For the last couple of centuries, the urban environment has been designed to push nature back beyond the edges of the human built world with manicured parks and tree lined roads within the urban boundaries. We even design many of our modern buildings with heat and air conditioning to keep the natural world outside. As such we are becoming a species that is more and more isolated from the natural world such that nature is always something out there. Forests and wildland meadows are not manicured yet have a spectacular beauty every bit as spectacular as a European Garden by a Stately home. Wildness may make you nervous but it does invigorate you and liven up your senses.
People who have not studied the idea of ‘Rewilding,’ especially many in the mainstream media, like to scoff at the idea of having potentially dangerous animals wandering around in what is now human habitat. Anyone who lives on the urban fringes close to wildlands are not strangers to dangerous creatures such as Bears and Mountain Lions (Tigers in parts of Asia, Alligators in Florida, etc.) wandering past their homes, but just remain vigilant. Rewilding is not about plonking wild carnivores back into urbanized setting, but considering how to promote natural interactions that replicate more natural conditions before urbanization began. This would not only help maintain native species ecosystems but also benefit people whose physical and psychological health would be enhanced by interacting more with nature on a daily basis. ‘Rewilding is a way of siting ourselves as just one part of a larger, complex natural ecosystem, rather than as the domineering, destructive species we too often become.’
In one of my classes I used to show various adverts to demonstrate how media influence us. One ad was a ‘Kaiser Permanente Thrive’ advert (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pr-R-EDqVKo) that showed a city of large building and skyscrapers with huge trees in the streets (just randomly growing anywhere on the street) and wildlife wandering the streets. Motorists literally had to navigate around the trees looking out for the animals, trees and pedestrians. I recall one of my students shouting out, “That’s the kind of city I want to live in.” The ad itself was just that, but the visual was what was important. The health care company knew that this kind of natural setting spoke to people at a core level.
Many of us have gardens, indoor plants and pets, but they hardly constitute natures wildness. There are a lot of studies showing how valuable wildness is in our lives from forest therapy to observing wild animals up close and personal. Yesterday I was hiking in the Rocky Mountains and met a Bull Moose nonchalantly crossing the trail in front of me. On my way home I had to content with traffic that literally stopped in the middle of the road as a large bull Elk stood by the road with many of his female harem grazing around him. We can observe with respectful distance and still sense and enjoy the beauty of wild nature around us once we immerse ourselves within it. Indigenous peoples literally lived within nature. I have sat admiring a view and had Coyotes, Foxes, Moose Elk, Deer, and many other kinds of animals literally wander past me. While hiking last September I recall a couple of Bobcats come out of the woods in front of me. The female ran off into the brush but the male Bobcat just stood there and looked at me for many long seconds before causally wandering off after the female.
Many years ago, I did a study that explored what people think of as wildness and wilderness. As you might suspect the answer depended on how much time a person spent in what they considered wild areas. For a kid brought up only in Manhattan, Central Park is a ‘wild’ place. As a kid, I found the hills and mountains of England had wildness about them. I found northern Scotland to be as remote and wild as anywhere I had visited within western and central Europe. When I emigrated to the USA, large swaths of the Appalachian Mountains were even wilder for me. It was after a trip to Nome, Alaska, that I organized a trip to the ANWR in northeastern Alaska that my thoughts about wildness and wilderness expanded even more. So wild is a relative concept depending on any person’s individual experience. Wilderness (or wildlands), however, is a bit more definable in that most people consider it a natural environment that has not been significantly modified by human activity. Some think of it as or any nonurbanized land not under extensive agricultural cultivation – an unsettled and uncultivated tract of land left in its natural state.
The Europeans are creating the biggest rewilding projects since its inception in the 1990s, although many countries have started to reintroduce extirpated species back in to their natural environments (e.g., Wolves to Yellowstone National Park) in order to restore natural ecosystem balances. The benefits of reintroducing these and other keystone species has the effect of stabilizing populations of most other species and reducing overgrazing of native vegetation caused by extirpation of large carnivores. What makes rewilding different is that it is focused on rewilding urban environments. As such it cannot simply be about creating wildernesses within urban situations, it has to be carefully thought out and managed. I like the idea of the Thrive ad I mention earlier, but can you imagine rush hour, which would become more than a nightmare in such situations.
I live on the edge of a small town located next to the Rocky Mountains. As such I have lots of wildlife (such as raccoons, foxes, rabbits, elk, and deer, and from the poop I find, the occasional nocturnal black bear) just wander through my unfenced garden. I have squirrels frolic in the trees surrounding mine and my neighbors’ properties. We are already a rewilded area because of the lower numbers of human homes in the area. Rewilding is about trying to create a similar situation in more dense urban environments.
There are several ecological benefits to rewilding. The increased vegetation acts as a carbon sink and increases wild areas to help wildlife and biodiversity increase. The increase of natural areas provides us with clean water, flood defense (e.g., increased wetlands), more food varieties, healthier organic soils, improved air quality, and overall healthier ecosystems. It’s why it is so important that we work to ensure everyone has access to wilder nature, even in our urban areas. The human health benefits of rewilding and time spent in nature is known to lower blood pressure and stress, improve immune system function, and overall improves physical and mental health and sense of well-being. And as I explained in an earlier post (Biophilia and Biodiversity 2: Nature – love it or leave it, why we need it! {June 2018}) it cures Nature Deficit Disorder (NDD). It has been shown that the ‘sterilized’ urban environment is ultimately not good for our mental and emotional health. We literally need nature in our lives all the time and not just on an occasional hike. It needs to be a part of where we are all the time. It also helps us in ‘Rewilding Our Hearts’ because amazing as it may seem, more exposure to nature builds neural pathways of compassion and an increase of understanding of connectedness necessary for peaceful coexistence with all life.
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