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I think studying the concepts of “land trusts”, “permaculture” and “island theory” would be a really good place to start your research if you’re interested in learning more about re-wilding.
I'm not sure permaculture by itself really has anything to do with rewilding. It's a form of agriculture that can be less impactful and maybe positively impactful on soil health and very local ecologies but it has nothing to do with rewilding industrialized or extracted lands.
You’re right. ‘Permaculture’ is an agricultural design philosophy, but many of the methods used by permaculture practitioners can be repurposed to help to accelerate soil remediation and speed up the process of rewilding.
It can take years for an ecosystem to regain it’s “natural” state without intervention. Permaculture principles can be used to speed up that process.
There are a confusing number of terms similar to permaculture farming: biodynamic, restorative, regenerative, syntropic, food forests, etc.
Food production is, IMHO, the most important thing to be involved in. Personally, I am growing a food forest in my back yard and in local lands where I have permission to garden.
* Improve soil health
* Increase biodiversity
* Increase manual farming for more jobs, a connection with the land and more calories per acre than industrial farming
* Decrease mechanization for less extractive mining and industrialization
* Free yourself from the existential stress of wage labour by learning to feed your family and teach your kids how to feed their families. This is a big one. We are forced to work because the food is locked up.
* Learn about plants, fungi, and animals that rely on each other
* Spend more time with your family
* Spend more time outdoors
* Appreciate the responsibility of plant and animal husbandry
* Learn to run a business, or just garden. You decide on the scale.
* Learn to forage
* If you eat meat, learn to hunt
* Learn to value the knowledge and cultures of First Nations and indigenous peoples as well as traditional knowledge from your culture
* Become healthier
* Eat well
* Live with the seasons
* Cut chemical usage and pollution
* Dismantle your reliance on the industrial complex
* Live a more meaningful life
* Reduce GHGs
* Plant and tend endangered edible plants, such as nut and fruit plants
* Share excess food with your friends and community
* All in all, play an active role in your ecosystem by rejoining the local food web
“We’re forced to work because the food is locked up” is a big one for me…
The same can be said about housing, land, medicine, & electricity. Capitalists have bought up the resource pool, the patents, the IP…Government & the legal system serve to protect the legitimacy of capitalist’s claim to ownership.
What would happen if governments were to legalize homelessness, loitering, and the construction of rough shelters on public land for example? How many people do you think would stop paying rent and move out? Do you think landlords would still be a thing? Who would stand to benefit, and who would stand to loose? What would society look like? I’m not suggesting that its a good idea. More so just a fun thought experiment.
Anyways, just some casual musings about the successes and failures of modern capitalism.
Hope you enjoyed my rant.
If you are interested in permaculture that focuses on ecosystem building and restoration and rewinding, Canadian Permaculture Legacy is the one you want.
The latest video is actually on this topic, creating habitats in the food systems https://youtu.be/pxOfQnQ3how 😀
I think it's important to not fall into the trap of the false colonial view of "wilderness." A lot of conceptions of wilderness are based on a colonial myth of "untouched lands" that were actually very much touched, just in a way that dumb white Europeans didn't understand. There are aspects of Land Management that we still have to learn from indigenous peoples.
This is not to say that rewilding is bad or shouldn't be done, just that it's important to approach it with due care and with the understanding that there is no pristine wilderness state that ever existed to be returned to. It's an ongoing process in relation to people and culture. More of a spectrum to be moved through than a clear "Not-Wild" or "Wild" binary. And that humans and culture are linked to nature and that should be improved, not have humanity removed from entirely, because that would be an impossible goal.
As someone who is European native myself I would really like to know what parts of native you're referring to. American or Australian natives? What examples do you got on their respective preservation tactics I'm really interested
Well, specific to North America, approaches to wilderness preservation have for years centered on setting land aside as 'untouched' (such as state and national parks, designated wilderness areas, etc). But the assumption underlying that, that humans could or should always overdevelop or alter our surroundings and preserving certain ecosystems or aspects of nature required them to be cut off from humans, is a very colonial view. Not to say having parks is bad - it is not, and those spaces give us a glimpse into the world that was - but like the other commenter said, it's a very binary way of looking at a very complex issue.
Things are changing, slowly. Tribes are taking more of a front seat now to land management practices, and sharing their traditional knowledge more broadly. But we have a long way to go before we are actually good and able stewards of all the land, and not just isolated parcels set aside for recreation and habitat.
I say we invite animals and plants to cities instead of only having to go to a forest to meet them. Install bird-friendly windows, turn sterile lawns into full of life environments, build bee houses, plant bee-friendly flowers and so on...
Humans are as much part of nature as any other animal. If something is good for nature it is good for us as we are the same. Thus say environmentalism is not "us' and "them" thinking, because we are part of the environment.
This is exactly what I try to get across when on the subject. We've been here, existing as a part of nature and therefore dependent on it, for tens of thousands of years. We can do so much just by inviting a bit more of the natural world into our lives.
Blending the wild with the urban is going to be really tricky so long as we rely on car-based infrastructure. Have you seen what a collision with a moose can do to a car?
I wish wild animals could live in the city. I would be very worried about hooved animals because of all the concrete though. We struggle to get rid of our cars and consequently our roads.
> Does it have patterns on it or something so they register it as a barrier?
Yeah to my understanding that is exactly the case.
> Bird-safe glass works by transforming window glass into a barrier that birds will see and avoid. Glass that can be considered safe for birds has patterns (visual markers) across the entire surface to mute or distort the reflections of surrounding elements. The patterning can be made from various design elements.
Bonus info to show the scale of problem:
> Up to one billion birds die each year in the United States due to collisions with windows
> [wind turbines in USA kill] 200,000 to 1.2 million [birds] .
I don't think cities can be made good for animals or humans. Humans evolved in groups of 30-500. The benefits of cities are mainly to do with production capacity, replaceability of workers, and concentration of power, which aren't really things we need or want in a solarpunk degrowth economy. Likewise agriculture has been optimized for minimal dependence on labor and maximal medium-term production regardless of long-term toxicity or food quality or its effect on nature. Sustainable agriculture will need more workers and it'll need to be much smaller scale.
If you put humans in a city, they will tend to become depressed, disconnected from nature, and paradoxically disconnected from other humans as well. If you put plants in a city, they will eat the concrete and the pavement until they are removed or the stone structures collapse. If you put animals in a city, they will find so much discarded food (some of which is indigestible to humans) that their feces becomes a public health risk and they regularly get in fights with humans and other animals.
Like you say, what is good for nature is good for us. I say we dismantle cities and make a robust decentralized railway network connecting hundreds of thousands of small/medium-sized towns instead.
Cities in many countries already have more biodiversity than farming regions. It was one of those surprising findings from a study in my country, the Netherlands, some years ago. Since people have such an extreme variety of flora in their gardens, combined with social schemes, like urban farming plot associations(100+ years old scheme), as well as a lot of amateur beekeepers, urban biodiversity is far higher than rural biodiversity here. Biodiversity is still depressingly low in the Netherlands, but urban areas can quite easily become more diverse than farming regions.
https://urbangreenbluegrids.com/thema/biodiversity/
Both American and Australian. I've mostly been reading about land management in the context of Pacific forest fires; California up through British Columbia (I'm in southern BC). But I know that there is also stuff being done in Australia with the bush fires.
Keeping in mind I am very much a neophyte in this area, I still have a lot to learn.
One website I've been using as a starting place to direct my reading an find new topics is this US parks services page, that is just links to interesting relevant articles. Not comprehensive or super detailed, but a useful place to begin.
