Before talking about the concept of “rewilding,” we should ask ourselves an important question: what exactly is “wilderness” and what ecological system is qualified as “wild”? Modern ecologists are starting to realize that many landscape features that were deemed “wild” were in fact “man-made” (Marris, 51). Even when we look back into the early American time, nature-appreciators like Thoreau and Muir sought out wilderness as a mean to get away from society and lounge in a vacation spot amidst lands, trees, and animals, they are the first ones coming up with the idea of “wilderness and humanlessness” (Marris, 51), a romantic idea without practicality. Thus, it is evident that “wilderness” is not really “natural” and void of human interference. If humans have long imprinted their footsteps in the ground and that the closest evidences to “pristine wilderness” also had men in them, to what kind of picture are we trying to “rewild” nature back to? “A single rusty hubcap tucked under the ferns, a wildfire observation station visible on the horizon, a species moved, an atmosphere heated, a forest felled two hundred years ago – it doesn’t take much to chase away “nature” if nature must be perfectly “untouched” or “pristine”” (Marris, 54).
“Rewilding,” or scientifically termed as “Pleistocene rewilding,” is the idea of restoring the landscape not to any historical mark relating to human’s exploration of new continents, but 13000 or more years ago, “before humans drove any species extinct” (Marris, 57). In the project, the scientists have been trying to do the undoable, rising up the dead. They have been resisting the course of life by bringing back extinct species like the Heck cattle, a mimic of the extinct “auroch,” by introducing closely resembling species to replace extinct ones, like the flightless Guam rail replacing extinct Aguiguan rails, and by importing “proxies” for some other long-lost beats. There are mixed feelings from the public regarding this idea, from extreme positive feedbacks to assuming criticism such as “you are playing god” (64). I sympathize with ecologist Rubenstein’s critique of the project, where he found that “placing animals in a modern landscape could spell trouble” (64). He believes that attempting to fill the gap of thousands of years of evolution since megafauna extinctions with proxies could generate unpredictable consequences, such as the threats of their becoming invasive pests and causing trouble with local landowners, or since these newly introduced proxies are herbivores, without the monitor of predators, they would roam around and deplete their food resources, the trees and grass.
In conclusion, I think the idea of “rewilding” has no practical foot stand today since ecologists are yet to drop their ideal of “pristine wilderness” and some are trying to recreate a memory that has long passed through the “Pleistocene rewilding” project by bringing animals out of its time and place to the present, thus representing even more human disruption to the ecological system. The chapter ended with a paradox sprung from Vera’s vision of rewilding “the only thing man did was create the conditions, and nature filled it in” (71). What would be the output of his vision? Wilderness or a garden?
