that rewilding carries on some of the main themes of the wilderness debate, but considering rewilding broadly allows tensions and novel questions to manifest that are important to how rewilding should be discussed and understood going forward.

Sustainability

The vision of rewilding is to return ecosystems to a “natural” or “self-willed” state with trophic complexity, dispersal (and connectivity) and stochastic disturbance in place. The concept is gaining traction, particularly in Europe where significant land abandonment has taken place in recent years. However, in reality, the purest form of rewilding (Rewilding Max) is constrained by a number of context-specific factors whereby it may not be possible to restore the native species that form part of the trophic structure of the ecosystem if they are extinct (for example, mammoths, Mammuthus spp., aurochs, Bos taurus primigenius). In addition, populations/communities of native herbivores/predators may not be able to survive or be acceptable to the public in small scale rewilding projects close to areas of high human density or agricultural land. Therefore, the restoration of natural trophic complexity and disturbance regimes within rewilding projects requires careful consideration if the...

Geoforum, 2018

Highlights: • At the project level, rewilding is interpreted and implemented in a variety of ways • Rewilding projects are distinguished by place-based, adaptive, flexible approaches • Projects focus on avoiding failure; policy focuses on producing evidence of success • Transforming rewilding to best-practice policy risks loss of adaptive practices

2007

This paper reviews the emerging wild land policy in the United Kingdom-in England and Wales in particular-and the environmental, social, political and economic drivers that make extensive protected wild land areas a possibility in what is otherwise a crowded and intensively developed island nation. Various future scenarios for wild land and rewilding in England and Wales are described including some warnings about the threats from renewable energy developments. Should there develop a strong political will, the paper concludes that there remains a core of significant wild lands in key areas that can be built on to create a spatially continuous network of wilder areas for the benefit of people and wildlife.