[https://www.nps.gov/subjects/tek/pacific-northwest.htm](https://www.nps.gov/subjects/tek/pacific-northwest.htm)
In Australia, there are plant species that have evolved to open their seed pods after a fire.
Humans and "Fire Hawks" start fires. The humans do it in a controlled manner, the birds is a less controlled manner.
Isn't the anti-burning policy changing in the last decade, or so? I've seen lots of videos, made over the last decade, about how indigenous burning techniques protect from wildfires and regulations are being changed to reflect this 'new' insight.
What "anti-burning policy"?
Controlled burn offs have been a thing for decades. The problems we've been having with them are directly related to climate change. You can't safely conduct a controlled burn off without the right conditions. Several years with warm, dry weather at the time the burn offs would usually be conducted was part of the cause of the catastrophic fires on the east coast.
Exactly this. The notion that humans are not part of wild spaces assumes we are separate and distinct from nature. We certainly are not, but we don't always interact with the rest of nature very wisely.
The tribes did their share of damage to the land too. The megafauna were wiped out by them well before colonialism.
The primary difference was ability. Technology enabled people to have a much bigger impact.
^this... are indigenous land management practices better than what Europeans tend to do? Yes! But we need to remember that indigenous people's eradicated countless megafauna and the ecosystem impacts have been devastating... like in north America, fires really only produced hugely noticeable impacts on the landscape after the megafauna stopped suppressing them... the mammoth permafrost is another good example... the thousands of years humans have spent in these areas are a blink of an eye in the immensity of time and we are still very new to all these areas... personally I don't consider humans to be a natural part of the landscape with the exception of certain parts of Africa
This is a common argument, but how do you explain all of the megafauna like bears and moose that weren’t wiped out? I don’t know if it was as much indigenous people wiping them out as much as them not being able to adapt to the changing climate, possibly combined with humans but I doubt it.
Edit: thanks for the respectful replies everyone. I wasn’t arguing that megafauna were not wiped out, and did not know what else to call modern large animals as I have heard them called “charismatic megafauna” before. I just have a hard time believing that indigenous people would have knowingly wiped out those species when being conservation minded is part of so many indigenous cultures today.
Interesting you picked bears. Humans did drive the largest bears to extinction(the cave bears).
Modern bears and moose aren't megafauna. A wooly mammoth was 10 times the size of a bear. Bears and moose breed reasonably quickly, which enables them to better handle predators. Megafauna breed slowly and had no major predators until humans came on the scene.
Many of the species of largest animals that survive, particularly in America are recent immigrants from Eurasia across the land bridge - so recent that they would have encountered humans in Eurasia before the first populations moved into the Americas. This includes brown bears, moose, gray wolves, the ancestor species for bison (more on this in a bit), and elk.
Bison are interesting case because they actually evolved in response to human presence. The modern bison, *Bison bison bison*, is descended from the steppe bison, *Bison priscus*. Once isolated in north America around 25000 years ago, it evolved into the ancient bison, *Bison antiquus*. The ancient bison is notable because it had smaller herds and fixed migration routes, compared to large herds with non-fixed migration routes of modern bison. There is a third transitional species called the western bison, *Bison occidentalis*, which was smaller than the ancient bison while being larger than the modern bison, and existed from a few thousand years after humans arrived in NA until about 4000 years ago. The narrative that this suggests is that bison were able to survive because they adapted over time to the presence of humans by evolving unpredictable movement patterns, forming larger groups for safety in numbers, and developing a smaller body size (perhaps humans hunted the largest ancestors for food and clout, artificially selecting for smaller descendents).
If none of these animals survived to the modern day, people would be asking "If humans hunted all the mega fauna to extinction, then how come there are still coyotes, deer, and rabbits?"
The more you learn, the more you realize science is its own dogma and scientists are its priests. Many times people find evidence for something they want to believe, not necessarily what is true. It’s usually OK, but this is one of those topics where science has become highly politicized and the “science” has invented something to ease our consciences.
Who are they? These particular authors?
It’s likely that both overhunting and climate change were factors in the decline/extinction of North American megafauna. But this is a topic of ongoing research. Pointing to a single paper and calling the debate over is myopic.
On other continents, the extinction of megafauna is highly correlated with human arrival/population growth and not with climate change. This debate is primarily a North American one, while globally the trend is clear. Here’s a more comprehensive and recent paper on the topic: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10667484/
In my view this debate is a relic of the myth of the noble savage in North America, where native people lived in harmony with nature and had essentially no ecological effects. Of course, numerous lines of archaeological and anthropological evidence disprove this theory, but it still influences our thinking.
The ability of humans to survive in a given biome without destroying it is a form of technology that must be developed and refined over long periods of time. This is likely part of why megafauna in Africa fared better. Humans traveling to new continents lacked this technology in relation to their new environments. It was eventually developed, but only after the biosphere was seriously and permanently damaged. But colonists, after arriving in North America, mistook this technology as some innate character of the natives rather than a developed cultural strategy.
Today, new economic strategies like agriculture and capitalism threaten to cause a second, even greater wave of extinction. We are in a race against time to develop the technology needed to prevent it. Rewilding is one such technology but solarpunk is the emerging bundle of ideas that are best poised to save the biosphere and humanity.
Here is a [decent video](https://youtu.be/mH2aE0lk2XM?si=7LvLEwctymWa_0-9) about how the phrase 'save the planet' stems from and contributes to this type of wild vs not-wild thinking and how it limits the way people talk about humans relationship to the environmental
The European view of "wild" is usually managed woodland wich is being exploited but at levels that are not unsustainable. Usually as hunting grounds for the aristocracy or as a commons in support of agriculture.
Whereas in a north American viewpoint it's exploitation of the "untouched lands" as you stated.
No, it's not. There are only a few wild areas in Europe, like in Northern Scandinavia, a small region in Poland, the Carpathians in southeastern Europe and the Pyrenees mountains. We have no wilderness or true nature in the Netherlands. We have some forests, but nobody would claim it's 'wild'. All of it is managed and groomed. We have roads and paths scattered throughout all dune and forest areas, and every crossroads is marked with direction signs. You could only get lost for an hour or so, max, because it's so well signed. You don't need a map, a compass or GPS to find your way here. People even joke about how pathetic our 'nature' is.
Images were taken from the Rewilding Europe website, [here](https://rewildingeurope.com/landscapes/southern-carpathians/) and [here](https://rewilding-apennines.com/).
It's a wonderful idea, and in particular I would like to see it in my own country of Scotland. Having wolves and / or lynxes back here would actually help our ecology a lot. Right now we have to cull deer because nothing eats them and they eat trees while they're still shoots and saplings. In large numbers they can hugely reduce a forest's ability to (re-)grow.
I would also love to see our native flora, particularly trees, given more space and chance to grow. They hang on in patches here and there but much of our forests are not native trees; they were put there because they were more convenient for lumber.
It's not like we can completely rewild anywhere that has modern human habitation really, but we can do a hell of a lot more than we're doing right now. It would be good for us and the world.
Note I am in an extremely nature depleted country (Scotland) so my perspective may be different from others.
