Technical wildness: Modernity, romanticism, and the technocratic turn in Scottish rewilding

Abstract Technical wildness is a new and increasingly influential culture of nature. This paper marks its emergence in Scotland in the early 2020s. Focusing on Scotland's rapidly evolving land management sector, the paper traces how private rewilding companies position science‐led land management and natural capital markets as the most effective mechanisms for producing a wild, authentic, and ecologically flourishing landscape. Situating these developments within a longer environmental history, the paper argues that technical wildness constitutes a novel cultural synthesis of the modern and romantic traditions that have long characterised Scottish environmentalism. Technical wildness smooths tensions between seemingly incompatible approaches to valuing, governing and financing nature. It reworks human–nature relations by presenting natural capital measurement technologies as contributive, rather than contrary, to the cultivation of wildness. In the process, it changes what rewilding is, how it is practised, and which ecosystems it creates. Drawing on mixed qualitative methods, the paper identifies three interwoven discursive strategies—ecological aesthetics, trust in numbers and spectacular science—that together generate significant political and economic power for private rewilding companies. The paper explores this dynamic through a close reading of a flagship natural capital report. Then, it analyses the political and economic implications of technical wildness. Technical wildness enables the production of ‘wild carbon’ credits. It renders rewilding legible and investable to businesspeople and offsetting actors who may have little ecological expertise, while also positioning natural capital markets as the most credible route to achieving landscape‐scale restoration. This paper will appeal to scholars interested in natural capital, rewilding, nature finance and the politics of digital technologies in nature restoration. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.