Rewilding's technological experiments: Virtual reality and scalable narratives of rewilding in the Scottish highlands

Abstract Depictions of rewilded landscapes reveal the underlying principles shaping the future of rewilding. This paper analyses a virtual reality (VR) model of a rewilding project in the Scottish Highlands that is advertised as a vision of a rewilded nature in 50 to 100 years' time. I present the VR model as representative of a wider mode of technological experimentalism at the project. The increasing use of novel digital technologies in UK rewilding is identified as part of a response to challenges in making rewilding sufficiently scalable. These challenges persist despite rewilding's general acceptance into mainstream approaches to UK nature recovery. The technological nature of the experiments at the project is differentiated from the ecological forms of experimentation in rewilding that have been the focus of research to date. The study was conducted using a mix of ethnography, content analysis and semi‐structured interviews, focusing on the development of the VR model and representations of technological use at the rewilding project. My analysis shows, firstly, that the VR model represents a particular digital aesthetic of rewilding that contrasts to more established forms of depicting rewilded futures. Secondly, I show how the project's technological visions relate to its technological experiments and how these inform a narrative of ‘high‐tech rewilding’. Finally, I analyse how this narrative is made to travel beyond the project's physical and organisational boundaries and the work done to naturalise ideas of technologised rewilding. Policy implications. My study positions the narrative of ‘high‐tech rewilding’ as part of an emerging technological ‘storyline’ in Scottish rewilding discourse. In the absence of a formal policy framework for rewilding in Scotland, storylines can work to influence the parameters for policy decision‐making. I argue that technological narratives that exclude people pose a challenge to existing storylines that emphasise the social and cultural role of rewilding in Scotland. However, by identifying them at this emergent stage, I also offer a hopeful interpretation based on the care evident in the creation of the VR model that as rewilding's new technological narrative continues to develop, it can be aligned with people‐oriented objectives. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.