With all the bad news of recent times, it’s easy to feel that collectively we’re going backwards and that the planet’s living systems are heading in the direction of terminal decline. Environmentalists can lose heart that the liveable advances that have taken so much struggle to secure, are now often being rolled back. Climate activists are being increasingly criminalised by Western governments, who continue to follow the dictates of the seemingly all-powerful fossil fuel lobby. Activists can feel like the boy holding his finger in the dyke to hold back the flood of disaster, but unfortunately without the good ending of this folk tale.

Reasons to be Cheerful

While this is unfortunately too true for my liking, there’s a very practical environmental movement gathering force under the radar, which is a very real counter to all this: And that is Rewilding. I recently attended the two-day Cambridge 2025 conference on Rewilding, bringing people and projects together from around the world. 

Whether you call it rewilding, regeneration, restoration or wilding, these projects, ranging from the very small to the gargantuan, are quietly forging ahead in parallel to the status quo.

Instead of attempting to fight against the tsunami of bad stuff, which is often only possible to a disappointing degree, rewilding is quietly going ahead all over the world, building a better future for all beings, human and non-human.

Many attendees of the Cambridge Rewilding conference were scientists and field workers, deeply engaged in projects. I’m not attempting here to report on the detailed science but writing more to convey an overview of the whole phenomenon, illustrated by a few examples of the many projects represented. I attended the inaugural Cambridge Rewilding Conference in 2019 when rewilding was far less known to the public and often seen as quite radical. I wanted to see the developments. 

We Can’t Thrive Unless Nature Thrives

The goals of rewilding include increasing biodiversity, restoring natural processes, and reducing the effects of climate change, and of the global extinction crisis.

Today there are numerous rewilding organisations, although the word ‘rewilding’ was only added to the dictionary in 2011. It was popularised by George Monbiot’s 2013 book, ‘Feral’, which advocated the idea of letting nature manage itself. Alister Scott, Co-director of the Global Rewilding Alliance said for him, ‘Rewilding is hope’. Rewilding is not about leaving civilisation, but about enhancing it. We can’t thrive unless nature thrives.

UK’s Poster Child for Rewilding  

In the UK, the poster child for rewilding has been the Knepp estate, where a large unproductive farm in Southern England, sitting on clay – a quagmire in winter and baked hard like concrete in summer – was allowed to return to a more natural state with the cessation of regular farming. Its transition to a wilded state has been measured year by year and has resulted in an extraordinary increase in biodiversity, with rare UK species like Nightingales and Turtle Doves thriving. I have visited Knepp several times and experienced this natural evolution over the years. Here, the emblematic white stork, now established around Knepp after an absence in Britain for hundreds of years, captures the public’s imagination.

Rewilding is not the same as merely leaving land alone. Large herbivores such as wild cattle, ponies, and pigs roam the farm. And their grazing, trampling and rootling, keep the mosaic of habitats in balance, enabling maximum biodiversity. In Knepp, like many rewilding sites, there are no natural predators such as wolves to control the numbers of large ungulates. If left unchecked these would eat all the vegetation and eventually starve. So culling is needed by human intervention, and in Knepp’s case provides high quality beef, pork and venison, which they sell. 

Patagonia – a Chilean Success Story

While Knepp is largish, Patagonia National Park is on the huge side of rewilding projects. The Director of Rewilding Chile, Carolina Morgado, conveyed what is possible with the string of national parks created down the length of Chilean Patagonia – many millions of acres – linking and restoring habitat.

Grasslands, previously worn out and degraded by a century of sheep overgrazing, had become economically unviable. However, facilitated by enormous philanthropic gifts from the Tomkins, founders of outdoor brands Patagonia and North Face, and working with the Chilean government, creating local employment, eco-tourism, and retraining for local people, their achievements are astounding.

Having succeeded in getting the government onboard by demonstrating it’s a good financial investment, the rewilded lands have become ‘engines of the local economy’, according to Morgado. 

A Shift in Mindsets

One of the most interesting and heartening developments, to me, is the shift in old mindsets away from just trying to conserve fragments of nature or focussing on single iconic species. This view tends to see nature as something separate from us, to be set aside like a kind of giant bell jar, or game reserve. Indigenous peoples have been known to be forcibly removed from African conservation zones. Such practices, with their colonial overtones, also reflect old attitudes of estrangement from the living world.

Today, it’s becoming more widely recognised that human beings are an integral part of ecosystems, as well as non-human beings. And that rewilding works when people feel, and are, part of the plan. In other words, wilderness includes people too. 

Gorongosa National Park

While at the conference, I heard firsthand an amazing story that illustrates this. Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique is a huge 4000 square km area that was at one time, the site of the terrible Mozambique civil war, which finally ended in 1992. The wildlife had been decimated by the opposing armies, reduced to almost ground zero level. Today, transformed by nature’s inherent resilience, coupled with careful human intervention and help, it is again an rich habitat with local people fully involved, and feeling that this land of theirs is precious and to be respected.

Local people have been employed, with 300 rangers among the park’s 1700 employees. The best rangers being those who were previously poachers. Education and healthcare are part of the park’s remit, and productive coffee growing on the park fringes provides better employment than ever before. The park has become a hub for scientific research and for the training of local people. I couldn’t help being impressed by what had emerged from this scenario, which only three decades previously had been utterly disastrous. Rewilding can be a win-win.

Rewilding Europe & Britain

Frans Schepers of Rewilding Europe spoke of the large landscape nature recovery in Europe, and what has been learned from the 11 large scale projects stretching from the Danube Delta to Swedish Lapland, to the Iberian Highlands in Spain. All of which Rewilding Europe is involved with. Meanwhile it was a relief to see that Britain, the host of the conference, yet one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world, had many UK-based rewilding projects featured at the conference.

With more than half of the land in Britain used for animal grazing (see diagram above), plus a large amount of land in other countries used to grow feed for UK livestock (eg. clearing rainforest to grow soy for animal feed), it’s clear that a significant reduction in meat consumption could free up an enormous amount of land, even in a small country like the UK.

This land could then be rewilded with great benefit to wildlife, human health and well-being, as well as creating big reductions in carbon emissions. And since more than half of us now live in urban environments, urban projects are vital too. I was happy to see schemes discussed regarding the greening of cities and streets. Rewilding is not just about restoring ecosystems but also about reconnecting people with nature. 

Rewilding and the Microbiome

Coming even closer to home is the rewilding of the microbiome of our guts. The link between human well-being and healthy wild landscapes has been well established. It’s now emerging that reduced contact with diverse microbial communities in urban environments may contribute to immune dysfunction and related disease. Therefore, rewilding degraded ecosystems could potentially restore at least some microbial diversity, possibly reversing these effects.

Beavers – Ecosystem Engineers

Amongst the multiple, smaller inspiring initiatives discussed was the reintroduction of beavers! A classic keystone species, exterminated in the UK centuries ago, these ecosystem engineers create new habitats enabling much richer biodiversity, while retaining water with their damming. This reduces flooding. And remarkably, today, beavers are happily living in a marshy site in West London in Zone 4 on the Tube line!

None of this is about going back to anything. It’s not the impossible attempt to recreate the past. Nature is not nostalgic. Life is creative and resilient, and what emerges will always be a new expression. Rewilding Britain has a strapline: Think Big. Act Wild. 

Ultimately though, it seems to me that first and foremost we need to rewild ourselves.

Visit Chris Parish at The Urban Animist