Rewilding has become an immovable yet controversial ideological presence within the fields of nature conservation and ecology. Benedict Dempsey encourages a ‘spectrum based’ reframing of rewilding in the hopes that this will depolarise perceptions of rewilding, particularly within farming communities.
Rewilding continues to develop as a prominent idea within UK nature conservation and ecology, but much of the debate around it has been presented in polarised, binary terms. It is not only contentious among conservationists (Barkham 2023) but in society more widely, with concerns that the issue is being pulled into broader ‘culture wars’ (Kite 2022).