Rewilding

Pleistocene rewilding

Pleistocene rewilding is the (re)introduction of extant Pleistocene megafauna, or the close ecological equivalents of extinct megafauna, to restore ecosystem function. Advocates of the approach maintain that ecosystems where species evolved in response to Pleistocene megafauna but now lack large mammals may be in danger of collapse.^[55][56] Meanwhile critics argue that it is unrealistic to assume that ecological communities today are functionally similar to their state 10,000 years ago.

Trophic rewilding

Trophic rewilding is an ecological restoration strategy focused on restoring trophic interactions and complexity (specifically top-down and associated trophic cascades where a top consumer/predator controls the primary consumer population) through species (re)introductions, in order to promote self-regulating, biodiverse ecosystems.^[57][58]

Urban rewilding

Urban rewilding is a type of rewilding focused on the integration of nature into urban settings.^[59]

Yellowstone to Yukon

Formally launched in 1997, Yellowstone to Yukon (Y2Y) was a conservation initiative that envisioned a wide corridor of protected land stretching from Canada’s Yukon territory, through American national parks like Waterton and Glacier, all the way to the Greater Yellowstone ecoregion in the northern Rocky Mountains. ^[84] Promoters of the project worked to discourage building of roads and other human developments that would impede the movement of large predators like wolves and grizzly bears. Y2Y used lobbying and education to promote its mission and get the public involved. Organizers set up conferences between rewilding groups in Canada and the United States, facilitated dialogue between conservationists and Native American groups, and maintained high visibility for the project by featuring in newspapers like the New York Times and the Washington Post. Activists involved in the project successfully lobbied for 24 highway crossing structures in the Banff area, allowing for safer movement of wildlife across the Trans-Canadian highway. ^[85]

Y2Y inspired other conservation groups to focus more of their efforts on lobbying to persuade government action, and led to an increase in corridor planning across North America. The South Coast Wildlands Project successfully convinced the California State Parks Agency to buy a 700 acre tract slated for development. The Algonquin to Adirondack initiative, modeled after Y2Y, has focused research efforts on improving connectivity around the Great Lakes Region. Conservation groups from the United States and Canada have worked together to plan a series of marine priority areas from Baja California to the Bering Sea, allowing both nations to protect species of mutual concern. ^[86]

Protecting Predators

There have been multiple projects launched to protect North America’s carnivores, one of the main components of the ‘3 C’s’ approach to rewilding. Reed Noss, an early advocate for rewilding, began working on reserve designs as early as the 1980s to protect Florida’s largest predators: the Florida panther and the Florida black bear. Noss’ initial plan envisioned 60% of Florida’s land set aside for wildlife reserves, and proved so influential that the Florida State legislature set aside $3.2 billion to buy land for a network of reserves and corridors between them. ^[77]

At the same time, a group based in Washington D.C. called Defenders of Wildlife began promoting protection of predators across the country, including grizzly bears, wolves, and river otters. In 1987, they set up the Bailey Wildlife Foundation Wolf Compensation Trust to pay ranchers back for the loss of livestock due to predation in an attempt to raise support for rewilding among farmers, who are often some of the most vocal opponents of the conservation of large predators. In 1998, they launched another program to pay for fencing, alarms, and other methods that would protect livestock in a way that didn’t harm predators. However, this approach has been largely unsuccessful at bolstering the native wolf population because of continued shooting of wolves, both illegally and permitted by the USFWS. ^[77]

New York

Fresh Kills landfill, located on Staten Island, was once home to 150 million tons of trash. However, plans created between 2001 and 2006 reimagined it as a 2,200 acre park, the largest park built in the state of New York in over a century. Construction began in 2008 to restore the area back to its original wetland ecosystem, complete with open waterways, sweet-gum swamps, prairies, and meadows of wildflowers. Part of initial plans involved removing invasive reed species and replacing them native marsh grasses. The project is slated to take up to thirty years to complete, with the end goal of combining ecological restoration with recreational activities. ^[77]

While planning for Fresh Kills Park, New York State initiated an even more ambitious program focused on protecting the broader ecosystem around Staten Island by restoring the Hudson River. In 2005, the organizations involved came up with a few goals for the project: re-invigorating the river’s fisheries, improving water quality by removing contaminants, and preserving shoreline and forested habitats upriver. When the project is complete, it will affect fifty thousand acres containing six different habitat types. ^[77]

