It’s the buzzword on everyone’s lips. Rewilding is a big new trend in the field of nature conservation that involves restoring degraded ecosystems to their natural state, often via the reintroduction of carefully selected species. Benefits include increased biodiversity, more carbon absorbed and the therapeutic effects for human visitors.
Central to rewilding, according to its early founders, are the “Three Cs”, namely cores (reserves), corridors and carnivores (predators.) Small, fragmented, protected areas are often deliberately connected via wildlife corridors, while long and broad extended corridors of this type are sometimes referred to as “wildways”. One project that has been pursued for decades in piecemeal fashion is the Western Wildway, a stretch of more than 9500km linking Canada, the US and Mexico.
The 30×30 initiative aims to protect 30 per cent of the planet’s land and ocean areas by 2030. This ambitious target was agreed upon at the 2022 COP15 International Biodiversity Conference in Montreal, Canada. To achieve this goal, rewilding strategies have been proposed as a key approach.
However, controversy hovers in the background. Indigenous peoples, who protect an estimated 80 per cent of the world’s biodiversity, could face challenges. In worst-case scenarios, such as in parts of India and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, they might be treated as interlopers or poachers.
Clearly, much is at stake in how this initiative is implemented. How rew.
