Economics of rewilding

Abstract

Rewilding, a concept often defined as an open-ended approach to ecological restoration that aims to establish self-sustaining ecosystems, has gained much interest in recent conservation science and practice. The economic dimensions of rewilding remain understudied, despite repeated calls for research, and we find that synthetic or programmatic contributions to the scientific literature are still missing. Here, we mined Scopus and Web of Science databases through a systematic review, looking for "rewilding" with various economic terms in the peer-reviewed literature, in the English language. We then screened out a 257 references-rich corpus with 14 variables, including the position of rewilding regarding positive and negative economic effects in specific sectors, and geographical or ecological foci. Our corpus amounts to ca. 40% of recent rewilding literature, with a clear emphasis on European study sites and the economic consequences of rewilding initiatives. Rewilding studies often refer to positive economic impacts on tourism and hunting, e.g., through higher income and employment rates, although very few studies properly quantify these. Conversely, most authors find rewilding harms farming, which is threatened by abandonment and damages by wildlife, raising interest in potential EU subsidy regimes. We highlight the surprising paucity of rewilding literature truly focusing on economics and/or providing detailed quantification-with remarkable exceptions. While rewilding's ecological relevance is no longer in question, demonstrating its economic benefits and sustainability will undoubtedly help scaling up. Thus, we advise rewilders to systematically measure and report investments and outcomes of rewilding initiatives, and to adopt common standards for cost and benefit assessments.

Keywords: Economic outcomes; Economic sectors; Economics; Indicators; Review; Rewilding.

Fig. 1

Number of English-language papers included in the review (Scopus and Web of Science queries; blue curve) and number of English-written references including ‘rewild*’ or ‘re-wild*’ in their abstract, title or keywords (Scopus query, including book chapters; red curve). Top left panel shows ratio between the former and the latter

Fig. 2

Number of study sites per country (circles) or continent (squares) in 196 spatially-explicit papers (including 44 opinion papers). Black: Europe (136 study sites), orange: Asia (16), blue: Latin America (15), green: North America (11), pink: Africa (8), red: Pacific islands and Indian Ocean (5). Asterisks in Europe means that there is one site mentioned in this country. An additional 18 papers cover larger scales (transcontinental to global) (not shown on this map)

Fig. 3

Centrality graph for rewilding/economic issues

Fig. 4

Four contrasted case studies of rewilding. From top to bottom, left to right: (1) wild boar (Sus scrofa) in Alladale Wilderness Reserve, Scotland, UK (credits: Alladale Wilderness Reserve); (2) Mountain olive groves in Los Pedroches, Cordoba Province, Spain (credits: Rafa Sánchez); (3) Marshes around Saltbæk Bay, Western Zealand, Denmark (credits: SemiAquaticLife); (4) American bison (B. bison) in Fort Belknap Reservation, Montana, USA (credits: Fort Belknap Community Economic Development Corporation)