Rewilding Week: Time to walk the talk
This article, written by Paul Jepson from the University of Oxford, describes how in 2015 rewilding has moved from a fringe idea to a mainstream vision. He describes how rewilding has moved from a fringe idea to a mainstream vision.
George Monbiot’s rewilding manifesto has attracted wide media coverage, a new pressure group Rewilding Britain was launched, and the core ideas have been framed and validated in a raft of academic papers. If 2015 is to go down in history as the year when a 21st century conservation mind-set took form, then 2016 needs to be a year of ambition, a year when rewilding talk is transformed into strategies for action.
At its core rewilding envisions the restoration of ecosystem processes through reassembly of large animal populations, either through the reintroduction of lost species or their domestic analogues. In my mind this is a vision for our times, one that chimes with numerous trends in science and society – from the desire to connect ecology with the rise of Earth Systems science to the sense that UK nature is lacking in excitement. From a policy perspective, rewilding is a radical vision. This is because it represents a new paradigm that shifts the focus of conservation from composition (conserving units of nature in place) to function (reconstructing relationships between species in their ecological contexts). Introducing large free-ranging herbivores and carnivores to existing reserves would change the composition of species with uncertain outcomes thereby contravening the rational for their designation. Furthermore, the de-domestication of cattle or reintroduction of species such as boar and wolf rubs up against a raft of wider legislation relating to animal welfare, biohazards and public access and safety.