Rewilding involves a range of activities concerned with conservation efforts aimed at restoring affected ecosystems and protecting natural ecosystems. Its basic aim is to restore ecosystems, focusing on recreating an area’s natural state before intervention. Rewilding engages with the idea of letting nature heal itself. It is an approach to restoring sustainable biodiversity and ecosystem health by providing certain conditions like connecting areas and reintroducing species such as keystone species and apex predators to re-establish ecological balances.
Rewilding has a long-term goal of maintaining and increasing biodiversity while reducing the impact of human interventions usually done through the restoration of species and ecological processes. This process is necessary to maintain ecosystem balances, areas where wildlands are not protected, connectivity has decreased or biodiversity has disappeared. Learning about food webs and trophic levels is essential to address species extinction.
Over time, humans have taken over the ecological roles of top carnivores in ecosystems. There is mounting evidence that extinctions of large animals lead to drastic ecosystem shifts. Large herbivores also maintain ecosystem structure and appearance by shaping local vegetation. Thus, restoring these roles by re-introducing large animals is essential.
There is much debate on how to proceed with rewilding. Proposals include passive management measures, allowing ecological roles and dynamics to re-establish themselves, translocations and even introducing non-native species into ecosystems to replace the roles of extinct species. Extreme activities also include promoting naturalistic grazing and fires or modifying flood patterns in river systems.
How is Rewilding different from Ecological Restoration?
Rewilding is different from restoration as restoration involves active and continued management of the ecosystem. Rewilding attempts at guiding the ecosystem back to a state in which it can sustain itself, thus, human intervention is decreased. The cost of actively managing and maintaining environments is much more than the cost incurred while letting nature regenerate or repair itself.
The IUCN’s Commission on Ecosystem Management (CEM) Rewilding Thematic Group (RTG) developed 10 principles that guide rewilding initiatives. These principles give insights into the concept of rewilding and points to keep in mind while undertaking the process.
The 10 Rewilding Principles
1. Rewilding uses wildlife to restore food webs and food chains.
2. Rewilding plans should identify core rewilded areas, and ways to connect them and ensure outcomes are mutually beneficial for people and nature.
3. Rewilding requires local engagement and community support.
4. Rewilding focuses on the recovery of ecological processes, interactions and conditions based on similar healthy ecosystems.
5. Rewilding recognizes that ecosystems are dynamic and constantly changing.
6. Rewilding should anticipate the effects of climate change and act as a tool to mitigate its impacts.
7. Rewilding is informed by science and considers local knowledge. .
8. Rewilding recognizes the intrinsic value of all species.
9. Rewilding is adaptive and dependent on monitoring and feedback.
10. Rewilding is a paradigm shift in the coexistence of humans and nature.
So why is rewilding so important?
Rewilding can help mitigate global climate change. Greenhouse gases can be lowered by restoring large herbivores. They may also reduce the frequency of forest fires. Herbivores accelerate nutrient cycling through grazing, increasing plant productivity and maintaining equilibrium in ecosystem productivity. Large animals also aid in carbon storage. Biodiversity habitats that are restored, act as carbon reservoirs, removing CO2 from the atmosphere from areas that accelerate climate change.
Rewilding returns species that are important to habitats. These species are vital in maintaining species diversity and food chains. The species mainly include top predators that initiate trophic interactions and maintain the structure of ecosystems. Rewilding helps to stabilize trophic interactions by the reintroduction of locally extinct species, especially keystone species (organisms crucial to the ecosystem balance and define the ecosystem). In such cases, human intervention is required at the early stages to begin the process.
Ecosystem services provided by these systems are much required by rural and urban communities to earn their living. Being in nature is very helpful for man’s well-being and health. Rewilding helps connect people with nature and help them engage with local and national wildlife.
What are some of the challenges?
Ecosystem responses to rewilding have yet to be studied and understood properly. The restoration and normal functioning of ecosystems after re-introduction of species has been assessed less.
There is a lack of policies and management measures that are required to minimize human interference with ecosystems that are recolonizing naturally. Policies must also be aimed at providing full-scale protection to all large predators that are not only dependent on the conservation status but also on their ecological roles. Practices such as predator control programs, game management practices like wildlife fencing or introduction of alien populations, and other such practices that alter the natural functioning of populations should be discouraged.
And the risks?
Concerns about the rewilding program are largely driven by a lack of understanding of the process and effects of full-scale rewilding.
Projects that involve the introduction or re-introduction of species may lead to depletion of donor populations, increased risk of bringing in disease, and low genetic variability among the introduced individuals.
Rewilding may give rise to unexpected or undesirable interactions and effects, even in the case of re-introduction of species to its former habitat. These animals bring about changes in the composition of the landscape and structure of the ecosystem.
Large-scale projects require land. Land availability may be hindered by the requirement of land for other uses and by public influence. Rewilding thus requires greater openness and willingness to accept uncertainties and ecological surprises.
How are climate change and rewilding linked?
Trophic rewilding represents an approach to help meet goals set by the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change).
Rewilding and restoring natural landscapes damaged by anthropogenic activity can be one of the most effective and low-cost ways to combat climate change. This method also boosts endangered wildlife populations.
If 1/3rd of the earth’s most degraded areas were restored and protection was offered to areas still in good condition, these areas would store carbon equivalent to half of all greenhouse gas emissions caused by human activity since the Industrial Revolution.
Conclusion
Rewilding is essentially a method followed to allow nature to reclaim and restore itself with minimum human intervention. The definition of rewilding may vary according to the approach, the objective of the study, and the researcher’s take on the subject.
Much research and understanding is required to develop the process further. Thus rewilding strategies are likely to change drastically over the next few decades. Rewilding also faces many challenges from traditional land management techniques. A detailed study is required to assess the effects of rewilding and how ecologies respond to it. Rewilding must be initiated with the coordination of regional populations concerned with the ecosystem.
If undertaken correctly, rewilding can provide a great hope to combat climate change, manage species extinctions and rebuild declined ecosystems.
Written by: Y.S.K Sivani