The concept of rewilding is essentially the reintroducing of lost wild-life back into an area to improve its ecological quality.
As discussed by Emma Marris, Rewilding, unlike several other forms of conservation sets a baseline for restoration far before any human interference or impact. It aims to bring back the world to the prehuman era and tries to recreate pristine and untamed wilderness. Theoretically, as proposed by Dave Foreman, the idea of rewilding provides the necessary factors to keep an ecosystem resilient and diverse by reintroducing top-level predators or key stone species and regulating their population. Such a technique allows ecologists to keep check on all other prey and medium-sized predator species, and essentially recreate the world as it appeared more than 13000 years ago.
The idea of rewilding does seem far-fetched and impractical, however rewilding like efforts have already started to take some shape. Oostvaardersplassen, in the lowlands of the Netherlands, is one such place where the idea of Pleistocene rewilding is not just a mad concept but has been implemented fairly well.
However, what are the real life implications? Is it not paradoxical to “manage” wildlife or fence open wilderness? Aren’t the proxies, which are being introduced as makeshift native ancient predators essentially the invasive species that ecologists greatly hate? Do humans have the right to selectively breed wildlife and decide which species have the right to thrive or deserve to fade?
The concept of rewilding appears to be a large scale scientific experiment which will face severe criticism if it was to be implemented at a large scale, especially in North America. Rewilding essentially takes us back to era prior to development of the great civilizations, on several instances the idea of rewilding basically derides the city life that humans have become so accustomed to for centuries and sort of posses a return to the time of where humans had not evolved.
Ecological conservation and preserving biodiversity is crucial and must be pursued, introducing invasive species to recreate an ecological balance is also fair and unquestionable, however rewilding is not as feasible as some of its proponents may suggest. Having lost species reappear to help maintain biodiversity and even increase the aesthetic values seems quite favorable, but implementing the idea at such a large scale only seems to appear like an untested experiment which has several reasons to go wrong. It is unethical to counter balance thousands of years of evolution and essentially a way of synthesizing nature. In principle the rewilding approach is paradoxical and unpractical with costs that do not break even with the benefits. Human population has greatly impacted the ecosystems, and its activities must be regulated, however there is a reason why the megafauna and large predators in the Pleistocene have faded.
Conservation and preserving diversity is great, however rewilding may just be too extreme.
