Rewilding: a quiet revolution
All over the world conservationists and ecologists are moving toward a new guide for how to combat climate change. Coined by author and environmentalist Dave Foreman, the term ‘rewilding’ is a new perspective on land management that has been steadily gaining ground since the 1990s. Today what was once a marginal opinion has now become mainstream amongst ecologists and conservationists.
What is rewilding?
To understand what rewilding is, it helps to first understand what it is not. A rewilded area of land is not necessarily the same as a nature reserve. The latter is used for very specific aspects of conservation. A rare bird species can only thrive in one specific environment, so that environment is preserved, or certain flowers can only grow in one specific moor, so said moor is kept free of other plants and wildlife that might damage them.
This is certainly invaluable work, but many argue that it misses the point — that conservationists are essentially choosing some animals and plant species over others. A nature reserve, by definition, preserves a habitat in a kind of stasis. It’s ‘natural environment’ is in fact highly cultivated by us.
Rewilding has a different aim. The basic idea is that nature does not need our intervention to thrive, it is perfectly capable of doing it itself. Our input should be…
