Photo credit: Quang Nguyen Vinh from Pexels
We are so pleased that you will be joining with us to celebrate this year’s World Rewilding Day on March 20th. This is intended to be a source document for messaging and inspiration for action.
Firstly, we set out some core messaging for the theme Rewilding Together, followed by some rationale behind it for rewilders. It is deliberately longer (2.5 pages), diverse and its interpretation caters to our wide, growing, global network. We intend to facilitate your own messaging; use what aligns to your own aims and join us for a collaborative ‘thunderclap’ on the day, in your own way. Use the subheadings to select relevant sections to you.
Rewilding Together
People are uniting around the world to bring nature back.
As the rewilding movement grows we can do even more by rewilding together.
Rewilding Together deliberately has two meanings:
- with a wide range of people in local communities
- with each other as rewilders across the globe, stronger and more credible as part of a global movement.
So our theme this year emphasises the benefits both of embracing ‘new’ partners for nature’s recovery and that we are a strong, united, credible movement that is helping to solve many problems that different communities face – economic, social, environmental.
What makes someone a rewilder? If we take a step back, it becomes clear: millions of people around the world are responding to a deep, positive, visceral drive – to support nature’s recovery. But many of these people aren’t even aware of rewilding yet! You may not call yourself a rewilder, but in taking action for nature recovery, we are rewilding together.
#RewildingTogether encompasses the many people that make up this far-reaching, positive movement towards a wilder, more resilient and biodiverse future.
Rewilders, indigenous communities, farmers, fishers, lawmakers, scientists, policymakers, innovators, local communities, governments, investors, insurance companies – rewilders are everywhere, even if they use different words.
Rewilding together, juntos, ensemble, pamoja, 共同, gemeinsam, ma’an, एक साथ, dulili…this is a theme that can work in many languages.
Photo credit: Kamchatka.
Millions of people are uniting for nature recovery
Let’s look at some people who are helping nature recovery but may not regard themselves as rewilders:
- Many farmers, fifth generation or first – are making space for nature. Their livelihoods and life’s work depend on the healthy soils, the rhythm of the seasons and the resilience of the land. Many are uniting to transform our food systems through our relationship with nature.
- Fishers increasingly seek the return of abundance in our oceans and play a vital role in creating this reality. Many of them have seen the decline in catches, as bigger and more ‘efficient’ technology take more and more fish, reducing the ability of populations to recover. Governments are declaring large Marine Protected Areas.
- Law-makers are representing nature, putting a halt to extractive activities and putting in place long-term, solid agreements and laws that will benefit future generations.
- Financiers are bringing their skills to direct ever-increasing amounts of capital into nature recovery, often allied with commitments to offset unavoidable carbon emissions, but this time with ‘charismatic carbon’ that also supports rewilding.
- Governments are starting to realise that they can partly achieve their Paris Climate Agreement commitments through enabling recovering ecosystems to draw down more carbon. Rewilding wild animals can play a key role in this process.
People are embracing rewilding because of problems they face
The growing partnerships – sometimes unexpected, sometimes surprising, always creative – that we see between rewilders and diverse groups show that millions of people are responding to practical problems and a deeper calling: in an era of polycrisis, the consequences of depleting nature are becoming ever clearer:
- Floods, fires and drought are made worse by the absence of nature’s resilience
- Land is becoming exhausted by industrial agricultural methods
- Real farmers are finding it increasingly hard to make a livelihood
- Fish stocks are falling, making it hard for local fishers to make a living at sea
- Climate anxiety is affecting many people – we need practical hope back.
Photo Credit: Photos_mart Ymage from Getty Images.
Rewilding is solving people’s problems
We need new responses to these urgent problems. More and more people are realising that nature used to provide resilience against these problems. And many are yearning for the beauty of wild nature that has been stripped away. The ‘nature economy’ (thanks Rewilding Argentina for this idea!) – and rewilding – is one powerful response. Rewilding can:
- provide different incomes for farmers, fishers and others who live on the land
- create new local economic opportunities that spin off rewilding efforts
- protect communities from flooding, fire and drought, often preventing them
- increase employment, helping people to stay in places they love; and
- give back ‘the more beautiful world that our hearts know is possible’. *this is the name of a book by Charles Eisenstein
People are at the core of rewilding
Humans are truly at the heart of rewilding and they are the ones benefiting the most from it. This is a true partnership between nature and the human community, with people gently assisting nature to recover, but with wild nature being given time and space to follow her own course, often surprising us, for example, as species reappear that we thought were locally or globally extinct.
Together, we can rewild our land, our oceans, and our lives. From local projects to global action, we are Rewilding Together.
Photo Credit: Andrejbalco from Getty Images.
That is the end of our core messaging for Rewilding Together, as a theme for World Rewilding Day and beyond, and now we highlight some of the rationale behind the theme.
Things for us as rewilders to think about
We as rewilders need to welcome people as they take steps towards embracing rewilding. As this hilarious 5m41s TED talk shows, effective leaders welcome the first followers, as they ‘turn a lone nutter into a leader’. We’re done with being the lone nutters! Let’s welcome people into our movement, with all their beautiful, human imperfections and diversity. We can move forward with the confidence that comes from the three decades of experience of our movement during which we’ve learnt a lot, created many successes, and worked hard to lay the foundations for scaling up. It is only by welcoming new people to our movement – with all of their skills, networks and resources (and challenges!) that we will scale and become mainstream!
Telling real, human stories
Our theme this year aims to showcase examples of this happening, telling real human stories of how rewilders are Rewilding Together with a diversity of different people around the world. This is essential as we move rewilding to the mainstream – more and more people need to make rewilding their own vision and mission, even if they call it different things: wilding, nature recovery, restoration – we are a big tent and it’s all positive action!
Photo Credit: GuidoMontaldo from Getty Images Pro.
From unknown to mainstream – along the ‘rewilding gradient’
As people become more familiar with the possibilities, they are moving along the ‘rewilding gradient’ – from opposition or at least concern, to mild interest, to active appreciation of its benefits, to active involvement and then ownership for helping nature to recover. Each of these steps is significant and represents a step towards Rewilding Together:
“The Rewilding Gradient of Ownership”
Opposed – Concerned – Mild interest – Supportive – Actively involved
By framing rewilding as a collective journey, we shift its narrative from being a niche or radical activity to a widely embraced practice. This fosters participation among “low-resistance” adopters and builds the social proof necessary to transform rewilding into a mainstreamed process and social norm.
We already are Rewilding Together
We have noticed that as new organisations join the Alliance, all of their (and our) mission statements seem so similar! Even when groups have been working in isolation, more often than not they have arrived at the same vision and methods. We truly have a “shared purpose beyond self”. This is a sign that what we are doing goes beyond the intellectual – this is a deeper calling. Rewilding is a response from our emotions and spirit to an instinctive drive to survive. Millions of people are feeling this; our role is to show them the joys of rewilding, giving them the language, the tools and the stories to enable their own efforts.
Rewilding comes in many forms, the methods vary between continents, returning species rarely come back in the same manner, and there is an endless amount of knowledge, teachings and discoveries to be made when working closely with the natural world. BUT everyone across our global movement is driven by this united purpose.
We already are Rewilding Together – let’s show the world!
We look forward to working with you to make the most successful World Rewilding Day yet.
Photo credit: Michel VIARD from Getty Images