According to Marris, rewilding is essentially returning an area back to the state it would be in today if there were no humans. Although the intentions of rewilding are good, the idea of undoing the changed that humans have caused, the reality of creating such an environment is impossible and unrealistic, not to mention contradictory and unethical.
Firstly, creating recreating ecosystems that existed before humans existed in many cases is completely impossible. Since thousands of years have passed, the species that once existed during the Pleistocene may have evolved. If a species has been exposed to a different environment, they may have changed the way they behave. Though the species is the same as the past, its role and the way it interacts with the environment may have changed. Another common problem is that many of the animals that existed during the Pleistocene have since then become extinct. In order to overcome this, ecologists might introduce a similar species that would play the same role as that of the extinct species in the ecosystem. For example, introducing “Bactrian camels (from the Gobi Desert)” to America to replace the wild horses and camels that used to exist here (Marris 63). No matter how hard humans try, some ecosystems can never be replicated exactly, just approximately. Reintroducing animals also leads to many shifts in the ecosystem. According to field ecologist Josh Donlan, after the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone, “not six month goes by without a new groundbreaking paper… linking some unexpected ecosystem shift” (Marris 62). It is clear that bringing in a single species can drastically alter an ecosystem since the ecosystem would adjust to accommodate the changes. Changes to the ecosystem would also affect humans since the rewilded animals need to be separated from humans and managed carefully. In some areas, towns and farms would need to think about putting up fences to protect themselves from the new large beasts. Though these changes are not impossible, they create great difficulties for humans and could potentially create a great threat if they were not carried out. Recreating ecosystems from the past prove to be troublesome, difficult and scientifically impossible due to the state the world is today.
Rewilding aims to take away human interference with the environment, but by actively taking a hand in recreating environments, rewilding actually does the complete opposite of its purpose. Rewilding is self-contradictory and unethical. One of the criticisms of rewilding that Donlan points out is the idea of “playing god” (Marris 65). Although both introducing and removing species may be considered “playing god,” actually having to ship in animals to different ecosystems altering the ecosystem in a different way. Nature will always readjust itself to the given conditions, but since human effort is needed to maintain such an environment, it is no less natural than its current state. An artificially created environment, no matter how realistic it is, is no substitute for the real thing. The intentions of the ecologists are admirable, but completely misguided.
