The author is a Sophomore at Laurel School in Ohio.
Electric vehicles, renewable energy, carbon capture, biofuels… the list of potential climate solutions goes on and on. However, there’s a strategy for ecosystem preservation that is certainly different than the approaches above. Rewilding is a nature management strategy that lets wildlife flourish and care for itself. An article from Ashish Kumar Arya in the BMC Zoology Journal explains that “rewilding is an approach that aims to rehabilitate ecosystems and prevent biodiversity loss by allowing wild animals and natural processes to reclaim places no longer managed by human beings.” This is a sharp turn from management practices that emphasize the human role in protecting the environment.
What is the importance of rewilding?
A report from the HM Treasury featured by the Natural History Museum found that “[w]ithout greater action than currently implemented policies, more endemic species will go extinct in the coming 30 years than appear to have died out in the entire period 850-1850 CE.” As biodiversity continues to decline, rewilding is more important than ever. Rewilding could be a critical solution to biodiversity loss as it often involves the introduction of a keystone species, which builds species diversity.
Why is biodiversity important?
Increased biodiversity through rewilding provides a natural carbon capture solution. In fact, a study spearheaded by Oswald Schmitz, a professor at Yale’s School of the Environment, closely reviewed the impacts of nine species and concluded that “protecting or restoring their populations could collectively facilitate the additional capture of 6.41 billion tons of carbon dioxide annually” which is “95% of the amount needed every year to meet the Paris Agreement target.” This nature-based solution could be a significant mitigator of the climate crisis, while also being cost-effective and productive.
Biodiversity is also increasingly important for ecosystem resilience, as the more species that exist in a habitat, the better the chance that the environment will survive natural disasters. In a biodiverse environment, if one species is harmed due to an unpredictable event, there is still a variety of other plants and animals that have the potential to fill in ecological roles. This is crucial now more than ever, considering the increased risk of natural disasters due to accelerating global warming.
Additionally, biodiversity can benefit human health. For example, an empirical study from Scientific Reports “showed significant positive associations between natural diversity score and mental wellbeing.” While many previous reports have analyzed the importance of nature for mental health, this study confirmed “that not just the presence of natural environments, but also their diversity, plays a crucial role in the impact on mental wellbeing.”
What are the challenges of rewilding?
The unpredictability of a nature-focused approach complicates the implementation of rewilding. An article from Luiz Oliveira-Santos and Fernando Fernandez emphasizes “the risk of getting new, unwanted interactions.” While rewilding has the potential to lift biodiversity levels, there is also the possibility of species acquiring new roles when reintroduced into environments, which could threaten native species populations. The uncertainty of introducing species that have not been in the ecosystem for years could pose a roadblock to the successful implementation of rewilding.
Others worry about a potential “leakage” effect where global biodiversity could be harmed instead of helped through rewilding. Rewilding on agricultural lands could push food production to other nations, harming international biodiversity. For instance, empirical evidence from researchers at the University of Cambridge concluded that “reclaiming typical UK cropland for nature may be five times more damaging for global biodiversity than the benefit it provides local species, due to the displacement of production to more biodiverse regions.” This phenomenon could pose a huge barrier to the biodiversity goals of rewilding projects. Yet, the researchers propose solutions to this pressing issue. For example, they write that “[t]here’s scope to limit leakage by targeting conservation to areas high in biodiversity but where current or potential production of food or timber is limited.”
This leads to another crucial consideration of rewilding projects: where to rewild. Rural residents often feel threatened by conservation efforts. A paper by Taylor Dotson and Henrique Pereira observed that “[w]hen conservationists have spoken for nature, agriculture and other traditional rural ways of life have usually been either absent or the target of critique.” Rewilding projects may require vast tracts of land that could encroach upon farmers’ operations, or even push agricultural processes out of the country, as discussed above. Additionally, reintroduced predators could harm livestock or crops.
Another concern is the potential spread of ecotourism near rewilding projects as tourists come in to visit the newly conserved areas. Ecotourism could force resource-intensive operations such as hotels into protected locations, ultimately harming the biodiversity of these spaces. Ecotourism may result in excessive water usage, littering, and other actions that could reverse the progress of rewilding efforts. Thus, it’s imperative that rewilding proposals include input from local communities and look at all groups impacted.
Rewilding could be the answer to the thousands of conservation questions on the minds of scientists. Nevertheless, conservationists should not rush this process, considering the views of local communities and managing projects closely to prevent unpredictable consequences.
Rewilding: A Bold Approach to Conservation © 2026 by Youth Environmental Press Team 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/
