The UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration and the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework have established ambitious goals to restore degraded ecosystems. Rewilding is gaining prominence as a crucial approach to achieve these goals. However, barriers exist to ensuring that rewilding efforts maximize benefits for biodiversity, mitigate the impacts of climate change and address societal needs.
So, how can we achieve this balance effectively?
Introducing climate-smart rewilding
Our new climate-smart rewilding framework integrates biodiversity conservation, climate change adaptation and mitigation and socio-economic factors of rewilding. In doing so, it enables a critical examination of the connections between rewilding, climate action, and human well-being.
This new framework for rewilding promotes climate-smart rewilding management actions (1) to restore ecological dynamics within rewilded ecosystems, encompassing targeted actions and unintended dynamics. This is achieved by enhancing the three components of rewilding: dispersal and connectivity, trophic complexity, and stochastic disturbances, which increases biodiversity across ecosystems.
The expansion of these rewilding components can lead to more dynamic and resilient ecosystems, contributing to climate change mitigation (2) and adaptation (3) efforts beneficial for both wildlife and society. The socio-economic dimension is also considered within the framework, aiming to cultivate sustainable strategies by assessing the benefits and risks of rewilding (4) that promote long-term stewardship of rewilded areas and encourage the development of more natural landscapes on a larger scale
How can we apply the climate-smart rewilding framework
- Climate change mitigation on abandoned farmlands: We can use the framework to identify areas in Europe where rewilding can increase carbon storage through passive methods, considering societal opportunity costs.
- Climate change adaptation and hazard prevention: The framework explores how rewilding can create migration routes and habitats for species, enhancing resilience to unstable climates.
- Social benefits and trade-offs related to wildlife comeback: We can examine regions where the natural expansion of large mammal species increases trophic complexity, balancing the positive effects of wildlife observation with potential human-wildlife conflicts.