Mexico

In the Mexican state of Sonora, the Northern Jaguar Project bought 45,000 acres of land by 2007 devoted to protecting the northernmost breeding population of jaguars. The group also encouraged local people to help them monitor the population by offering a $500 reward for each photograph of a living cat taken by ranch owners who promised not to shoot jaguars on their property. In its first year, the program paid out $6,500 for photos of jaguars, mountain lions, and ocelots. ^[77]

Paseo Pantera/Mesoamerican Biological Corridor

In the early 1990s, the Wildlife Conservation Society proposed a plan for a major corridor project that would span from Southern Mexico down into Panama, connecting existing reserves, parks, and undisturbed forests of all seven Central American countries and the lower five Mexican states. They called the plan “Paseo Pantera,” or “the path of the panther,” named so because of the movement of mountain lions throughout the area. ^[77] The plan attracted a lot of controversy: indigenous peoples were concerned that their land would be taken from them to be converted into parks, and some activists claimed that the program was setting the environment above human needs. These arguments caused the project to be reviewed and refashioned. In 1997, the new plan, renamed the “Mesoamerican Biological Corridor,” was unveiled as a conservation project that also promoted the welfare of indigenous people and local economies. ^[77]

Despite the changes, the Mesoamerican Corridor still had some flaws, most notably with regard to land use. The plan necessitated reaching agreements with numerous villages to decide what zoning for protected areas meant for the local people, how it would be enforced, and where hunting and fishing would be allowed. Rural people were largely unimpressed with the vague nature of the outline, so progress was slow. In 2005, the Central American Free Trade Agreement promised to develop many of the same areas the Mesoamerican Corridor sought to protect, but conservationists refused to oppose the development for fear of losing funding. By 2006, hundreds of millions of dollars had been spent on preserving the corridor, but only one small protected area had been created. ^[77]

Costa Rica

Costa Rica’s Osa Peninsula is one of the most biodiverse places on the planet. In 1975, the Nature Conservancy worked with the Costa Rican government to create the first national park in the country: Corcovado. The park originally spanned 86,000 acres, nearly a third of the peninsula. The Nature Conservancy wanted to establish it as a refuge for the dozens of endemic species that occur in this small stretch of habitat. ^[77] However, the project has faced many setbacks since its establishment. Conservationists quickly realized that it was too small to protect many critical species, including the jaguar, peccary, and harpy eagle. Gold was discovered in Corcovado around the same time as the park was established, and some of the natural areas within the park were illegally destroyed by miners. Programs to engage local people in conservation efforts quickly failed because of a lack of funding, causing people living on the border to become increasingly hostile towards the project. Lack of financial resources caused many people to resort to poaching within the park’s borders or shooting jaguars that ate their crops. ^[77]

Conservation groups hoped to solve these problems by launching another initiative, the Osa Biological Corridor project. The plan was designed to enlarge currently protected areas on the peninsula, and hopes to devote $10 million to develop community support for rewilding by providing education programs and new jobs protecting the reserves. ^[77]

Argentina

In 1997, Douglas and Kris Tompkins created 'The Conservation Land Trust Argentina' with the goal of transforming the Iberá Wetlands. In 2018, thanks to a team of conservationists and scientists, and a donation of 195,094 ha (482,090 acres) of land by Kris Tompkins, an area was converted into a National Park, and jaguar (a species that had been extinct in the region for seven decades), anteaters and giant otters were reintroduced. A spin-off of the Tompkins Foundation, Rewilding Argentina, is an organization dedicated to the restoration of El Impenetrable National Park, in Chaco, Patagonia Park, in Santa Cruz, and the Patagonian coastal area in the province of Chubut, in addition to Iberá National Park.^[87]

Brazil

The red-rumped agouti and the brown howler monkey were reintroduced in Tijuca National Park (Rio de Janeiro state, Brazil), between 2010 and 2017 with the goal of restoring seed dispersal.^[88] Prior to the reintroductions, the national park did not have large or intermediate -sized seed dispersers, the increased dispersal of tree seeds following the reintroductions therefore had a significant effect on forest regeneration in the park.^[88] This is significant since the Tijuca National Park is part of heavily fragmented Atlantic Forest and there is potential to restore many more seed dispersal interactions if seed dispersing mammals and birds are reintroduced to forest patches where the tree species diversity remains high.^[89]

