Embedding rewilding in policy: Perspectives on overcoming barriers and unlocking opportunities

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Rewilding initiatives are increasing in number across Europe and the UK in response to a growing awareness of substantial nature depletion, despite a lack of policy, guidance and legislation. Ongoing transformations of UK environmental policies offer a ‘policy window’ in which rewilding could become established as a key strategy for nature recovery. Here, we present the results of discussion sessions held as part of a British Ecological Society Policy Training workshop. A total of 46 participants, academics, practitioners and young people interested in rewilding attended. Our discussion focused on three pre‐determined thematic discussion sessions: (1) barriers to rewilding and trade‐offs; (2) species reintroductions; (3) facilitating rewilding in policy. Using thematic analysis, four emerging cross‐cutting themes were identified from our workshop discussions: (a) environmental stewardship & public engagement, (b) cross‐policy approaches, (c) incentivising rewilding and (d) an evidence base for rewilding. Policy Implications . Given the UK's considerable biodiversity loss, restoring ecosystem processes and function on a large scale is increasingly urgent, and operationalising rewilding through supportive environmental policy structures should be a key priority for government. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.