This author is a Junior at Kenston High School in Cleveland, Ohio.
Rewilding just 30% of the world’s degraded agricultural lands could offset 50% of all CO2 emissions produced since the Industrial Revolution. Despite its overwhelming environmental potential, rewilding remains underutilized in conservation policy and undercovered in environmental news coverage. Rewilding is defined by the International Union for Conservation of Nature as the process of restoring healthy ecosystems by creating wild, biodiverse spaces. Rewilding is carried out on degraded land where biodiversity is needed by taking actions like reintroducing local species, planting greenery, and restoring waterways. In other words, it is restoring land to its state before human interference.
Why Do We Need to Rewild?
Our planet is facing a biodiversity crisis, with the World Wildlife Report finding that out of over 32,000 monitored species, populations declined on average 69% since 1970. By decreasing the overall population of animals, genetic diversity decreases, leaving ecosystems vulnerable to environmental shifts. This causes other dependent animals and plants to die off, decreasing biodiversity. Biodiversity is important for a multitude of reasons. Aside from ecosystem resilience and decreasing the likelihood of extinction, biodiversity is crucial to human health. For example, the World Health Organization explains that over a quarter of modern medicines are derived directly from rainforest plants. One of the many ways rewilding keeps this intact is through reintroducing keystone, or vital, species to the environment. The London School of Economics explains that reintroducing species to their natural habitat, which may have been destroyed by human interaction, creates “trophic cascades”-the triggering of other beneficial environmental processes. For example, reintroducing beavers to their native wetlands helps to support thousands of other bird, amphibian, and insect species. As these species return, they strengthen food webs, improve water quality, and make ecosystems more resilient to disease and disturbance. This dynamic creates habitats where a wide variety of animals and plants can thrive without degradation.
Beyond biodiversity, rewilding also plays an important role in addressing climate change. The global temperature has risen by approximately 1.44 degrees Celsius since the 19th century, and only continues to rise, with fossil fuels and human degradation being the main causes. The impacts of climate change continue to be discovered and range from severe weather events to air quality to rising seas and more. Only one developed solution captures large amounts of carbon using the natural world: rewilding. Gabriela Angueira, a Climate Solutions Writer, writes that restoring populations of just 9 key animal and plant groups could capture up to 6.4 billion tons of carbon annually. This equates to 95% of the annual target set forth by the Paris Climate Agreement. By sequestering the carbon, or absorbing the carbon, in large amounts of greenery, rewilding offsets the impacts of fossil fuel emissions. While rewilding does not reduce the amount of fossil fuels being burned, it does mitigate their impact by absorbing the carbon and using it to produce more oxygen.
How Has Rewilding Worked So Far?
The policy possibilities are vast. Rewilding projects have already begun in America. For example, reintroducing wolves to Yellowstone National Park. Over the course of a year, 41 wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone, creating a trophic cascade within the park, and the positive impacts continue to be seen even 20 years after the reintroduction. By rebalancing the food chain with increased predation, several plants were likewise supported as fewer plant-eaters were there to eat them. Conservation Biology Institute estimates that after the wolf reintroduction, Yellowstone saw a 1,500% increase in streamside willows, and in turn allowed riverside plants to rebound.
Most recently, Illinois has become the first US state to codify rewilding into law as a conservation strategy. The legislation directs state and private environmental departments to incorporate rewilding techniques into natural resource planning. In an interview, Sergio Vargas at the Illinois Environmental Council, explained that the new Illinois Rewilding Act has increasingly empowered state agencies to utilize rewilding as a conservation strategy. The bill has allowed for Illinois’ Wildlife Action Plan to be revised to implement 10 year strategies to conserve endangered wildlife. Using the rewilding bill, the state has increased power to use rewilding, as well as other strategies, to conserve endangered wildlife species, a goal that wasn’t previously codified. The Emiquon Preserve in Emiquon, Illinois, demonstrating the efficacy of this approach. After being leveed off and drained in the 1920s to farm corn and soy, the site was bought by The Nature Conservancy, which prevented water from being pumped out of the area. This restored the historic Thompson and Flag lakes, allowing aquatic plants that had been dormant to return. Consequently, thousands of native birds and fish have returned to the area, with researchers from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign documenting a peak return of over 119,000 waterfowl. Similarly, New York has created its Adirondack Park, which has focused on restoring broad wildlife corridors to link large, fragmented protected areas. This area has grown to 6.1 million acres, protecting the remaining 1% of old-growth forests across the Eastern United States.
Where Can The United States Go from Here?
The rest of the United States must follow suit to combat a failing climate. By expanding policies like Illinois’ nationwide, the United States can invest in a cost-effective strategy that benefits both people and the natural world.
These examples show that rewilding is not just a theory, but a strategy that works in practice. Rewilding works best on degraded land, and the US should take action to rejuvenate this land to restore biodiversity. A comprehensive rewilding plan in the US can revitalize our environment through biodiversity and carbon storage, in a way no other conservation method can. If the US can utilize this strategy, not only can the environment face a better future, but so can we.
How Rewilding Could Turn the Climate Tide © 2026 by Reagan Carnes is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
