As we start talking about the Sixth Mass Extinction (Barnosky et al. 2011), it feels like conservation is running out of time and scrambling for solutions. The focus has started to shift toward the idea of ecosystem resilience, and rewilding is one permutation of this new quest that raises a number of issues.
From a strictly biological perspective, the rewilding policy is not necessarily apt to its proclaimed goals. First of all, the concept of returning to a ‘base’ state is problematic, given that environment does not exist in a balanced state of harmony, but rather dynamic stable states (Botkin 1992). While building resilience helps ecosystems adapt to climate change, returning to pre-industrial or Pleistocene-era interactions may not suffice. If we were to restore to a geologically relevant time, why not extend that logic and restore to the early Eocene? (The Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum is often compared to our current climate change scenario, and resulted in large-scale benthic extinctions and the subsequent propagation of mammals.)
Additionally, rewilding could equate to the voluntary propagation of invasive species. The ultimate goal of rewilding to reproduce the ecosystem functions and species interactions of yesteryear; rewilding assumes that when functionally equivalent species roam the old stomping grounds of their extinct cousins, the old trophic web will snap back into place. However, species introductions can have huge unintended consequences, as a closely related species may not adopt the same ecological function. This not only ties into the academic discussion on invasive species and translocation of species (Thomas 2011), but also into deeper cultural fears of monsters and uncontrollable consequences (Oliveira-Santos and Fernandez 2010). The prospect of cloning extinct megafauna like the woolly mammoth extends the theme of monsters; should we resurrect these animals or mourn them and move on?
Rewilding also creates problems related to the location-specific quality of the rewilding project. The designation of where these projects will take place enters into a society's management of its own space; rewilding becomes an economic problem, wildlife to be squeezed in with other priorities for territorial development. A rewilded landscape becomes a term in an economic balance sheet: outgoing agricultural land (lost production), incoming revenue from ecotourism and ecosystem services. Furthermore, where does a wild environment belong on a nation's territory, a socially constructed space? And how to negotiate that new border between the human and animal nations? The inside/outside dimension to rewilding adds to the othering of wilderness; cohabitation of humans megafauna in close proximity might heighten the potential for human-animal conflict.
Oostvaardersplaassen injects some additional issues, as the first European rewilding project. Heck cattle were initially a Nazi project; aurochs had been heavily featured in proto-German runes and were closely tied to Aryan philosophies of racial and genetic purity. Brothers Heinz and Lutz Heck, directors of zoos in Berlin and Munich, tried to genetically purify cattle, until they resembled the aurochs that roamed Europe in times of the supposed Aryan race. Heck cattle would later be introduced into Oostvaarderland as substitutes for the aurochs, which were hunted to extinction in 1627. Is it possible to disentangle the product from its creator? Futhermore, the images of dead animals during the yearly cullings painted a violent image of wild nature, that does not correspond to the idyllic myth of the state of nature.
Additionally, rewilding argues for a specific conception of nature, relying on wilderness. Although its theory originates in the US, we are interested to see if the rewilding concept has been Europeanised, given that man has largely fashioned European landscapes to the purpose of progress. European rewilding is therefore a slightly different project from that we see in the United States (restoring megafauna to unoccupied areas), drastically transforming intensive ecosystems, like abandoned cropland, into what we perceive to be a healthy ecosystem: wild and diverse. The desire to recreate a lost state of nature can be described as a romantic pursuit of Eden. An aesthetic project, rewilding therefore also engages in a narrative of control, trying to create a space separate from man, but by man's machines and in his own vision. So, rewilding has a complex relationship to environmental agency: the desire to restore pre-Anthropocene processes may be viewed as an attempt to empower a disenfranchised agent, yet might also simply be another iteration of human control.
A couple other considerations arise, which don't necessarily fit into the above. First, where are the women? In our research, we have found that much of the discussion surrounding rewilding is largely dominated by men. This may be related to the fact that wilderness itself is already a gendered concept. Also, from a more pragmatic standpoint, the funding of rewilding is an interesting question. Does rewilding come out of the public budget? How does that work if most of the impetus behind rewilding comes from non-governmental agencies?
Finally, as an attempt to fundamentally change the face of European landscapes, rewilding is also a public debate. Bringing the different actors in the controversy of rewilding Europe to consensus will necessitate a dialogue between the various stakeholders, experts, governments and concerned populations: a new Parliament around the rewilding, the issue of concern. The outcome of this discussion, whether or not rewilding is implemented on a large-scale in Europe, will produce new understandings of how Europeans view their relationship to the natural environment, and where that relationship is going in the Anthropocene.
Source for Part 2:
Daniel Botkin, Discordant Harmonies: A New Ecology for the Twenty-first Century. Oxford University Press, 2006.
