rewilding

1 of 2

noun

re·​wild·​ing (ˌ)rē-ˈwī(-ə)l-diŋ 

: an effort to increase biodiversity and restore the natural processes of an ecosystem that typically involves reducing or ceasing human activity and often the planned reintroduction of a plant or animal species and especially a keystone species

Rewilding—giving nature the space and opportunity to express itself—is largely a leap of faith.

—Isabella Tree

Large-scale domestic rewilding projects include dam removal in the Pacific Northwest and in the Northeast to facilitate the return of several endangered species of salmon, as well as reintroducing wolves to Yellowstone National Park, which stabilized and reinvigorated the ecosystem.

—Carey Smith

The concept of rewilding creates hope; it gives the opportunity to set things right, to link protected areas through corridors, to bring back species once lost, and to revitalize our forests, rivers, and wetlands with all forms of life.

—Bahar Dutt

The truth of when this forest actually existed and why it disappeared is murky. … Now, a group of visionary conservationists and ecotourism companies are working to revive the landscape through rewilding.

—Chloe Berge

rewilding

2 of 2

present participle of rewild

Example Sentences

Recent Examples on the Web

Noun

This project is part of Affric Highlands, the UK's largest rewilding project. —Elizabeth Waddington, Treehugger, 16 Apr. 2023

Urban rewilding can't return landscapes to pre-settlement times and doesn't try, said Marie Law Adams, a Northeastern University associate professor of architecture. —John Flesher, Detroit Free Press, 7 Dec. 2022

Urban rewilding can’t return landscapes to pre-settlement times and doesn’t try, said Marie Law Adams, a Northeastern University associate professor of architecture. —John Flesher, The Christian Science Monitor, 7 Dec. 2022

For example: In 2015 the media mogul philanthropist Ted Turner turned his 1.1 million acres in New Mexico into a nonprofit trust called the Turner Reserves to protect them and showcase the massive and expensive rewilding and conservation work being done. —Klara Glowczewska, Town & Country, 18 Nov. 2022

Funds are being raised for Wilder Blean, all of which will go toward rewilding — a conservation effort intended to replenish land and restore it to its natural state. —Sydney Page, Washington Post, 27 Oct. 2022

Intent on making the farm a greener, cleaner space for her young children, Bamford also set about planting wildflower meadows and reinstalling hedgerows, now-typical methods of rewilding that were unfashionable at the time. —New York Times, 28 July 2021

The most radical plans to curb humanity’s all-consuming effects on the planet—the rewilding movement, for instance, or the biologist E.O. Wilson’s proposal to designate half of the world a nature preserve—necessitate extraordinary levels of human intervention. —Mark O’connell, The New York Review of Books, 22 July 2021

As in Los Angeles, which is moving forward with the rehabilitation of its eponymous river, rewilding projects are poised to supplant the concrete jungle with actual jungle. —Ian Volner, ELLE Decor, 21 Oct. 2020

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Word History

Etymology

Noun

rewild + -ing entry 1

First Known Use

Noun

1993, in the meaning defined above