On the surface, rewilding sounds like a fantastic idea. Through rewilding, ecologists can study a natural environment free from human interactions. They can also examine how different species interact before the arrival of humans. However, rewilding is not very feasible and it is quite unethical.
According to Dave Foreman, the concept of rewilding comes directly from the food chain of the ecosystems. At the top of the food chain, the predators regulate the population of the other species. If there are fewer predators, the population of the other species decreases. This results into an overpopulation of some species and an extinction of other species. Marris summarizes this by saying that the ecosystem will end up with “fewer species” (60). By reintroducing species into an environment, ecologists hope to restore “evolutionary and ecological potential to populations of large animals… and to inspire people to support nature conservation” (62). It would also prevent the extinction of certain species.
The main problem with rewilding is that it is almost impossible to replicate nature into an environment that existed thousands of years ago. Dustin Rubenstein points out that “placing proxy animals in a modern landscape could spell trouble” (65). These animals could generate unpredictable results and it could lead to an environment far from the past natural landscape. Furthermore, humans already touched this land thousands of years ago. In Chapter 3, Marris states that many people do not include the early humans because they are not considered “civilized.” However, Marris argues that “first people might have made greater changes to the landscape than the European arrivals ever did” (43). In fact, many large animals died because of the hunters from these early humans. Recreating a landscape with these large animals without the human hunters is arguably not a faithful representation of the environment in the past. Since we cannot recreate this environment, we are essentially observing a completely new environment.
In addition, rewilding is not very ethical. Despite what Donlan said, we are basically playing god since we can pick and choose which species can live and which species can die. In this case, we are basically picking and moving those species that we are interested in studying. Once the species are moved into the new environment, we give the species what it needs to survive. In addition, we can kill off an animal if we want to. In Chapter 4, Vera “called one of the reserve’s staff members to come and shoot [an abandoned calf].” Apparently, “[letting] an animal starve to death is too cruel to be allowed, even in the name of nature” (66). The fact that humans can control life and death of different species through rewilding makes it quite unethical.
Even though humans can create a landscape that looks “natural” to many people, it is not necessarily an ideal environment for studying the past. As Marris points out, “the whole place is cultivated, man-made, created” (70). The fact that it is man-made reinforces the idea that there is no baseline or pristine wilderness. Instead of recreating the past, these ecologists should just focus on the environment of the future. We can start by building a relationship between human and nature instead of separating it.
