Rewilding: Can We Restore Ecosystems Instead of Just Protecting Them?
F or much of modern conservation history, the central question has been how to protect what remains . Conservation has created national parks, wildlife sanctuaries, protected forests, marine reserves, species-recovery programmes and laws against hunting, logging and habitat destruction. These efforts have prevented countless extinctions and created refuges in which threatened species can survive. But protection has a fundamental limitation: protecting a damaged ecosystem does not necessarily make it healthy again . A forest can remain legally protected while its large mammals have disappeared, its streams have been altered, its invasive plants have replaced native vegetation, its ecological corridors have been severed and its natural disturbances have been suppressed. A wetland can be designated as a conservation area while remaining polluted, disconnected from its river system and incapable of supporting the ecological processes that once maintained it. A grassland can remain inside ...