The Cerrado-Pantanal Ecological Corridors Project was proposed in the 1990s to restore connectivity between two of Brazil’s core reserves: Emas National Park and the Pantanal, one of the world’s largest wetlands. ^[77] It made significant progress in the early 2000s because of plans to conserve mainly areas with low human density. Another reason for wider support was because of a fund started to compensate farmers that lost livestock to the big cats that conservationists hope to protect using these corridors, and healthcare programs that provided free services to ranchers who committed to not killing critically endangered jaguars. ^[77]

European Green Belt

The European Green Belt is a proposed rewilding zone that is envisioned running through over a dozen European countries using land that was historically part of the physical boundaries of the Iron Curtain. When completed, the European Green Belt will stretch over five thousand miles, from the Barents Sea off the northern coast of Norway to the Black Sea in southeast Europe. ^[77] The corridor is composed of three main sections: the Fennoscandian Green Belt running through Norway, Finland, and Russia, the Central Green Belt located in parts of Germany, the Czech Republic, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia, and Italy, and the Balkan Green Belt in Macedonia, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, Greece, and Turkey. It will link core reserves and parks like the Bavarian Forest in Germany, the Danube-March floodplains in Austria and Slovakia, and Sumava National Park in the Czech Republic. Proponents of the European Green Belt hope that it will increase ecotourism and sustainable farming practices across Europe. ^[77]

Austria

Der Biosphärenpark Wienerwald was created in Austria in 2003 with 37 kernzonen (core zones) covering a total of 5,400 ha designated free from human interference.^[95]

Britain

Rewilding Britain, a charity founded in 2015, aims to promote rewilding in Britain and is a leading advocate of rewilding.^[96] Rewilding Britain has laid down 'five principles of rewilding' which it expects to be followed by affiliated rewilding projects.^[97][98] These are to support people and nature together, to 'let nature lead', to create resilient local economies, to 'work at nature's scale', and to secure benefits for the long-term.

Celtic Reptile and Amphibian is a limited company established in 2020, with the aim of reintroducing extinct species of reptile and amphibian (such as the European pond turtle,^[99] moor frog, agile frog,^[100] common tree frog and pool frog)^[101][102] to Britain. Success has already been achieved with the captive breeding of the moor frog.^[103][104] A reintroduction trial of the European pond turtle to its historic, Holocene range in the East Anglian Fens, Brecks and Broads has been initiated, with support from the University of Cambridge.^[105]

In 2020, nature writer Melissa Harrison reported a significant increase in attitudes supportive of rewilding among the British public, with plans recently approved for the release of European bison, Eurasian elk, and great bustard in England, along with calls to rewild as much as 20% of the land in East Anglia, and even return apex predators such as the Eurasian lynx, brown bear, and grey wolf.^{[106][107][61]} More recently, academic work on rewilding in England has highlighted that support for rewilding is by no means universal. As in other countries, rewilding in England remains controversial to the extent that some of its more ambitious aims are being 'domesticated' both in a proactive attempt to make it less controversial and in reactive response to previous controversy.^[108] Projects may also refer to their activity using terminology other than 'rewilding', possibly for political and diplomatic reasons, taking account of local sentiment or possible opposition. Examples include 'Sanctuary Nature Recovery Programme' (at Broughton) and 'nature restoration project', the preferred term used by the Cambrian Wildwood project, an area aspiring to encompass 7,000 acres in Wales.^[109]

Notable rewilding sites include:

• Knepp Wildland. The 3,500 acre (1,400 hectare)^[110] Knepp Castle estate in West Sussex was the first major pioneer of rewilding in England, and started that land-management policy there in 2001^[111][112] on land formerly used as dairy farmland.^[110] Rare species including common nightingale, turtle doves, peregrine falcons and purple emperor butterflies are now breeding at Knepp and populations of more common species are increasing.^[113] In 2019 a pair of white storks built a nest in an oak tree at Knepp. The storks were part of a group imported from Poland as a result of a programme to reintroduce the species to England run by the Roy Dennis Wildlife Foundation which has overseen reintroductions of other bird species to the UK.^[114]
• Broughton Hall Estate, Yorkshire. In 2021, approximately 1,100 acres (a third of the estate)^[115] was devoted to rewilding with advice from Prof. Alastair Driver of Rewilding Britain.^[116]
• Mapperton Estate, Dorset. In 2021, a 200 acre farm (one of the five farms composing the estate) began the process of rewilding.^[117]
• Alladale Wilderness Reserve, Sutherland, Scotland. This 23,000 acre estate hosts many wildlife species and engages in rewilding projects such as peatland and forest restoration, captive breeding of the Scottish wildcat, and reintroduction of the red squirrel. Visitors can engage in outdoor recreation and education programs.^[118]

