What is Conservation Rewilding?

Conservation Rewilding is an approach that prioritizes nature-first, nature-led ecological restoration strategies. Conservation Rewilding drives balance by maximizing the functionality of ecosystems through restoration practices that focus on coexistence, ecological relationships, habitat connectivity, and the overall enhancement of biodiversity. While historically associated with megafauna reintroduction, wilderness conservation, and the Three Cs Model (Cores, Corridors, and Carnivores), Conservation Rewilding in practice is now seen as any benefit to nature regardless of scale.

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
• 12 Principles of Rewilding: Rewilding Practitioners Putting Theory in Action – The Global Rewilding Alliance
• Guiding principles for rewilding
• 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
• 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
• ReWild Long Island
• Wild Utah Project
• Yukon Wildlands Project
• Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness

What is Human Rewilding?

Human Rewilding is an approach that reconnects people to the knowledge provided by the innate wildness of our primitive human origins. Human Rewilding is defined by the practice of reskilling which promotes wellbeing, resilience, and self-sufficiency in the post-industrial modern world. Reskilling activities include foraging, herbalism, homesteading, hunting, fishing, ancestral knowledge, weaving, permaculture, holistic wellness, composting, beekeeping, textile making, astronomy, wilderness survival, primitive lifeways, orienteering, bushcraft, and more. Human Rewilding is a rediscovery of self, nature connectedness, and the human spirit.

Definitions from Around the World

“Rewilding isn’t about trying to go back to living as hunter-gatherers. Rather, it is about examining our cultural paradigms, seeing how they affect our physical, mental, and emotional health, and reclaiming our birthright as human beings.” – ReWild University

“The process of undoing and reversing industrial domestication, then it is at least, basically, a process of reconnecting with nature-based life-ways. Rewilding is the process of encouraging, allowing or otherwise assisting natural regenerative growth patterns on the land. On a personal level, rewilding could be defined as the process of reconnecting with more natural and unbridled ways of being alive.” -Rewild Maine

Human Rewilding Principles

• Small-Scale Place-Based Living Skills | Rewild Maine
• Human “rewilding”: Live like a hunter-gatherer to be happy – Big Think
• Human Rewilding: A Soulful Practice to Feel Alive Again

Human Rewilding Organizations

• Rewild Portland – Place-Based Resilience
• ReWild University – Unleash Your Inner Nature
• Small-Scale Place-Based Living Skills | Rewild Maine
• Human Rewilding
• Introducing Earth First! | Environment & Society Portale

What is Community Rewilding?

Community Rewilding is an approach that re-establishes the connection between local environments and the people who live there. Community Rewilding shifts power back to local people who steward local environments and maximize local resources with the application of scalable rewilding efforts in community centers such as homes, schools, workplaces, churches, parks, community gardens, civic centers, and more. Community Rewilding is a form of resistance that counterbalances modern challenges by helping us to achieve sovereignty.

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