What is rewilding?

Traditional conservation often focuses on maintaining specific habitats or species through active management. Rewilding takes a different approach: it aims to restore natural processes, such as predation, grazing and flooding, so ecosystems become self-sustaining. This often involves reintroducing keystone species. The reintroduction of grey wolves to Yellowstone National Park in 1995 is a landmark example: wolves reduced elk overgrazing, allowing trees and shrubs to recover, which stabilised riverbanks and brought back beavers. In Europe, projects have reintroduced bison, beavers and lynx. Rewilding can also mean stepping back from managing land and letting nature reclaim it.