A commentary on rewilding in Europe

Abstract

As relationships between people and nature are being reassessed, not least as concerns about climate change gather increasing momentum, so a range of environmental and conservation themes are moving up public and political agendas. Rewilding, simply defined as increasing the role of natural processes within landscapes, is one such theme. This commentary paper outlines the variety of definitions and origins of the concept of rewilding, illustrates some of the elements of rewilding within Europe, and offers some general reflections on the rewilding process. The paper suggests that although many benefits have been claimed for moves to increase the role of natural processes within landscapes and environments, rewilding faces several challenges, in that it means different things to different people, public perceptions of rewilding can generate unease, hostility, and concern and it has only limited scientific support. At the same time, there is no clear statutory policies to guide the rewilding process. As such, rewilding organisations may increasingly look to communication and public relations to garner public and financial support for their cause.

Developing guidelines and a theory of change framework to inform rewilding application

“…It has been suggested that a lack of clarity regarding the concept of rewilding (e.g. definitions, key principles) remains a barrier to rewilding application (Coźar-Escalante, 2019;Dandy and Wynne-Jones, 2019;Jones and Comfort, 2020). Some progress is being made towards consensus, as demonstrated by the IUCN CEM guiding principles and definition, which highlight social and ecological goals and implications for rewilding practice (Carver et al, 2021).…”

To capitalise on the Decade of Ecosystem Restoration, we need institutional redesign to empower advances in restoration ecology and rewilding

“…Rewilding has emerged at the intersection of advances in transdisciplinary conservation science and pioneer practice and is the subject of a burgeoning scientific and public discourse, particularly in Western Europe (Jepson & Blythe, 2020). Rewilding lacks a simple definition (Lorimer et al, 2015) and means different things to different people (Jones & Comfort, 2020. Nonetheless, a set of rewilding principles is coming into being (see Table 1) and in a recent commentary, Svenning (2020) argued that rewilding should be central to the ‘massive restoration efforts needed to overcome the global biodiversity crisis and enhancing the biosphere's capacity to mitigate climate change’ (p. 657).…”

The policy consequences of defining rewilding

“…In addition, rewilding has attracted significant attention by stakeholders such as land use policy makers and landowners (e.g. Wentworth and Alison 2016), not all of which has been positive (Jones and Comfort 2019;BBC 2019).…”

“…Mirroring the diversity of definitions in the scientific literature, these organisations take different approaches to rewilding. In North America, the focus is often on protecting carnivores in large, connected landscapes (Wildlands Network 2020), whereas European approaches focus on passive rewilding on abandoned farmland and on reintroducing large herbivores (Jones and Comfort 2019). In Australia, rewilding projects emphasise the restoration of native predator populations and small mammal communities by controlling invasive predators (Sweeney et al 2019).…”