Rewilding's False Promise

When I turned the page of my business magazine and found an article on rewilding, I groaned.  NO!  I said it loudly, but I was the only one around to hear. Then on the next page I found a picture of Exmoor ponies illustrating the article.  My opinion, though, was unchanged, in part because the type of native pony wasn’t mentioned in the caption.  I suppose in some way it is laudable that Exmoors are being used in a rewilding project, but rewilding hasn’t necessarily been good for Fell Ponies.  In some places Fells are no longer allowed to graze fells that they have grazed for centuries. 

The article discusses an aristocrat, one of several in Britain, who “aims to return denuded farmland and deforested areas to their native state by removing invasive species and replanting and reintroducing native ones….  Rewilding attempts to reverse [denuded farmland and deforestation], not for the sake of nostalgia, but for a more viable future.” (1)  The article suggests that agriculture and forestry businesses are the cause of the problems that rewilding wishes to solve.  Having owned businesses in both those vocations, I know they don’t have to be the cause of problems; they can instead be solutions.  And with the right incentives, these sorts of businesses can be more enduring than philanthropy for problem solving.  Hence my vehement reaction to the heralding of rewilding by my business magazine.

While the intentions of people wanting to retain wildness and native species in our world are not bad ones, often these people miss an important point about our world and the landscapes within.  Denuded farmland and deforested areas have resulted from humans trying to meet our needs.   If our needs are not taken into account in these rewilding projects, then rewilding isn’t really solving the problem, is it?  It’s just punting the problem to the next landscape down the road, so to speak.  And no landscape deserves that, though there are plenty which have suffered that fate.

Often, native ponies like Fells are not considered native species by rewilding enthusiasts, hence the ponies’ needs are not a priority in a rewilding plan.  And the needs of their stewards, too, are often unaddressed because farmers and loggers are seen as the cause of the problem that rewilding is trying to fix.  In the Lake District and its environs, this is especially odd since the very landscape that was heralded by the World Heritage Site designation was in large part created by farming.  One would think that there, at the very least, the needs of farmers and their livestock would be addressed in any landscape management plan.

Because rewilding fails to take human needs of landscapes into account, its promise of a more viable future is a false one.  How can rewilding claim to be creating something viable when the needs of the most impactful species on the planet aren’t considered?  Instead, our planet needs each of us to be honest about the needs we have of landscapes and who we share those landscapes with.  Only when we make each decision – personal, political, business - with these things in mind can we create a more viable future.  There is no one-size-fits-all solution.  Each place has its own unique opportunities.  Our charge as citizens of this planet is to make our decisions wisely because all lives - humans and ponies and native species included - depend on it.

1)       Ekstein, Nikki.  “Keep Wild and Carry On,” Bloomberg Businessweek, 4/27/20, p. 55.

© Jenifer Morrissey, 2020