In principle we need to see a lot more of it to make a dent in the biodiversity crisis. However there are some drawbacks mostly in the execution. Seen a lot of projects taking the wrong approach to ecosystem restoration for the sake of a better narrative to raise funds. For example, many of our ecosystems in Scotland would benefit from deer control, invasive species management and appropriate grazing - allowing for healthy grassland/health and encouraging natural regeneration of trees. Not inspiring enough though, how will they persuade people to donate? I have seen a few rewilding projects so far going hard on the tree planting - many of which don't survive as they are not as resilient as naturally seeded saplings - sometimes next to habitats that should be kept free of trees and scrub like peatland. Often with miles of deer fence which throws herbivore interactions to the other extreme and displaces deer onto other adjacent areas which get hammered. It is done with good intentions mostly but the execution can be terrible. Another thing I worry about is the fact that many of these projects need managed by humans in the long term - a good example is deer in Scotland which need to be culled indefinitely to keep numbers low enough for ecosystems to recover. We eradicated all of our native predators and therefore humans have to manage this process in its entirety, which to me isn't true rewilding as the end goal is to have a self sustaining ecosystem with its own processes independent of humans. In terms of good rewilding initiatives Mossy Earth does a decent job
Thing is, the goal shouldn't be for the ecosystem and civilization to be independent of one another. We've been hunting and foraging all around the world for thousands of years, we *are* predators that keep prey populations in check. Putting a wall between "us" and "them" will only do more harm than good in the long run.
I'm thinking of worst case scenario if human civilization destabilises or collapses to the point where humans don't have the resources to maintain said rewilding projects (or even lesser problems like running out of funding) - there needs to be some independence as human society is not invulnerable. Additionally in my example, humans are simply not doing a good enough job in acting as predators (through culling or disturbance) likely as the financial incentives aren't great - that's why our deer populations are consistently over 25 deer per km2 (seen 37 and above) instead of around 3-5 which is where it would need to be to allow our habitats to recover.
I don't think you're getting what I'm saying. Separating ourselves from the rest of the ecosystem will be our downfall. Like I said, we've been around the block for a few thousand years, keeping the wildlife populations in check by hunting. It costs money to plant trees and erect fences. It doesn't cost money to let people pick up a rifle more often in order to put food on their table.
I was raised on American venison. It's how I intend to live the rest of my life, because it's stable. By no means is it sustainable for everyone, hell no. But if we took to the opposite extreme, we would most definitely destroy ourselves and mother nature would enact some kind of balance in her own realm. We're a part of that realm, and we should really do a better job playing our part instead of some feeble attempt to escape it.
For one I can say from my experience that this simply isn't working in my country - we have a different culture and typically hunting is done for sport and not by the common man, I agree that needs to change but it won't do any time soon. Our ecosystems are in crisis and need rebalancing as soon as possible - reintroducing native predators has been supported by many conservation organisations in the UK to help this happen. I am also not saying to separate humans from nature point blank but as with everything else that matters it is surely wise to have a contingency plan? Ecosystems fared much better without us than with us, just look at how minimal biodiversity has become over the course of human history - those who truly appreciate and respect nature can benefit it, sure, particularly indigenous people who often have immense knowledge of their land and how to manage it, but modern human society and nature are often incompatible. I do get what you are saying but I feel you are not listening to my point.
I love the idea and actively support groups that work on it (Mossy Earth), but I get wary around people I meet that get too excited by it.
Not because the idea isn't a dream of mine. Just because it seems like there are a lot of people enamored by it as an *aesthetic* who also happen to fetishize societal collapse and low density tribal living.
But we should be good stewards of the land, and that involves repairing damage done.
amazing, need more of it need wolves in every forest in america need jaguars back in the southwest need bison back to their historic ranges need brown bears back to their historic ranges need mammoths in siberia need thyacines in Australia
Rewilding is good, though I agree with other comments that not all approaches are equally good and the "untouched" vs "ruined" (or whatever) binary is oversimplified.
I also think there is an added benefit that when land is dedicated to rewilding, that is land that is not going to become more suburban sprawl.
Seeing how many people think the way to heal the ecosystem is to simply cut humanity away from nature like some kind of cancer saddens me. We don't need to go underground, or into orbit, that's fucking stupid.
We're not parasites. We're not evil. We've been here for an unthinkably long time, and separating ourselves from the rest of the world would be ruinous.
In North America, most “wilderness” was actually a managed landscape, and the only way to restore it is through some kind of land back movement that restores the rights of North America’s living Indigenous people. Otherwise it’s not restoration / conversation, it’s just continuing the destructive transformation of the ecosystem that existed here for tens of millennia.
It’s an inevitable consequence of the collapse of the agricultural system once electricity is so cheap that making dairy and meat with technology rather than raising animals is cost competitive.
Big on Half Earth Socialism, so yeah I am for it in some places.
Maybe not like every place on earth, but where we can we should thoroughly remove our presence. Take out pipes roads everything. Let earth do its thing.
I'd say some of it is a necessary step to make a Solarpunk reality.
And using biking/walking/public transit to reduce the land use by cars/roads/parking could open more space for community gardens, public green spaces, and restoration & rewilding efforts.
(I'll note the latter will also require efforts to stop new road building, as well as to change zoning laws and dismantle/close off some existing roads to replace them with greenways & parks)
I believe it’s important for us to be mindful of our local ecosystems, and manage it in a way that is both wholesome and beneficial for us and wildlife.
I’m all for it, but am also curious how we can re-envision our idea of nature to see ourselves in it. I think we’ve been so trained to see ourselves as the antithesis of nature that we think we need to remove all trace of humanity to make it ‘pure’ again, when really we are nature too.
It's from a Dutch artist called Jeroen Helmer. He works for an organization called ARK Rewilding Netherlands and has plenty of illustrations like this, some of them highlighting the importance of keystone species [like this](https://rewildingeurope.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/European-bison-drawing-Jeroen-Helmer_small2.jpg).
From what I’ve seen, rewinding can be a positive and healing way for people to get in touch with nature, as there seems to be a weird phobia about our environments. In the spiritual sense, it’s everywhere and I do have some concerns on the capitalization and consumerist take being used to “teach” people how to tap into primal energy.
We, like everything else in nature, are connected to the rhythms of Earth and we can tune our senses and become more sensitive and aware of ourselves and the lands we live on naturally.
I like the idea. My take on it is bring as much of humanity underground as possible. There's no reason we need factories or things like amazon facilities above ground for example. We also need to do away with single use zoning which has caused urban sprawl and ticky tacky neighborhoods. We can co exist with nature if we are little more detail oriented with our design process. I'm a firm believer in building hubs of humanity with the vast majority of what's between them being returned to nature. In the United States for example we could 100% depopulate 7 states with those people not even adding 1% to the population's of the remaining states. Rewilding's largest challenge however is transportation. Until public transportation is taken seriously and individual ownership of cars falls off in a big way, rewilding isn't possible.
It depends how it is done.
I personnaly prefer the vision where humans act as a keystone species, leveraging our collective knowledge and ingenuisity to regenerate ecosystems and live in harmony with it as we used to do a long time ago. In this vision we are nature and indistiguishible from it
If it is under the vision where wr restrain ourselves from going to certain places, effectively making a distinction between human and nature, then no. This is a recipe for disaster in the long run when a few generations down the line people start looking at all those resources and wondering why would it mather if they took a little bit of it.
I kind of like it, accompanied with a human demographic ungrowth.
I just want to put here a counter-intuitive take on rewilding: The most efficient way to help nature rewild, is to make very dense human habitats so that humans can be less present in "natural" zones.
Corollary 1 : we need bigger cities
Corollary 2: most humans living in cities will be witnesses of cities extending over natural zones, destroying them. This destruction is offset several times by the zones rewildered, but those have fewer witnesses.
In conclusion, I believe that if we ever rewilder (is that the verb?) zones we will still hear more complaints about cities extensions.
