Here at How to Rewild, it’s our mission to ditch the jargon, so we came up with a clear and simple explanation of rewilding that everyone can understand…
- Before modern humans walked the Earth, wild nature thrived without our help.
- Rewilding returns natural spaces to that healthy state and stops the damage to our climate, wildlife, rivers and countryside.
- But for 1000s of years, we’ve changed nature by wiping out herbivores (plant-eaters), carnivores (meat-eaters), draining land, channeling and blocking rivers, and breaking up wilderness into tiny chunks.
- This means we can’t just leave land alone to ‘go wild’ – we need to repair the damage first, before natural cycles can start again and run without our help.
- One of the ways to do this is by reintroducing herbivores like beavers and bison, or carnivores like wildcats and eagles on large plots of land.
- Smaller plots aren’t big enough for this – here, humans can copy what these animals do, knocking down trees, digging holes or taking wild meat, to help keep nature in balance.
- True wilderness is always changing – animals and plants evolved to live in that ever-changing landscape – rewilding returns natural spaces to that state of change.
- Rewilding also helps humans in many ways, like flood protection, carbon storage and soil health. It creates new jobs in ecotourism, wild farming and habitat restoration.