What is Conservation Rewilding?

Conservation Rewilding is an ecological restoration and conservation approach that prioritizes nature-first, nature-led adaptive strategies. This approach maximizes relationships and functionality within ecosystems by allowing biodiversity to drive balance. While historically associated with ecological histories and the reintroduction of large animals or megafaunas into ecosystems, rewilding has evolved to encompass any practice that results in the net gain of biodiversity and connectivity of habitats- regardless of scale. Providing natural solutions to modern problems, rewilding is locally occurring and globally impactful. This practice has created systematic change in the arenas of conservation, sustainable development, governance, nature-based economies, and more.

Rewilding is completely redefining how humans assess, support, utilize, and coexist with the diversity of life and habitats on Earth. Showcasing strategies that limit human control, Rewilding practices recognize the dynamic self-sustaining capabilities of nature. Historically, rewilding practices have focused on the reintroduction of megafaunas within ecosystems with the Soulé and Noss (1998) “Three Cs” model “restoring big wilderness based on the regulatory roles of large predators through the establishment of cores, corridors, and carnivores.” It has been found that the reintroduction of keystone carnivores and herbivores creates a “trophic cascade” effect that balances ecological communities from the “top down”.

Rewilding practices are being adopted on many different scales all over the world with the reintroduction of native flora, fauna, and microbial life into ecosystems. The holistic nature of rewilding makes it a clear proponent of the future of environmentalism and sustainability.

Definitions from Around the World

“The process of rebuilding, following major human disturbance, a natural ecosystem by restoring natural processes and the complete or near complete food-web at all trophic levels as a self-sustaining and resilient ecosystem using biota that would have been present had the disturbance not occurred.” -International Union for the Conservation of Nature

“Rewilding is the process of restoring and protecting natural ecosystems, and allowing them to develop and function without human intervention.” -Rewilding Academy

“Rewilding is comprehensive, often large-scale, conservation effort focused on restoring sustainable biodiversity and ecosystem health by protecting core wild/wilderness areas, providing connectivity between such areas, and protecting or reintroducing apex predators and highly interactive species (keystone species).” -Rewilding Earth

Conservation Rewilding Principles

• What is Rewilding? Dave Foreman and The Rewilding Institute Definition
• The benefits and risks of rewilding – resource | IUCN
• Rewilding Principles | Rewilding Europe

Conservation Rewilding Organizations

• The Global Rewilding Alliance
• Re:wild – Biodiversity is the Solution | rewild.org
• Home – The Scottish Rewilding Alliance
• Knepp – Rewilding Pioneers
• Trees for Life | Rewilding the Scottish Highlands
• Rewilding Britain | Think Big. Act Wild.
• Rewild.com
• Mossy Earth: Rewilding Membership
• Northeast Wilderness Trust – Rewilding the Northeast (newildernesstrust.org)
• Home Page | Keeping Track 
• Rewilding Earth Welcome – Home of the Rewilding Institute
• Wildlands Network
• National Wildlife Federation (nwf.org)
• Rewilding America Now

What is Human Rewilding?

Definitions from Around the World

Human Rewilding Principles

Human Rewilding Organizations

What is Community Rewilding?

Community Rewilding is a transformative approach to environmentalism that re-establishes the connection between the independence of people with the health of local environments and accessibility to local resources. This approach emerged from the critical need to reimagine how we engage with nature by linking our innate bond with the natural world to our empowerment in modern society. Working to rewild land, restoring nature, and rewild yourself, transforming people, this revolutionary practice actively counterbalances complex modern challenges and dependencies by building sovereignty through promotion of localized resilience and self-sufficiency.

Community Rewilding provides us with a realistic pathway to reach goals in sustainability by focusing change locally- in the power of local people, benefiting local environments, and maximizing local resources.

After decades of addressing global environmental problems with macro solutions, Community Rewilding is focusing power and change on the micro level. Community Rewilding provides us with natural solutions for modern problems and empowers us to reach the change that we seek. This is an action that we can directly control and feel real gratification from. This is not a cause- it is a physical, social, and spiritual transformation in our daily lives. If we rewild, we will directly see the results that we are creating.

Definitions from Around the World

“Rewilding also means changing the way we think. Humans are part of the wild. We are one species among many, bound together in an intricate web of life that ties us to the atmosphere, the weather, the tide, the soils, the freshwater, the oceans, and all living creatures on the planet. The Earth is our home. Together, we can protect and restore it.” -re:Wild

“Community Rewilding project brings the ideas and principles of rewilding to urban environments and communities. It applies them to small scale greenspaces such as public parks, school grounds, vacant and derelict land and gardens.” – The Conservation Volunteers Scotland

“Rewilding, a positive reframing for nature conservation, involves holistic solutions to remove barriers and reestablish vibrant wildlife populations and intact, functional, and resilient ecosystems that effectively integrate people.” -re:wild

“We have internalized ecological impoverishment with a consequence of “shifting baselines” where each generation assumes the nature that they experienced in their youth to be normal and unwittingly accepts the declines and damages of the generation before.” – Paul Jepson in Rewilding: A New Radical New Science of Ecological Recovery

Community Rewilding Principles

Demystifying community rewilding — Climate Action North

Community Rewilding Organizations