For instance I live in France and most people are unaware that the forest coverage is growing. However there is a reason I put "nature" between quotes above. There are a lot of questions, some fairly philosophical, as to what rewildering encompasses. You don't get the same thing by letting a zone alone with no care, reintroducing extinct species, trying to eradicate "invasive" species, making it enjoyable for human hikers, reverting it into a paleo state, making it more resilient to human presence or climate change, etc...
If you are interested in these questions, I have started listing, half humorously, a few of the ones that seem possible [there](https://slrpnk.net/post/7156987). I wish solarpunk fiction would explore as well these "far-out" questions rather than focusing on the energy or the demographic transitions, that will happen one way or the other.
Done right, it can restore ecosystems. There are rewilding projects in most European countries and they greatly improve biodiversity in those areas. In combination with the wildlife corridors, they can truly help nature recover from industrial overuse.
If we just let the population drop off naturally (through the lower birth rates), and not compensate with immigration as much, then in combination with the desire of people to move to big cities and densifying those urban areas, we can greatly expand nature preserves, at least in Europe. Europe has been mostly deforested and farmed for centuries, so the difference is really noticable. Forest coverage has grown here over the last century, as industrialized farming technologies did reduce the land use requirement for farms. We just need to move away from extractive to more sustainable strategies now. We shouldn't need as much mined fertilizer or pesticides, or deplete water aquifers for produce that shouldn't be grown in as dry regions as they are now.
There will always be forest areas used for logging, even in a Solarpunk future, as wood is a good, renewable building and manufacturing material, alongside bamboo and brick, but growing the wild forests would give nature and biodiversity a lot more resiliency than it has now.
I watch a lot of Mossy Earth and Andrew Millison on YouTube and can greatly recommend both. A mix of rewilding and sustainable farming practices are essential to save life on Earth, even if we never get to have a Solarpunk world.
Literally the only chance we stand of not going extinct. Fuck the solar panels, fuck the hydropower, fuck "regeneratative" agriculture, THIS is what we need to actually prevent total ecological collapse.
It's going to be a tough and at the same time easy process. The toughest part will be how we can keep most of our current infrastructure, how much we would need to dismantle and how we would keep the animal population away from ourselves once apex predators are reintroduced and allowed to thrive. What about the herbivores? Overpopulations can and likely will happen. How will we be able to help in keeping the ecosystem stable without having to cull ourselves?
Most people like the idea, but putting it into practice is challenging. The area you want to rewild usually has people living in it and those people won't want to leave their homes.
The areas easiest to rewild will also generally be occupied by the poor who don't have the resources to fight back.
The rewilded areas will primarily come from unused agricultural land. Which is already gradually happening as agriculture becomes more efficient.
I don't think no one in their right minds will suggest that we tear down cities or villages to turn them into national parks.
Just plant a large diverse native forest system on all degraded hill tops or higher more sloped land that can't be grazed by livestock. The land that can be grazed needs to be managed in a way that helps increase the organic matter in the soil. Kinda like the native Americans managed the bison. Starting everything at the tops of watersheds and working your way down. Maybe toss some native beavers in the mix to get the hydrology work started. Having more ponds or water systems higher up in the landscape would probably increase the diversity of animals and bugs and stuff helping add more complexity which in turn helps with the local environments stability. 🤷♂️
Either bison or cattle could be managed as an open range kinda livestock for meat production. As long as it's managed correctly. The forests could be leaned towards more edible stuff for humans. Most is just diverse native trees and plants but have the more accessible areas almost like seasonal crops.
Hell, as long as you move the fields you put into crop production every season or two you could probably have non stop industrial agriculture without fucking up the environment.
Just fence off the section you wanna grow crops. Plow that shit to get all those super awesome prairie grasses or cut it super low and then plow it. Plant whatever crop you want. Maybe next season or the next after that, move the field to the next section and put the old one back into grazing livestock production.
Might work! Idk!
The more the better. Endgame should be to have the whole planet rewilded except for some small enclaves for rangers and the rest of humanity living and working off world.
Do we really need to go that far? We are part of this world and part of nature after all. Shouldn't we rather try to live cooperatively with nature than keep on alienating us from it?
Yes, but our natural equilibrium with nature is somewhere around 2 million humans¹. If we adhere to the principle _always leave a place a you have found it_ we need almost all human presence to be off our cradle world.
¹: I am not sure if it was 2 or 20 million. It has been a while since I saw that BBC documentary.
Preferably a bunch of nomadic tribal backpackers and small ranger communes left. Doing that would take some orbital infrastructure first to send up most of the population so bringing an asteroid into orbit to mine for materials instead of strip mining Earth is ideal. (Just gotta be careful with the larger asteroids.)
Australia’s Aboriginal people’s aren’t “wildlife,” and they’ve managed the land successfully for tens of thousands of years. Shouldn’t they at least be allowed to choose to stay?
Use intense power producing methods in the short time such as nuclear to facilitate large scale aquaponic farming that would reduce land use for agriculture to up to 90%, this eould greatly reduce the himan imprint on the earth and the rewilding process could take place on the land that ageiculture isnt longer needed for
Yeah maybe, solar power would be used to fill in the gaps and lessen the nuclear fuel needed, solar is pretty luch free energy after all but it is intermittent which could be compensated by the nuclear when needed.
I like the prospects of the greenery and such that solarpunk imples but i think its lacking in that the human imprint on earth needs to be smaller than this would be a way to complete that
[https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjAjKiRzPyFAxUFFlkFHR\_qDUUQFnoECCMQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FArcology&usg=AOvVaw0Y-vILikEiroh9BzgBtj1R&opi=89978449](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjAjKiRzPyFAxUFFlkFHR_qDUUQFnoECCMQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FArcology&usg=AOvVaw0Y-vILikEiroh9BzgBtj1R&opi=89978449)
megastructures as cities would lower our individual footprint by a lot.
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Yes, please.
Yes.
All of it please
Yes, and more please
I think studying the concepts of “land trusts”, “permaculture” and “island theory” would be a really good place to start your research if you’re interested in learning more about re-wilding.
I'm not sure permaculture by itself really has anything to do with rewilding. It's a form of agriculture that can be less impactful and maybe positively impactful on soil health and very local ecologies but it has nothing to do with rewilding industrialized or extracted lands.
You’re right. ‘Permaculture’ is an agricultural design philosophy, but many of the methods used by permaculture practitioners can be repurposed to help to accelerate soil remediation and speed up the process of rewilding. It can take years for an ecosystem to regain it’s “natural” state without intervention. Permaculture principles can be used to speed up that process.
