rewild | riːˈwʌɪld |verb
Restore (an area of land) to its natural uncultivated state (used especially with reference to the reintroduction of species of wild animal that have been driven out or exterminated)
WE MUST REWILD THE WORLD
"To restore stability to our planet, we must restore its biodiversity, the very thing we have removed. It is the only way out of this crisis that we ourselves have created. We must rewild the world."
Sir David Attenborough, 'A Life on Our Planet - My Witness Statement and a Vision for the Future'
According to Wikipedia
Rewilding activities are conservation efforts aimed at restoring and protecting natural processes and wilderness areas. This may include providing connectivity between such areas, and protecting or reintroducing apex predators and keystone species.
Rewilding is a form of ecological restoration where the emphasis is on humans stepping back and leaving an area to nature, as opposed to more active forms of natural resource management. Rewilding efforts can aim to create ecosystems requiring passive management. Successful long term rewilding projects can need little ongoing human attention, as successful reintroduction of keystone species creates a self-regulatory and self-sustaining stable ecosystem, possibly with near pre-human levels of biodiversity.
THE CHALLENGE
Rewilding is probably one of the most challenging things a human being can do as it involves us standing back, not interfering, and allowing Nature to do what it does best.
Even with the best of intentions and solid research, we still do not fully understand Nature and the intricacies of how things fit together.
Nature instinctively balances herself if given the space to do so. We need to allow her to.
People see conservation as a management task that we need to perform, that our interference is essential to the success of the conservation initiative, often interfering with things we do not fully understand, with adverse effects.
Whilst we don’t advocate doing nothing, we do advocate trusting in Nature’s innate ability to balance herself.
We allow Nature to choose her own path. We intervene by carefully reintroducing keystone species that help Nature to balance herself, creating sustainable trophic cascades.
We work with other rewilding centres and organisations to relocate animal species once their numbers exceed the carrying capacity of the environment they are in. We always prefer relocation to culling. Our core philosophy of ‘take nothing but photographs, leave nothing but footprints, do no harm’ is at the centre of everything we do.