A Perspective on Rewilding

By: Anya Shetty

Since the Industrial Revolution, our population has begun to see the natural world as a resource which we can monopolize and exploit for our advantage. Human involvement in nature has caused the mainstream view of the “natural world” and “wilderness” to shift from great admiration to a tourist-like, ignorant perspective. Looking at the big picture, the concepts of land ethics and an ecological conscience seem simple, but it's only when we reflect on our actions that we realize that we don’t respect our environment as much as we should. Humans have impacted the environment in many ways: burning fossil fuels, deforestation, and pollution. Changes like these have triggered natural phenomenons like climate change and poor air quality. Our involvement in the natural world has also wiped out entire species and populations of animals, expediting the extinction process. In summation, human involvement in nature has mainly caused harm, and for a long time, we have been extreme. Polluting almost all aspects of the environment to an unsustainable extent. The only way to combat this extreme is with another extreme—rewilding. 

Rewilding may seem unreasonable at first, but in my opinion, it is necessary. We, as a collective world, need to shift our purpose to restoring our natural habitat and make it just that: natural. When it comes to my views on rewilding, I agree with environmental activist, George Monbiot’s famous perspective. I think that the only way to lessen the damage of our past actions is to “back off” on our involvement with nature in the present. Nature can naturally and slowly restore itself when we stop trying to impose ourselves onto it. 

​To solidify my stance on rewilding, I pose William Conon’s argument, a perspective quite different from that of Monbiot’s. Cronon, in his opinion of the wilderness, paints the idea of “wilderness” as somewhat of an ignorant ideal for people who don’t know how to actually treat and view the natural land. This general idea of the wilderness implies that humans are entirely separate from nature and contribute negative attitudes to environmentalism. When we stop trying to constantly “seek out” nature, we contribute to a more positive environmental movement: modern-day rewilding. Modern-day rewilding insists on removing human involvement in nature and letting the ecosystem's natural energy flow without any interruption. Maybe this is what many of us don’t understand, and why we need rewilding: nature can function without humans. Nature isn’t codependent on human activity. Nature has biological cycles in which the animals and plants thrive. In short, nature can function without us—and we must insist on it. 

An example I would like to bring up is the movie Pocahantas. I think I’ve watched the movie around 30 times (maybe more) since I was a child, and looking back on the movie with my ideas of rewilding now, I’ve come to a realization. The movie takes place in the beautiful, pre-industrial Virginia where plants are lush, animals roam free, and trees are olden-day skyscrapers. I think that the purpose of rewilding should be to revert our habits and return to a world like Pocahantas. Well, maybe not the part where humans necessarily walk barefoot through the lush wilderness with not a building in sight (it's kind of hard to do that), but a world where humans live harmoniously with nature. Not imposing ourselves onto it but respecting it and its natural energy for all its glory. In my opinion, the respect that the Native Americans have for the land is unmatched by any other group, clearly seen in their cultural practices and beliefs. They cherish the small things such as the flow of the river, the way leaves float in the wind, and the way the sky compliments the color of the trees. They appreciate nature and treat it as a sacred. They view the world as if they are living with nature. Nature, to them, is a cohabitant of their land. It is not a money pot to destroy and abuse. If anything, I think that they view themselves as secondary inhabitants on our Earth, second to nature. 

Based on my reasoning, I think you can guess by now that I am a proponent of rewilding. I think that rewilding argues for slowly overturning our past dire environmental mistakes, and argues for rebuilding a new society where we coexist with nature, not impose ourselves onto it. Rewilding argues against monopolizing nature and exploiting it for money. Rewilding, most importantly, fights for the fact that we need to live harmoniously with nature, not in nature.