The British radio drama series The Archers featured rewilding areas in storylines in 2019 and 2020.^[119][120]

The Netherlands

In the 1980s, analogue species (Konik ponies, Heck cattle and red deer) were introduced to the Oostvaardersplassen nature reserve, an area covering over 56 square kilometres (22 sq mi), in order to (re)create a grassland ecology by keeping the landscape open by naturalistic grazing.^[121][122] This approach followed Vera's 'wood-pasture hypothesis' that grazing animals played a significant role in shaping European landscapes before the Neolithic period. Though not explicitly referred to as rewilding, many of the project's intentions were in line with those of rewilding. The case of the Oostvaardersplassen is considered controversial due to the lack of predators, and its management can be seen as having to contend with conflicting ideas regarding nature.^[123]

Namibia

In 1996, Namibia passed the Nature Conservation Act, a law that allowed communities of civilians to create their own protected wildlife conservancies to develop the country’s ecotourism sector. Conservancy creation was voluntary, but proved to be popular: by 2008, fifty-two conservancies were registered with the government, and fifteen more were seeking approval. ^[77] By this time, one in four rural Namibians were involved in conservation, and around fifteen percent of the country’s land was protected. Conservancy committees were tasked with hiring park guards and rangers to crack down on illegal hunting, in exchange for limited hunting rights for conservancy members. The Namibian government relocated locally extirpated species to these newly protected areas, and community members monitored their flourishing population sizes. ^[77]

One notable success of the Nature Conservation Act is Salambala, a conservancy established in 1998. The region, only 359 square miles large, went from having virtually no large game to boasting a population of elephants six hundred strong, a herd of fifteen hundred zebra, and three lion prides after twenty years. ^[77] Surveys conducted in the conservancy showed a 47 percent increase in wildlife sightings, just between 2004 and 2007. The local community was able to capitalize on the environmental success: by 2006, the community was earning thirty-seven times more revenue from tourism than they had been in 1998. ^[77]

Nepal

King Mahendra was crowned king of Nepal in 1955. An avid hunter, King Mahendra and his son instituted Nepal’s first Western-style national park, the Royal Chitwan National Park, in 1973. ^[77] Establishment of the park led to an increase in research being done on Nepal’s wildlife, including the Nepal Tiger Ecology Project, an eighteen-year-long field study conducted in Chitwan. Findings from this study convinced the Nepalese government to eventually enlarge the boundaries of Chitwan and join it with its neighboring Parsa and Valmiki wildlife reserves. In 1995, Nepal’s Parliament ratified bylaws that required 50 percent of the revenue from park entrance fees to go towards programs that would benefit local people, providing funding to build better schools and clinics and bolstering public support for parks. ^[77]

In 1993, Terai Arc Landscape Program (TAL) was started to restore forested corridors between Chitwan, other Nepalese parks like Bardia National Park and Parsa Wildlife Reserve, and Indian reserves along the countries’ shared border. TAL’s goal was to add “buffer zones” around the established parks and create pathways between them to facilitate the movement of large species like elephants, tigers, and rhino. ^[77] The project was initially successful, supporting over 600 endangered rhinos and attracting tens of thousands of tourists every year, but the success was disrupted by the Nepalese Civil War, which took place from 1996 to 2006. Hundreds of rhinos and tigers were killed during the war as a result of fewer park guards and governmental conservation groups growing disorganized by the war. By 2008, wildlife populations in the reserve began to grow again, but the war caused hundreds of thousands of dollars of damage to the project. ^[77]

Indonesia

In 2001, conservationist Willie Smits began buying land from a former palm oil plantation that has been ecologically destroyed by logging. He, along with a group of Dayak villagers in Indonesia’s East Kalimantan province, replanted over twelve hundred species of trees on the land, which Smits renamed Samboja Lestari or “Everlasting Forest.” ^[77] The project’s hopes of returning the land to a tropical rainforest seems to be working: by 2009, temperature within the regrown forest had dropped by three to five degrees Celsius, humidity has risen by 10 percent, and rainfall had increased by 25 percent. 137 species of birds now reside on the land, up from only five species that had lived in the logged area. The replanted forest is also home to nine species of primates, as of 2009. ^[77]