What Rewilding Actually Means
Launch library · evergreen read
Rewilding generally refers to restoring natural processes and, where appropriate, missing species to a landscape, with the specific aim of allowing an ecosystem to become more self sustaining over time, requiring less ongoing, direct human management than more conventional conservation approaches that continue actively managing a landscape indefinitely.
This can involve reintroducing species that were once present in an area but have since been lost, allowing natural disturbance processes like flooding or fire to operate more freely again, or simply stepping back and allowing vegetation and wildlife to develop with considerably less direct human intervention than had previously been the case.
Rewilding projects vary enormously in scale, from a relatively small area allowed to regenerate naturally through to large landscape scale efforts involving the reintroduction of significant wildlife species, but the underlying philosophy remains broadly consistent: trusting natural processes to do much of the genuine restoration work themselves, given enough time and space.