Thread by @RewildingS

1/ We’ve broken with tradition a little today. After last week’s paper ‘Rethinking Rewilding’ got a positive reaction, this week we’re covering a response to that paper by Prior and Ward (2016) #rewilding #rewildingscience

2/ Rather than go over last week again, you can check out last weeks thread here

3/ Prior and Ward start by welcoming Jorgensen’s paper and emphasise their belief that the emergence of rewilding within both conservation and popular discourse means that social scientists and humanities scholar have a vital role to play in these debates.

4/ They begin with Jorgensen’s assertion that applying rewilding to a broad range of activities could potentially lead to confusion and that it is a plastic term. Arguing that instead multiple activities and definitions actually reinforce what activities constitute rewilding

5/ The authors present their definition of rewilding as: ‘a process of (re)introducing or restoring wild organisms and/or ecological processes to ecosystems where such organisms and processes are either missing or are ‘dysfunctional’

6/ They believe that this definition encompasses all 6 main strands of rewilding that Jorgensen identified as well as accounting for issues around scale and sites, for example including urban areas

7/ In Prior and Ward’s opinion its the idea of more-than-human autonomy which threads together the different versions of rewilding and underpins it, which address any concerns around a plastic word that signifies everything. They include a quote from Wood’s account of wildness

8/ ‘the autonomy of the more-than-human world where events, such as animals moving about, plants growing, and rocks falling occur largely because of their own internal self-expression’

9/ This non-human autonomy they argue is what sets rewilding apart from other conservation interventions and restoration. Although they accept that some human actions may be needed at the outset, for example slowly relinquishing management or de-domesticating animals

10/ Instead of a plastic word the authors believe that the identification of non-human autonomy is central to ‘rewilding’ and brings external and internal coherency and clarity to the term as both a theory and set of related practices.

11/ The paper then moves onto its next point, which addresses Jorgensen’s claim that ‘rewilders want to create a wild without people and are oblivious to the problematic nature of the wilderness construct’

12/ They argue that existing examples of rewilding do ‘acknowledge the implicit entanglement of non-humans and humans in conservation endeavours, and celebrate non-human autonomy in rewilding as fundamental to the creation of experimental, forward looking conservation futures’

13/ To further emphasis this point, they introduce two examples, the first being the Scottish Beaver Trial, which they state involved three stages of public consultation, community involvement and extensive human labour

14/ In this example they also fall back on the Beavers themselves, suggesting that the risk caused by the actions of beavers laid out in the risk assessments are evidence that beavers are being expected from the outset to co-exist and cofabricate the landscape along with humans

15/ It also uses the compensation and insurance schemes that are stated in the licensing as proof that the SBT have been aware that humans are intimately tied to ecosystems and have developed strategies which still allow for a certain amount of beaver autonomy within this context

16/ The second example they use at OVP in the Netherlands, arguing contrary to Jorgensen’s assertion that rewilding produces the aims of anti-human wilderness management

17/ The authors argue that the OVP is an experimental site unashamedly created through human and non-human entanglements. Rather than make recourse to wilderness, it allows for the co-production of surprising ecological futures

18/ Prior and Ward argue that OVP does not equate to anti-human wilderness management but instead to what Lorimer and Dressen term a ‘wild experiment’.

19/ This can mean although a certain amount of autonomy is given to non-humans they do not remove humans from Nature, instead creating unique, and ecologically surprising hybrid landscapes

20/ They conclude by reiterating their belief that the identification of non-human autonomy as central to ‘rewilding’ brings external and internal coherency and clarity to the term, as both a theory and set of related practices

21/ Before stating their the two examples mentioned show that existing rewilding initiatives have been developed and governed within the understanding that human and non-human world are inextricably entangled.

22/ These two points counter to Jorgensen’s assertion of rewilding as a plastic term or a call to return to a pre-human pristine nature. Rather an open-ended, ecologically surprising future; one which does not make recourse to a singular Nature

23/ There are more reposnses to this trail of academic literautre to come. Personally I think the first point around defiitions is well made and I would agree that as long as rewilding definitions are underpinned by a couple of central ideas, it is not dimished, but enhanced...

24/ by a diversity of definitions. This increases reach and applicability and allows the term evolve from theory into practice. The second part of the paper seeking to address the human exclusion element I think is less well made. The case studies used are unconvincing retorts

25/ which don't really do anything out of the ordinary to address Jorgensen's issue. For example consulting with people and compensating them is not proof they are included.

26/26 Although i don't feel rewilding seeks to exclude humans and nor does it need to, more needs to be done to make rewilding tied to a social vision as well as an ecological one and better examples of how this is done need to be found

This paper is available by the following link: sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

#rewilding #rewildingscience