I am really unsure that people who object to "Rewilding" as an ethic actually understand what is being suggested. It is NOT an effort to wipe out indigenous culture nor land management. In effect, it is a return to much of that way of life. The key, however, is scale.

As it was originally considered in the US, continental scale is critical. MOVEMENT (dynamism) of large wild animals and their natural predators, systems of protection rather than Pinchot's ideas of "conservation". These systems were lost because of colonialism!

It's adaptation as an idea to the UK has been, well, a disaster. It is neither THIS nor THAT, a hotchpotch. Confusion reigns, and "experts" have argued the toss by getting it wrong from the start. Whether the original concept can be applied to the UK at all is another question.

To Rewild is not to obliterate pastoralism nor craft nor Indigeneity. Nor is it exclusive of people. It requires people as 'friends' or as I would put it "kindship." No system of ecological healing can be done without human co-operation as long as our species exists!

It is simply to allow interconnected "place" for large animals & predators to roam AT SCALE, to effectively allow their cascade effects to aid biological diversity in those places, especially now given climate change, and to heal our WESTERN relationship with "wild".

If people are USING it as a device to oppress people, then it it is not Rewilding. It HAS to be collaborative, otherwise it will fail.

One thing I do object to is the idea that private philanthropists can buy out thousands of hectares of land in order to "impose."

Thousands of hectares of land were bought up by American philanthropists in South America, for instance, and Rewilded to be eventually returned to the State as "commons". Sadly, neither Private nor State is "Commons". Locals MUST be included from the start.

If you think that Britain is too small for Rewilding, I'd listen! Our "wild" has been hammered for hundreds of years more than the US. Colonialism began IN BRITAIN before it was exported so broadly and violently.

But we do have a still relatively recent and hard won system of National Parks that ought to be full with "wild" and the idea of connecting them in collaborative efforts would create the kind of scale needed. Is that ever going to be possible? (end).