Is rewilding bad for nature?

Last month, the well-known journal Science published an article entitled ‘Time to fix the biodiversity leak’ in which it stated that “locally successful nature conservation may be shifting problems elsewhere”. The paper attracted quite a lot of media attention, with the UK’s Daily Mail leading with the headline “Britain's obsession with rewilding could drive EXTINCTIONS in other countries, scientists warn” (yes, the all caps was there in case you didn’t fully understand the angle they were taking).

Even the more sober online news outlet, Yale Environment 306, ran with the headline “Push to Rewild in Wealthy Countries Fueling Destruction in Poorer Ones”. This must be music to the ears of the many defenders of business as usual who have fought tooth and nail against taking action in the face of biodiversity calamity. But is it true?

‘Biodiversity leakage’ refers to the impacts of land use change in one country that can shift demand for resources to other countries, where indeed negative impacts can arise. An example is how Japan, in the period following the second world war, moved to restore and expands its forests. This was remarkably successful and today two thirds of Japan is forested despite being one of the most densely populated countries on earth.

However, Japan did not moderate its use of timber resources, and so deforestation was simply exported to countries in South-East Asia and elsewhere. While the term ‘biodiversity leakage’ is not in common usage, people in Ireland will be more familiar with the term ‘carbon leakage’ as it has been used for some time now by polluting industries, such as dairy production, as a reason for not taking action to reduce emissions at home. ‘If we don’t pollute here then the pollution will just happen somewhere else’, so the argument goes.

These arguments rest on an assumption that consumer demand is, like gravity, a force of nature that cannot be counter-acted. Rather, consumer demand for meat or cheap furniture or whatever it might be, is driven by marketing departments and fickle shifts in cultural appetites. It is not a predetermined trajectory that cannot be altered through government policies or societal norms. For instance, while it is true that global meat consumption worldwide is increasing, in Germany it is declining while Denmark has recently introduced sweeping new policies to rewild land alongside a move to plant-based food systems.

It is true, and is described by the authors of the Science paper, that rewilding productive arable land in Europe, could lead to deforestation in the tropics assuming that consumption patterns in Europe remain constant. However, it has also been shown that rewilding significant areas of land that is currently producing low volumes of meat, such as extensively reared beef and lamb, would result in substantial gains for biodiversity without any noticeable change to volumes of overall meat production.

In Ireland, vast areas of peatland are dedicated to economically unviable sheep rearing or forestry. Rewilding these areas would not result in any biodiversity leakage, even in the absence of any government programmes to shift to plant-based food systems.

Expanses of land and sea globally could be rewilded without affecting food supplies through a shift away from meat eating. But it’s not just meat. The World Wildlife Fund and the Zoological Society of London have highlighted, through their ‘Living Planet’ reports, how unsustainable consumption in wealthy societies is at the core of biodiversity collapse.

So no, rewilding will not automatically lead to extinctions in other countries. But we do need a more joined up response to our environmental crisis by addressing consumption of high impact activities like meat-eating, flying, fast fashion, SUVs and more.