Decades of critique surrounding the wilderness ideal and its role in traditional conservation (Cronon 1996, Neumann 1998) has spurred conservationists, environmentalists, conservation biologists, and philosophers to increasingly adopt the concept of wildness and promote rewilding. This wildness turn is notable, especially for bridging two significant and highly divergent currents in contemporary conservation: (a) neo-protectionism (Foreman 2004, Wilson 2016) and (b) new conservation (Marris 2011, Kareiva et al. 2012). Surprisingly, proponents on both sides of this ideological divide have proposed rewilding as a model for conservation in the Anthropocene (Lorimer & Drissen 2014), but they apparently mean something else (Büscher & Fletcher 2020). My contribution examines the varying interpretations of wildness and rewilding within these two groups, asking whether these concepts can help us overcome the trouble with the wilderness (Cronon 1996) and provide a practical conservation target in the Anthropocene.
Wildness appears to offer certain advantages over wilderness. Wilderness relies on a strict separation of nature from humans; it is either pristine or, once touched, ceases to exist. Within this ideal, any human interaction with nature is perceived as spoiling, and conservation’s role is thus reduced to preventing interaction or maintaining an imagined ‘original state’. In contrast, wildness allows for scale ranging from self-willed to managed ecosystems (Monbiot 2013) and does not preclude human interaction with nature; on the contrary, rewilding encourages it. Yet, questions remain about the desired character of these self-willed ecosystems created through rewilding. It seems that from one perspective, they should (a) fulfill a specific aesthetic ideal, as in the iconic European example of Oostvaardersplassen, and from the other (b) become something akin to permaculture—a self-willed ecosystem designed to meet human needs. This contribution will explore these and related concerns, aiming to clarify whether wildness and rewilding can reconcile conservation with Anthropocene ecological realities.