To Be Wild.

Written for Benevento as part of a book project, to be published summer 2023.

What is rewilding? Non-profit organisation Rewilding Europe defines it as “a progressive approach to conservation … [that lets] nature take care of itself, enabling natural processes to shape land and sea, repair damaged ecosystems and restore degraded landscapes.” 

A return to a wild state, so to speak. 

But what is it to be wild? 

To exhibit wildness. To be untamed, uncontrolled. To be self-willed, self-determined. 

The wild can feel, in many ways, for many people, quite a foreign concept. The wild is out there, somewhere. In dark forests where beasts prowl. In the deep oceans where creatures unknown slink. In the frozen places at the peripheries of our maps.   

The wild is where we are not. Or we are not where the wild is. 

Or so myths would have us believe. And there is some truth to this because, for too long, humans – or rather, some humans – have sought to tame, control, banish and use other beings and rob them of their wildness. The result is deeply degraded and damaged lands and ecosystems. 

Where the myths fall short is that it forgets that the wild cannot be so easily tamed, controlled or banished, and it ignores that we humans are also wild beings. The wild lurks within us. 

It may be tempting to think of wild places as those absent of humans, but this thinking enforces a mythical separation between us and the rest of nature that simply does not exist. We live among a community of beings that's co-dependent and always changing, adapting, evolving and responding.

Cultures have formed that endorse a willing forgetfulness of our wildness and our interdependence with other beings. 

In contrast, rewilding offers a willing remembrance of this interdependence. We can leave space for nature to claim its self-determination. We can listen to the land and be active participants in fostering the conditions for ecosystems to become more resilient, support an abundance of life and find balance in their natural processes. 

There must be remembering. But we shouldn’t fall folly to wanting to emulate the past. Those times are gone. Nature is always in flux; ecosystems are constantly evolving. Besides, there was no singular moment in which an ecosystem was at its most wild. Wild is a continuous state of being. To model the future on the past is a fool’s game. Instead, we must learn from the past while looking forwards.

For many, looking forwards may require a cognitive shift. Rewilding should not be a way to enact dominion, no matter how well-intentioned. It bears repeating that rewilding should allow other beings their self-determination. It should not be about producing a human-devised design. The conditioned drive to control will need to be let go. Many may need to unlearn and relearn, through constant processing, what their role is as a natural being. It will likely require time to get to know a place, to learn to listen to it, to hear and heed its cries for help, to understand when to step in and when to step back, to widen our gaze and see the hidden connections between beings and see the world more holistically. Mistakes will be made. Inconsistencies will be found. 

But thankfully, there are those from whom we can learn. There are holders of traditional ecological knowledge, and there is the living world around us. 

Much in the same way that birds carry seeds across continents, beavers divert the flow of entire rivers, and corals build habitats for thousands of species, we humans are also ecosystem engineers. It's just that we need to be so while remembering that we are part of nature, and for all beings to thrive, we need to allow one another our self-determination. When we influence our ecosystems accordingly and allow ourselves to be influenced by them, both them and us become more wild.