Rewilding: Ten Years of Evolution and Development

Rewilding has matured into a mainstream approach in nature conservation. More than 450 academic papers on rewilding have been published since the term first appeared in print in the early 1990s. Rewilding is characterized by a shift in conservation from compositional goals to functional restoration, and its goal is to foster coexistence between humans and nature. Rewilding is a potential climate change mitigation strategy, and rewilding projects can influence carbon cycling and help ecosystems become more resilient to climate change by restoring large herbivores and predators. Rewilding is gaining traction in policy at the national and international levels. Several global policy mechanisms and initiatives now support ecological restoration as part of a broader effort to combat biodiversity loss, climate change, and land degradation. Key debates and uncertainties surrounding rewilding include its relationship to ecological restoration, its role in promoting nonhuman autonomy, and the challenges of achieving transformative change within current paradigms.