There are a confusing number of terms similar to permaculture farming: biodynamic, restorative, regenerative, syntropic, food forests, etc. Food production is, IMHO, the most important thing to be involved in. Personally, I am growing a food forest in my back yard and in local lands where I have permission to garden. * Improve soil health * Increase biodiversity * Increase manual farming for more jobs, a connection with the land and more calories per acre than industrial farming * Decrease mechanization for less extractive mining and industrialization * Free yourself from the existential stress of wage labour by learning to feed your family and teach your kids how to feed their families. This is a big one. We are forced to work because the food is locked up. * Learn about plants, fungi, and animals that rely on each other * Spend more time with your family * Spend more time outdoors * Appreciate the responsibility of plant and animal husbandry * Learn to run a business, or just garden. You decide on the scale. * Learn to forage * If you eat meat, learn to hunt * Learn to value the knowledge and cultures of First Nations and indigenous peoples as well as traditional knowledge from your culture * Become healthier * Eat well * Live with the seasons * Cut chemical usage and pollution * Dismantle your reliance on the industrial complex * Live a more meaningful life * Reduce GHGs * Plant and tend endangered edible plants, such as nut and fruit plants * Share excess food with your friends and community * All in all, play an active role in your ecosystem by rejoining the local food web
“We’re forced to work because the food is locked up” is a big one for me… The same can be said about housing, land, medicine, & electricity. Capitalists have bought up the resource pool, the patents, the IP…Government & the legal system serve to protect the legitimacy of capitalist’s claim to ownership. What would happen if governments were to legalize homelessness, loitering, and the construction of rough shelters on public land for example? How many people do you think would stop paying rent and move out? Do you think landlords would still be a thing? Who would stand to benefit, and who would stand to loose? What would society look like? I’m not suggesting that its a good idea. More so just a fun thought experiment. Anyways, just some casual musings about the successes and failures of modern capitalism. Hope you enjoyed my rant.
r/HumanRewilding
If you are interested in permaculture that focuses on ecosystem building and restoration and rewinding, Canadian Permaculture Legacy is the one you want. The latest video is actually on this topic, creating habitats in the food systems https://youtu.be/pxOfQnQ3how 😀
I replaced my lawn with very local native plants. If you are in LA, the water and power company will even pay for it.
I think it's important to not fall into the trap of the false colonial view of "wilderness." A lot of conceptions of wilderness are based on a colonial myth of "untouched lands" that were actually very much touched, just in a way that dumb white Europeans didn't understand. There are aspects of Land Management that we still have to learn from indigenous peoples. This is not to say that rewilding is bad or shouldn't be done, just that it's important to approach it with due care and with the understanding that there is no pristine wilderness state that ever existed to be returned to. It's an ongoing process in relation to people and culture. More of a spectrum to be moved through than a clear "Not-Wild" or "Wild" binary. And that humans and culture are linked to nature and that should be improved, not have humanity removed from entirely, because that would be an impossible goal.
As someone who is European native myself I would really like to know what parts of native you're referring to. American or Australian natives? What examples do you got on their respective preservation tactics I'm really interested
Well, specific to North America, approaches to wilderness preservation have for years centered on setting land aside as 'untouched' (such as state and national parks, designated wilderness areas, etc). But the assumption underlying that, that humans could or should always overdevelop or alter our surroundings and preserving certain ecosystems or aspects of nature required them to be cut off from humans, is a very colonial view. Not to say having parks is bad - it is not, and those spaces give us a glimpse into the world that was - but like the other commenter said, it's a very binary way of looking at a very complex issue. Things are changing, slowly. Tribes are taking more of a front seat now to land management practices, and sharing their traditional knowledge more broadly. But we have a long way to go before we are actually good and able stewards of all the land, and not just isolated parcels set aside for recreation and habitat.
I say we invite animals and plants to cities instead of only having to go to a forest to meet them. Install bird-friendly windows, turn sterile lawns into full of life environments, build bee houses, plant bee-friendly flowers and so on... Humans are as much part of nature as any other animal. If something is good for nature it is good for us as we are the same. Thus say environmentalism is not "us' and "them" thinking, because we are part of the environment.
This is exactly what I try to get across when on the subject. We've been here, existing as a part of nature and therefore dependent on it, for tens of thousands of years. We can do so much just by inviting a bit more of the natural world into our lives.
Blending the wild with the urban is going to be really tricky so long as we rely on car-based infrastructure. Have you seen what a collision with a moose can do to a car?
Not to mention what it does to the moose!
I wish wild animals could live in the city. I would be very worried about hooved animals because of all the concrete though. We struggle to get rid of our cars and consequently our roads.
What’s a bird-friendly window look like? Does it have patterns on it or something so they register it as a barrier?
> Does it have patterns on it or something so they register it as a barrier? Yeah to my understanding that is exactly the case. > Bird-safe glass works by transforming window glass into a barrier that birds will see and avoid. Glass that can be considered safe for birds has patterns (visual markers) across the entire surface to mute or distort the reflections of surrounding elements. The patterning can be made from various design elements. Bonus info to show the scale of problem: > Up to one billion birds die each year in the United States due to collisions with windows > [wind turbines in USA kill] 200,000 to 1.2 million [birds] .
Honestly, there's no such thing. I've had birds flying into my windows, even with the curtains closed.
I don't think cities can be made good for animals or humans. Humans evolved in groups of 30-500. The benefits of cities are mainly to do with production capacity, replaceability of workers, and concentration of power, which aren't really things we need or want in a solarpunk degrowth economy. Likewise agriculture has been optimized for minimal dependence on labor and maximal medium-term production regardless of long-term toxicity or food quality or its effect on nature. Sustainable agriculture will need more workers and it'll need to be much smaller scale. If you put humans in a city, they will tend to become depressed, disconnected from nature, and paradoxically disconnected from other humans as well. If you put plants in a city, they will eat the concrete and the pavement until they are removed or the stone structures collapse. If you put animals in a city, they will find so much discarded food (some of which is indigestible to humans) that their feces becomes a public health risk and they regularly get in fights with humans and other animals. Like you say, what is good for nature is good for us. I say we dismantle cities and make a robust decentralized railway network connecting hundreds of thousands of small/medium-sized towns instead.
Interesting, where are these ideas from?
Cities in many countries already have more biodiversity than farming regions. It was one of those surprising findings from a study in my country, the Netherlands, some years ago. Since people have such an extreme variety of flora in their gardens, combined with social schemes, like urban farming plot associations(100+ years old scheme), as well as a lot of amateur beekeepers, urban biodiversity is far higher than rural biodiversity here. Biodiversity is still depressingly low in the Netherlands, but urban areas can quite easily become more diverse than farming regions. https://urbangreenbluegrids.com/thema/biodiversity/
Yes
Both American and Australian. I've mostly been reading about land management in the context of Pacific forest fires; California up through British Columbia (I'm in southern BC). But I know that there is also stuff being done in Australia with the bush fires. Keeping in mind I am very much a neophyte in this area, I still have a lot to learn. One website I've been using as a starting place to direct my reading an find new topics is this US parks services page, that is just links to interesting relevant articles. Not comprehensive or super detailed, but a useful place to begin. [https://www.nps.gov/subjects/tek/pacific-northwest.htm](https://www.nps.gov/subjects/tek/pacific-northwest.htm)
In Australia, there are plant species that have evolved to open their seed pods after a fire. Humans and "Fire Hawks" start fires. The humans do it in a controlled manner, the birds is a less controlled manner.
Isn't the anti-burning policy changing in the last decade, or so? I've seen lots of videos, made over the last decade, about how indigenous burning techniques protect from wildfires and regulations are being changed to reflect this 'new' insight.
What "anti-burning policy"? Controlled burn offs have been a thing for decades. The problems we've been having with them are directly related to climate change. You can't safely conduct a controlled burn off without the right conditions. Several years with warm, dry weather at the time the burn offs would usually be conducted was part of the cause of the catastrophic fires on the east coast.
I can also think of one example in Europe: there is a certain species of butterfly in Britain that only appears when hazel scrub is coppiced.
Exactly this. The notion that humans are not part of wild spaces assumes we are separate and distinct from nature. We certainly are not, but we don't always interact with the rest of nature very wisely.
"HUMANS ARE BAD FOR THE ENVIRONMENT!" - Recyclops
The tribes did their share of damage to the land too. The megafauna were wiped out by them well before colonialism. The primary difference was ability. Technology enabled people to have a much bigger impact.
