This is an excerpt from (the appendix of) a longer piece I have been working on for a while, but which I am unlikely to finish any time soon. But having touched on the rewilding subject briefly a couple of times in recent months, a more complete write up of my current perspective on the subject is, I think, desirable.

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On a basic level rewilding is a marketing term for de-peopling. The underlying ideology, born out of 20th century American eco terrorism, is profoundly misanthropic, seeing humans as invasive alien parasites that are not part of ‘Nature’ and have to be kept separate from it so that it can achieve its ideal, perfect state (which is otherwise poorly defined).

This Nature/human segregation is the fundamental tenet of the rewilding faith — I use the word ‘faith’ here deliberately and quite literally, for this singling out of a species from the planet’s biome is, at even superficial examination, wholly irrational and incongruous, a form of the Judaeo-Christian human exceptionalism rooted in the idea of imago dei and the mythical Garden of Eden; it is an (unquestionable) article of faith.

There is no scientific reason why humans should not be seen as just another species inside the biome, it’s an arbitrary, a priori, choice the artificiality of which is underlined by the fact that such a view of nature doesn’t really exist outside of the western, white (and predominantly male) intellectual tradition. Yet, this definition of ‘Nature’ as human absence shapes the entire rewilding worldview, and consequently its ecological model, providing static, nostalgic, view of nature, in which the highest aspiration for the future is the return of the ‘good old days’ before people came.

This segregational ecological model in fact predates rewilding, going back to the 19th century American romantic conservationists. And the one thing those nearly 200 years show us is that it doesn’t work. It is precisely this artificial segregation between Nature and humans that has enabled a wholesale destruction of the planet by offering a handful of protected areas of ‘wilderness’ as a justification and an appeasement for our behaviour elsewhere.

The contemporary rewilders are proposing to fix the two centuries of failure by radically altering the Nature/human ghetto ratios in favour of ‘Nature’, but this is just a quantitative tweak of a manifestly failed (yet unquestionably sacred) model. A qualitative shift is required instead. The real issue is not, and never has been, that of human presence, but rather that of human behaviour (and specifically, of behaviour based on the same, western, white, patriarchal, Judaeo-Christian, worldview).

To an unbiased observer it should be self-evident the rewilding worldview simply cannot provide a viable ecological model for a world with 8+ billion people in it; no worldview holding to such radical human exceptionalism can. In order to fix the state of the planet, we need a wholesale shift in human behaviour that would enable viable, rich, ecosystems to exist where people are, rather than removing people from the equation.

But the strict segregation is also the reason for the enduring popularity of this form of environmentalism in the west: it offers simple ethics, requiring no changes of the bulk of human population that is based in urban environments; it makes no demands on us other then asking for vocal and financial support, the all important changes happen elsewhere, out there in the ‘wilderness’.

It should also be clear from the above that the segregation ecology doesn’t offer any useful answers to the existential crisis arising from the human created climate change, rewilding has zero interest in what happens in the city, where the heart of the problem is. The connection between climate change (a hard scientific reality) and ‘wilderness’ (a cultural aesthetic construct) is at best tangential, and often they are at odds. Turning Scotland into a ‘rewilding nation’ (to deploy the latest slogan making the rounds), will make no discernible impact on global temperatures.

It would provide biodiversity improvement, but not necessarily help the species that need it most, for ‘wilderness’ is opportunistic and benefits most the species that are thriving at the point of its seeding. And so US rewilded sites previously destroyed by extensive logging produce markedly different ecosystems from what was there before, favouring the species that were left behind by the loggers and so already relatively abundant. Similarly, the Scottish gamekeepers are right when they assert that their land management practices benefit some other upland bird species than those they specifically target — an absence of human activity is not a silver bullet.

At the same time the self-maintaining ‘pure’ ecosystems rewilding harkens after are not resilient to climactic changes. The Scots pine making delightful comeback in parts of the Cairngorms will necessarily die out by the end of this century, as it once did in England, from where it originally came to Scotland on the back of rising temperatures; it cannot cope with the 4C temperature increase we are likely to see. It might, of course, become viable again when the AMOC collapses — climate change means that Scotland’s biodiversity strategy needs thought out, deliberate, science driven planning and implementation.

There will be those who in response to the above critique will assert that rewilding is a much broader church than what I describe. But while it is true that here in the UK the term ‘rewilding’ is applied willy nilly to all sort of things to a point of absurdity (largely thanks to the Guardian newspaper), I am not concerned with wildflowers in window boxes but with a large scale environmental restoration. In that context rewilding is unquestionably de-peopling (for ‘wilderness’ is, by rewilding definition, a place void of people and human activity). And it is certainly so in the way it is practiced at scale here in Scotland; ‘rewilding and repeopling’, an expression I sometimes come across in Scotland, is an oxymoron.

Which brings me to the other big reason why I find rewilding deeply problematic specifically in the Scottish context. Here in Scotland we have a centuries long tradition of de-peopling, of forcefully removing and keeping people away from the land to serve the interests of a very small number of large, mostly absent, and frequently foreign, landowners. The low population density of the Scottish highlands (as well as some of the lowlands) was created artificially through the 18th and 19th century clearances and has since been carefully maintained, in the more recent times simply to provide a playground for the very rich.

Rewilding has slid seamlessly into that long established, colonial, de-peopling practice, and it should not come as a surprise. The fact that rewilding Scotland (and elsewhere) has become the favourite past time of the ‘philanthropist’ class is no coincidence, for rewilding’s inherent misanthropy is a perfect match for the sociopathy of extreme wealth.

Land is Scotland’s most important resource. The nature of land ownership in Scotland is one of the biggest, if not the single biggest obstacle to making Scotland a better, fairer and ecologically sounder place. It stifles the country economically as well as culturally, with the people of Scotland having no say in how our land is used; we are expected to be content with, and grateful for, our ‘right of access’.

The Scottish right of access certainly seems to obscure the reality for many whose only interest in land is recreation. But the current Scottish access legislation can be seen as both a monumental achievement and a monumental appeasement; even if we think of the de-peopled land purely in recreation terms, as the access legislation nudges us to, given there are around 3.5 acres of land per a head of our population in Scotland, we could do considerably better.

There are, of course, many who are content living in dense urban environments and the convenience they provide, but equally there is a fair number of us who are not. The hoarding of Scotlands land in the hands of a few (and in this regard it makes little difference if those are individuals, corporations or environmental NGOs), has created an artificial paucity of available land, which, in combination with the economic disparity of the UK, means land and property within these de-peopled areas of Scotland are wholly out of reach of a typical Scot.

And so much of the residential property ends up in the hands of people from outside of Scotland, vast majority of whom are looking either for a holiday property, buy to let, or retirement — not to put a finer point on that, the Scottish Highlands are rapidly becoming an English retirement village. This is not good for Scotland. It erodes any existing historic and cultural connections to the land, and is not a good use of our national resources either.

Just to be clear, so I am not misunderstood: I don’t have an issue with people from outside of Scotland, whether England or elsewhere, wanting to come to live here (as a new Scot myself, that would be a hard position to hold to with any degree of integrity). But I do object to this rigged system which confines the majority of people of Scotland to the urban areas whether they like to be there or not. A system that has direct environmental implications. Radical land reform is urgently needed in Scotland, and an environmental ethos that is prepared to sidestep this issue, the way rewilding does, is regressive.