Maëlle Jacqmarcq from Imperial College London recently completed her MSc thesis project with Surrey Wildlife Trust, as part of our Research & Monitoring programme. Her work investigated the attitudes and perceptions of rewilding amongst Surrey's private landholders, 8 of which she interviewed for the project. This blog is a summary of her research and conclusions. If you're interested in the Trust's research and monitoring work, please take a look at our page here.

Rewilding is a conservation method which has emerged and gained traction in the UK since the early 2000s, perceived as a powerful tool to reverse human-induced ecological degradation. The recent Environmental Land Management Schemes (ELMS) have introduced the idea of ‘public money for public goods’ and have made some rewilding initiatives viable for landholders. In this context, rewilding has become the source of controversial, polarising, and emotion-filled public debate in the UK, with proponents praising the ecological benefits and socio-economic opportunities of rewilding, and opponents questioning its ecological soundness and impact on food production and rural livelihoods.

Landholders, like other groups within the UK, have a plethora of meanings associated to the term rewilding. Many of them thought of it as "large-scale" actions, such as the reintroduction of lynx and wolves, whilst others recognised it could be on a spectrum of different scale actions. There were also mixed understandings of whether rewilding would replace agriculture and damage food security, or whether it was part of sustainable land management. General uncertainty about the meaning of rewilding also existed, which caused rewilding actions to either be avoided or delayed among some landholders.

The landholders were also asked about their opinions about rewilding; their views were categorised into advantages, barriers and enabling factors of rewilding. Their valuations of rewilding were significantly influenced by their perceptions of the meaning of the term, with those defining rewilding as large-scale actions which replaced agriculture seeing it negatively, with significant barriers. Those that recognised rewilding as a spectrum of actions that could complement sustainable land management held much more positive attitudes about it as a practice.

Landholder attitudes towards public access were closely linked to their perspectives on rewilding. They were generally more favourable towards smaller-scale, controlled forms of public access, managed parallelly to ‘lower-impact’ forms of rewilding. These attitudes may be influenced by some landholders’ lack of awareness and understanding of ELMS funding sources, which include public access and rewilding as revenue streams. Additionally, viewing food production as a trade-off of rewilding was common among landholders, who expressed concern about the need to ensure food security. the implementation of sustainable forms of agriculture is dependent on improved landholder awareness of ELMS funding and clarified perceptions about the impact of rewilding on food security.

You can view the thematic analysis diagrams for the advantages, barriers and enabling factors below.

The research showed that landholders and conservation organisations should embrace the multi-faceted nature of rewilding, adapting it to context. This requires facilitating a more widespread understanding of rewilding that includes people, with the end goal of promoting accessible and context specific forms of rewilding. Improving the understanding of existing funding sources among landholders is also essential to implement such rewilding actions.

Communication and collaboration were cited by landholders as key to create joint rewilding efforts based on a common understanding of the term and best practices for its implementation. Understanding and valuing local views is essential to enable a better consideration of practical constraints, whilst helping to reduce polarisation, mistrust, and negative attitudes about rewilding. In Surrey and beyond, conservation organisations should continue to involve and facilitate collaboration among landholders, to kickstart the implementation of acceptable and context-specific forms of rewilding, and to unlock the ecosystem services associated to this local conservation strategy