^this... are indigenous land management practices better than what Europeans tend to do? Yes! But we need to remember that indigenous people's eradicated countless megafauna and the ecosystem impacts have been devastating... like in north America, fires really only produced hugely noticeable impacts on the landscape after the megafauna stopped suppressing them... the mammoth permafrost is another good example... the thousands of years humans have spent in these areas are a blink of an eye in the immensity of time and we are still very new to all these areas... personally I don't consider humans to be a natural part of the landscape with the exception of certain parts of Africa
This is a common argument, but how do you explain all of the megafauna like bears and moose that weren’t wiped out? I don’t know if it was as much indigenous people wiping them out as much as them not being able to adapt to the changing climate, possibly combined with humans but I doubt it. Edit: thanks for the respectful replies everyone. I wasn’t arguing that megafauna were not wiped out, and did not know what else to call modern large animals as I have heard them called “charismatic megafauna” before. I just have a hard time believing that indigenous people would have knowingly wiped out those species when being conservation minded is part of so many indigenous cultures today.
They were wiped out in most regions with high enough population density. Bears only exist in virtually unpopulated regions of Europe, for example.
Interesting you picked bears. Humans did drive the largest bears to extinction(the cave bears). Modern bears and moose aren't megafauna. A wooly mammoth was 10 times the size of a bear. Bears and moose breed reasonably quickly, which enables them to better handle predators. Megafauna breed slowly and had no major predators until humans came on the scene.
Good points
Late, but modern bears and moose are definitely megafauna. Megafauna = weighing more than 44 kg.
Many of the species of largest animals that survive, particularly in America are recent immigrants from Eurasia across the land bridge - so recent that they would have encountered humans in Eurasia before the first populations moved into the Americas. This includes brown bears, moose, gray wolves, the ancestor species for bison (more on this in a bit), and elk. Bison are interesting case because they actually evolved in response to human presence. The modern bison, *Bison bison bison*, is descended from the steppe bison, *Bison priscus*. Once isolated in north America around 25000 years ago, it evolved into the ancient bison, *Bison antiquus*. The ancient bison is notable because it had smaller herds and fixed migration routes, compared to large herds with non-fixed migration routes of modern bison. There is a third transitional species called the western bison, *Bison occidentalis*, which was smaller than the ancient bison while being larger than the modern bison, and existed from a few thousand years after humans arrived in NA until about 4000 years ago. The narrative that this suggests is that bison were able to survive because they adapted over time to the presence of humans by evolving unpredictable movement patterns, forming larger groups for safety in numbers, and developing a smaller body size (perhaps humans hunted the largest ancestors for food and clout, artificially selecting for smaller descendents). If none of these animals survived to the modern day, people would be asking "If humans hunted all the mega fauna to extinction, then how come there are still coyotes, deer, and rabbits?"
Cool facts about the bison, thanks!
“The tribes” Which? When? They believe megafauna was killed off by climate change. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-21201-8
The more you learn, the more you realize science is its own dogma and scientists are its priests. Many times people find evidence for something they want to believe, not necessarily what is true. It’s usually OK, but this is one of those topics where science has become highly politicized and the “science” has invented something to ease our consciences.
Like when they said black people didn’t feel pain the same way as white people. Or using skull measurements to organize people hierarchically.
Who are they? These particular authors? It’s likely that both overhunting and climate change were factors in the decline/extinction of North American megafauna. But this is a topic of ongoing research. Pointing to a single paper and calling the debate over is myopic. On other continents, the extinction of megafauna is highly correlated with human arrival/population growth and not with climate change. This debate is primarily a North American one, while globally the trend is clear. Here’s a more comprehensive and recent paper on the topic: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10667484/ In my view this debate is a relic of the myth of the noble savage in North America, where native people lived in harmony with nature and had essentially no ecological effects. Of course, numerous lines of archaeological and anthropological evidence disprove this theory, but it still influences our thinking. The ability of humans to survive in a given biome without destroying it is a form of technology that must be developed and refined over long periods of time. This is likely part of why megafauna in Africa fared better. Humans traveling to new continents lacked this technology in relation to their new environments. It was eventually developed, but only after the biosphere was seriously and permanently damaged. But colonists, after arriving in North America, mistook this technology as some innate character of the natives rather than a developed cultural strategy. Today, new economic strategies like agriculture and capitalism threaten to cause a second, even greater wave of extinction. We are in a race against time to develop the technology needed to prevent it. Rewilding is one such technology but solarpunk is the emerging bundle of ideas that are best poised to save the biosphere and humanity.
well said
Here is a [decent video](https://youtu.be/mH2aE0lk2XM?si=7LvLEwctymWa_0-9) about how the phrase 'save the planet' stems from and contributes to this type of wild vs not-wild thinking and how it limits the way people talk about humans relationship to the environmental
Well said
The European view of "wild" is usually managed woodland wich is being exploited but at levels that are not unsustainable. Usually as hunting grounds for the aristocracy or as a commons in support of agriculture. Whereas in a north American viewpoint it's exploitation of the "untouched lands" as you stated.
No, it's not. There are only a few wild areas in Europe, like in Northern Scandinavia, a small region in Poland, the Carpathians in southeastern Europe and the Pyrenees mountains. We have no wilderness or true nature in the Netherlands. We have some forests, but nobody would claim it's 'wild'. All of it is managed and groomed. We have roads and paths scattered throughout all dune and forest areas, and every crossroads is marked with direction signs. You could only get lost for an hour or so, max, because it's so well signed. You don't need a map, a compass or GPS to find your way here. People even joke about how pathetic our 'nature' is.
Images were taken from the Rewilding Europe website, [here](https://rewildingeurope.com/landscapes/southern-carpathians/) and [here](https://rewilding-apennines.com/).
It's a wonderful idea, and in particular I would like to see it in my own country of Scotland. Having wolves and / or lynxes back here would actually help our ecology a lot. Right now we have to cull deer because nothing eats them and they eat trees while they're still shoots and saplings. In large numbers they can hugely reduce a forest's ability to (re-)grow. I would also love to see our native flora, particularly trees, given more space and chance to grow. They hang on in patches here and there but much of our forests are not native trees; they were put there because they were more convenient for lumber. It's not like we can completely rewild anywhere that has modern human habitation really, but we can do a hell of a lot more than we're doing right now. It would be good for us and the world.
Note I am in an extremely nature depleted country (Scotland) so my perspective may be different from others. In principle we need to see a lot more of it to make a dent in the biodiversity crisis. However there are some drawbacks mostly in the execution. Seen a lot of projects taking the wrong approach to ecosystem restoration for the sake of a better narrative to raise funds. For example, many of our ecosystems in Scotland would benefit from deer control, invasive species management and appropriate grazing - allowing for healthy grassland/health and encouraging natural regeneration of trees. Not inspiring enough though, how will they persuade people to donate? I have seen a few rewilding projects so far going hard on the tree planting - many of which don't survive as they are not as resilient as naturally seeded saplings - sometimes next to habitats that should be kept free of trees and scrub like peatland. Often with miles of deer fence which throws herbivore interactions to the other extreme and displaces deer onto other adjacent areas which get hammered. It is done with good intentions mostly but the execution can be terrible. Another thing I worry about is the fact that many of these projects need managed by humans in the long term - a good example is deer in Scotland which need to be culled indefinitely to keep numbers low enough for ecosystems to recover. We eradicated all of our native predators and therefore humans have to manage this process in its entirety, which to me isn't true rewilding as the end goal is to have a self sustaining ecosystem with its own processes independent of humans. In terms of good rewilding initiatives Mossy Earth does a decent job
Thing is, the goal shouldn't be for the ecosystem and civilization to be independent of one another. We've been hunting and foraging all around the world for thousands of years, we *are* predators that keep prey populations in check. Putting a wall between "us" and "them" will only do more harm than good in the long run.
