The Wild Imperative: Examining arguments for rewilding in the Anthropocene

Abstract

Rewilding has grown into a major land-use strategy now being adopted by governments and environmental NGOs and often wealthy individuals. Increasingly it is presented as the best or only option to address major Anthropocene challenges, yet critiques of the concept and practice remain common. This review brings together political ecology, archaeology, history, art, literature and popular non-fiction illustrating how rewilding, knowingly or not, draws on different bodies of knowledge ranging from ecological science to historical literature. We focus on how the knowledge drawn from these different disciplines is utilised to justify not only specific programmes of rewilding, but also the concept more broadly. These justifications, we argue, have coalesced into what we term the “Wild Imperative.” We describe some of the problems associated with the “Wild Imperative” and potential solutions to them in order to encourage both a greater diversity of perspectives and self-critical reflection for rewilding science and practice.