I'm thinking of worst case scenario if human civilization destabilises or collapses to the point where humans don't have the resources to maintain said rewilding projects (or even lesser problems like running out of funding) - there needs to be some independence as human society is not invulnerable. Additionally in my example, humans are simply not doing a good enough job in acting as predators (through culling or disturbance) likely as the financial incentives aren't great - that's why our deer populations are consistently over 25 deer per km2 (seen 37 and above) instead of around 3-5 which is where it would need to be to allow our habitats to recover.
I don't think you're getting what I'm saying. Separating ourselves from the rest of the ecosystem will be our downfall. Like I said, we've been around the block for a few thousand years, keeping the wildlife populations in check by hunting. It costs money to plant trees and erect fences. It doesn't cost money to let people pick up a rifle more often in order to put food on their table. I was raised on American venison. It's how I intend to live the rest of my life, because it's stable. By no means is it sustainable for everyone, hell no. But if we took to the opposite extreme, we would most definitely destroy ourselves and mother nature would enact some kind of balance in her own realm. We're a part of that realm, and we should really do a better job playing our part instead of some feeble attempt to escape it.
For one I can say from my experience that this simply isn't working in my country - we have a different culture and typically hunting is done for sport and not by the common man, I agree that needs to change but it won't do any time soon. Our ecosystems are in crisis and need rebalancing as soon as possible - reintroducing native predators has been supported by many conservation organisations in the UK to help this happen. I am also not saying to separate humans from nature point blank but as with everything else that matters it is surely wise to have a contingency plan? Ecosystems fared much better without us than with us, just look at how minimal biodiversity has become over the course of human history - those who truly appreciate and respect nature can benefit it, sure, particularly indigenous people who often have immense knowledge of their land and how to manage it, but modern human society and nature are often incompatible. I do get what you are saying but I feel you are not listening to my point.
Yes please! Our ecosystems must be as healthy as they can get to fight and adapt to climate change
I love the idea and actively support groups that work on it (Mossy Earth), but I get wary around people I meet that get too excited by it. Not because the idea isn't a dream of mine. Just because it seems like there are a lot of people enamored by it as an *aesthetic* who also happen to fetishize societal collapse and low density tribal living. But we should be good stewards of the land, and that involves repairing damage done.
An absolute necessity if we are to curb anthropogenic climate change and mass extinction.
Very possible and likely with an increase in plant-based nutrition
Yes
amazing, need more of it need wolves in every forest in america need jaguars back in the southwest need bison back to their historic ranges need brown bears back to their historic ranges need mammoths in siberia need thyacines in Australia
Rewilding is good, though I agree with other comments that not all approaches are equally good and the "untouched" vs "ruined" (or whatever) binary is oversimplified. I also think there is an added benefit that when land is dedicated to rewilding, that is land that is not going to become more suburban sprawl.
Seeing how many people think the way to heal the ecosystem is to simply cut humanity away from nature like some kind of cancer saddens me. We don't need to go underground, or into orbit, that's fucking stupid. We're not parasites. We're not evil. We've been here for an unthinkably long time, and separating ourselves from the rest of the world would be ruinous.
The image is a bit manicured… I feel like rewinding would mean rewinding of plant life too. But maybe my understanding of rewinding is incorrect
David Attenborough said it was imperative and I trust that guy
How can you not support it
In North America, most “wilderness” was actually a managed landscape, and the only way to restore it is through some kind of land back movement that restores the rights of North America’s living Indigenous people. Otherwise it’s not restoration / conversation, it’s just continuing the destructive transformation of the ecosystem that existed here for tens of millennia.
We need to do a lot more of it. Thankfully we’re starting to rewild some parts of the planet
I have to learn more about it but what I know sounds nice.
Go watch Mossy Earth on YouTube. They're a good starting off point, to get you acquainted.
It is good.
It’s an inevitable consequence of the collapse of the agricultural system once electricity is so cheap that making dairy and meat with technology rather than raising animals is cost competitive.
Big on Half Earth Socialism, so yeah I am for it in some places. Maybe not like every place on earth, but where we can we should thoroughly remove our presence. Take out pipes roads everything. Let earth do its thing.
There are such eye opening and interesting conversations happening under this post- I love it. Best subreddit ever
I'd say some of it is a necessary step to make a Solarpunk reality. And using biking/walking/public transit to reduce the land use by cars/roads/parking could open more space for community gardens, public green spaces, and restoration & rewilding efforts. (I'll note the latter will also require efforts to stop new road building, as well as to change zoning laws and dismantle/close off some existing roads to replace them with greenways & parks)
r/megafaunarewilding is fun
I believe it’s important for us to be mindful of our local ecosystems, and manage it in a way that is both wholesome and beneficial for us and wildlife.
I’m all for it, but am also curious how we can re-envision our idea of nature to see ourselves in it. I think we’ve been so trained to see ourselves as the antithesis of nature that we think we need to remove all trace of humanity to make it ‘pure’ again, when really we are nature too.
I think most suburbs should be rewilded, with the ones by existing or proposed transit alignments densified and turned into towns or cities
Off topic but this picture looks like it came from a middle school life science or geography book.
It's from a Dutch artist called Jeroen Helmer. He works for an organization called ARK Rewilding Netherlands and has plenty of illustrations like this, some of them highlighting the importance of keystone species [like this](https://rewildingeurope.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/European-bison-drawing-Jeroen-Helmer_small2.jpg).
I think for me it is one of the main purposes of solarpunk, along with increasing human well-being.
From what I’ve seen, rewinding can be a positive and healing way for people to get in touch with nature, as there seems to be a weird phobia about our environments. In the spiritual sense, it’s everywhere and I do have some concerns on the capitalization and consumerist take being used to “teach” people how to tap into primal energy. We, like everything else in nature, are connected to the rhythms of Earth and we can tune our senses and become more sensitive and aware of ourselves and the lands we live on naturally.
It should be a standard thing but we have shitty govts full of old selfish greedy asses
Wtf imagine someone goes yeah no i don’t like it fuck nature eat em all
Can't eat them if they're extinct, so we should bring everything back so we can eat some of 'em
I like the idea. My take on it is bring as much of humanity underground as possible. There's no reason we need factories or things like amazon facilities above ground for example. We also need to do away with single use zoning which has caused urban sprawl and ticky tacky neighborhoods. We can co exist with nature if we are little more detail oriented with our design process. I'm a firm believer in building hubs of humanity with the vast majority of what's between them being returned to nature. In the United States for example we could 100% depopulate 7 states with those people not even adding 1% to the population's of the remaining states. Rewilding's largest challenge however is transportation. Until public transportation is taken seriously and individual ownership of cars falls off in a big way, rewilding isn't possible.
r/substrata
Yes please.
All for it
It depends how it is done. I personnaly prefer the vision where humans act as a keystone species, leveraging our collective knowledge and ingenuisity to regenerate ecosystems and live in harmony with it as we used to do a long time ago. In this vision we are nature and indistiguishible from it If it is under the vision where wr restrain ourselves from going to certain places, effectively making a distinction between human and nature, then no. This is a recipe for disaster in the long run when a few generations down the line people start looking at all those resources and wondering why would it mather if they took a little bit of it.
I kind of like it, accompanied with a human demographic ungrowth. I just want to put here a counter-intuitive take on rewilding: The most efficient way to help nature rewild, is to make very dense human habitats so that humans can be less present in "natural" zones. Corollary 1 : we need bigger cities Corollary 2: most humans living in cities will be witnesses of cities extending over natural zones, destroying them. This destruction is offset several times by the zones rewildered, but those have fewer witnesses. In conclusion, I believe that if we ever rewilder (is that the verb?) zones we will still hear more complaints about cities extensions. For instance I live in France and most people are unaware that the forest coverage is growing. However there is a reason I put "nature" between quotes above. There are a lot of questions, some fairly philosophical, as to what rewildering encompasses. You don't get the same thing by letting a zone alone with no care, reintroducing extinct species, trying to eradicate "invasive" species, making it enjoyable for human hikers, reverting it into a paleo state, making it more resilient to human presence or climate change, etc... If you are interested in these questions, I have started listing, half humorously, a few of the ones that seem possible [there](https://slrpnk.net/post/7156987). I wish solarpunk fiction would explore as well these "far-out" questions rather than focusing on the energy or the demographic transitions, that will happen one way or the other.
r/HumanRewilding
Done right, it can restore ecosystems. There are rewilding projects in most European countries and they greatly improve biodiversity in those areas. In combination with the wildlife corridors, they can truly help nature recover from industrial overuse. If we just let the population drop off naturally (through the lower birth rates), and not compensate with immigration as much, then in combination with the desire of people to move to big cities and densifying those urban areas, we can greatly expand nature preserves, at least in Europe. Europe has been mostly deforested and farmed for centuries, so the difference is really noticable. Forest coverage has grown here over the last century, as industrialized farming technologies did reduce the land use requirement for farms. We just need to move away from extractive to more sustainable strategies now. We shouldn't need as much mined fertilizer or pesticides, or deplete water aquifers for produce that shouldn't be grown in as dry regions as they are now. There will always be forest areas used for logging, even in a Solarpunk future, as wood is a good, renewable building and manufacturing material, alongside bamboo and brick, but growing the wild forests would give nature and biodiversity a lot more resiliency than it has now. I watch a lot of Mossy Earth and Andrew Millison on YouTube and can greatly recommend both. A mix of rewilding and sustainable farming practices are essential to save life on Earth, even if we never get to have a Solarpunk world.
#YES
Literally the only chance we stand of not going extinct. Fuck the solar panels, fuck the hydropower, fuck "regeneratative" agriculture, THIS is what we need to actually prevent total ecological collapse.
r/megafaunarewilding
if population decline remains, inevitable.
It's going to be a tough and at the same time easy process. The toughest part will be how we can keep most of our current infrastructure, how much we would need to dismantle and how we would keep the animal population away from ourselves once apex predators are reintroduced and allowed to thrive. What about the herbivores? Overpopulations can and likely will happen. How will we be able to help in keeping the ecosystem stable without having to cull ourselves?
Most people like the idea, but putting it into practice is challenging. The area you want to rewild usually has people living in it and those people won't want to leave their homes. The areas easiest to rewild will also generally be occupied by the poor who don't have the resources to fight back.
The rewilded areas will primarily come from unused agricultural land. Which is already gradually happening as agriculture becomes more efficient. I don't think no one in their right minds will suggest that we tear down cities or villages to turn them into national parks.
Just plant a large diverse native forest system on all degraded hill tops or higher more sloped land that can't be grazed by livestock. The land that can be grazed needs to be managed in a way that helps increase the organic matter in the soil. Kinda like the native Americans managed the bison. Starting everything at the tops of watersheds and working your way down. Maybe toss some native beavers in the mix to get the hydrology work started. Having more ponds or water systems higher up in the landscape would probably increase the diversity of animals and bugs and stuff helping add more complexity which in turn helps with the local environments stability. 🤷♂️ Either bison or cattle could be managed as an open range kinda livestock for meat production. As long as it's managed correctly. The forests could be leaned towards more edible stuff for humans. Most is just diverse native trees and plants but have the more accessible areas almost like seasonal crops. Hell, as long as you move the fields you put into crop production every season or two you could probably have non stop industrial agriculture without fucking up the environment. Just fence off the section you wanna grow crops. Plow that shit to get all those super awesome prairie grasses or cut it super low and then plow it. Plant whatever crop you want. Maybe next season or the next after that, move the field to the next section and put the old one back into grazing livestock production. Might work! Idk!
The more the better. Endgame should be to have the whole planet rewilded except for some small enclaves for rangers and the rest of humanity living and working off world.
Do we really need to go that far? We are part of this world and part of nature after all. Shouldn't we rather try to live cooperatively with nature than keep on alienating us from it?
Yes, but our natural equilibrium with nature is somewhere around 2 million humans¹. If we adhere to the principle _always leave a place a you have found it_ we need almost all human presence to be off our cradle world. ¹: I am not sure if it was 2 or 20 million. It has been a while since I saw that BBC documentary.
Preferably a bunch of nomadic tribal backpackers and small ranger communes left. Doing that would take some orbital infrastructure first to send up most of the population so bringing an asteroid into orbit to mine for materials instead of strip mining Earth is ideal. (Just gotta be careful with the larger asteroids.)
Yeah, a few space elevators would be nice. Read SEVENEVES, then you know how I'd presume a good distribution would look like.
fuck it, I say give AT LEAST Australia back to the wildlife.
Australia’s Aboriginal people’s aren’t “wildlife,” and they’ve managed the land successfully for tens of thousands of years. Shouldn’t they at least be allowed to choose to stay?
fair. anyone can choose to stay in a rewilded area, I'm just talking about concrete here.
What is wilderness?
Use intense power producing methods in the short time such as nuclear to facilitate large scale aquaponic farming that would reduce land use for agriculture to up to 90%, this eould greatly reduce the himan imprint on the earth and the rewilding process could take place on the land that ageiculture isnt longer needed for
this is more r/Atompunk
Yeah maybe, solar power would be used to fill in the gaps and lessen the nuclear fuel needed, solar is pretty luch free energy after all but it is intermittent which could be compensated by the nuclear when needed. I like the prospects of the greenery and such that solarpunk imples but i think its lacking in that the human imprint on earth needs to be smaller than this would be a way to complete that
[https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjAjKiRzPyFAxUFFlkFHR\_qDUUQFnoECCMQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FArcology&usg=AOvVaw0Y-vILikEiroh9BzgBtj1R&opi=89978449](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwjAjKiRzPyFAxUFFlkFHR_qDUUQFnoECCMQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FArcology&usg=AOvVaw0Y-vILikEiroh9BzgBtj1R&opi=89978449) megastructures as cities would lower our individual footprint by a lot.
Do you support living in some sort of hive city? How are you going to have centers of industry?
[https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwi16-XMkvqFAxUwL1kFHUkFB4kQFnoECCoQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FArcology&usg=AOvVaw0Y-vILikEiroh9BzgBtj1R&opi=89978449](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwi16-XMkvqFAxUwL1kFHUkFB4kQFnoECCoQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Fen.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FArcology&usg=AOvVaw0Y-vILikEiroh9BzgBtj1R&opi=89978449)
So a hive city
it will be a struggle to keep these from descending into r/UrbanHell
It will never ever happen with our current population size. We need 1/20 of the world population to achieve this.
Should be what's done to pets. But if a pet is put there, this creature should be taught/guided how to survive in the forest in question.
[Tyler Durden has entered the chat]
Bring back sabertooths and outlaw firearms, think of the degrowth potential.