Rewilding the World: Dispatches from the Conservation Revolution

by Caroline Fraser

A Library Journal Best Sci-Tech Book of the Year

If environmental destruction continues at its current rate, a third of all plants and animals could disappear by 2050-along with earth's life-support ecosystems, which provide food, water, medicine, and natural defenses against climate change.

Now Caroline Fraser offers the first definitive account of a visionary crusade to confront this rewilding. Breathtaking in scope and ambition, rewilding aims to save species by restoring habitats, reviving migration corridors, and brokering peace between people and predators. A "methodical, lyrical" (Sacramento News & Review) story of scientific discovery and grassroots action, Rewilding the World offers hope for a richer, wilder future.

Genres: Nonfiction, Science, Nature, Environment, Conservation, Animals, Ecology

416 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Caroline Fraser was born in Seattle and holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University in English and American literature. Formerly on the editorial staff of The New Yorker, she is the author of two nonfiction books, God's Perfect Child: Living and Dying in the Christian Science Church and Rewilding the World: Dispatches from the Conservation Revolution, both published by Henry Holt's Metropolitan Books.

She has written for The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, The Atlantic Monthly, Outside Magazine, and The London Review of Books, among other publications. She has received a PEN Award for Best Young Writer and was a past recipient of the Margery Davis Boyden Wilderness Writer's Residency, awarded by PEN Northwest. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with her husband, Hal Espen.

Reviews

[Catherine Gentry · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful book on how "cores, corridors and carnivores" are necessary for returning biodiversity to nature.

Also the book includes a really interesting discussion of which I've not been able to get out of my mind. Two of the most healthy biodiverse spots on the planet are where the divisions were between Eastern and Western Europe (the Wall) and in the zone between North and South Korea, which is heavily landmined to keep all people out. Evidently nature thrives where man is not--even in a heavily armed spot--every now and again the mines being set off by probably the larger predators. I was reminded of the Chinese story about the old man whose son was given a horse. Everyone told him how lucky to which he would respond, "How do you know/" Then his son fell off the horse and was paralized and everyone told him how unfortunate, to which he again would respond, "How do you know?" These type of situations would repeat and finally there was a war, and everyone of the villagers sons marched off to war and died leaving only the old man's paralized son.

Who'd have thought that anything so wonderful would have been a result of no-man zones between countries.

[Adam McPhee · Rating 4 out of 5]

All rewilding projects seek to bring together the same elements: cores, corridors, and carnivores. Many of the ambitious early initiatives—Yellowstone to Yukon and the European Green Belt—were biological in design but inspirational in nature, offering a vision of re-creating connectivity across the landscape while promising people a new emotional connection to the land. Activists worked doggedly, steadily, practicing the arts of persuasion, from educational entreaties to compensation schemes to soft bribery. They effectively established, beyond dispute, the importance of corridors. Yet some of the most ambitious projects have had only partial success and have been achingly slow to catch on. If there is one defining characteristic of conservation, it is urgency.


A great tour of about a dozen conservation and rewilding projects on each of the inhabited continents. Really fascinating stuff. Also a good look at the politics of these projects, with Fraser's summary of the two approaches as:

Guns, fences, and what has been called fortress conservation: the community-based movement was dreamed up to put the dark history of parks to rest, placating leftist critics for whom conservation was forever tainted by racially motivated evictions and human rights abuses.61 At the other end of the spectrum, community projects alienated biologists, whose argument—that conservation and development were aims fundamentally at odds with each other—had merit. Early attempts to wed them had failed. Yet some projects confounded the stereotypes, proving that under the right conditions, guns, fences, and economic development could secure a peaceable kingdom for people and wildlife.
The answers were out there. Namibia found them. Ian Craig found them, and put them to work at Lewa. The Maasai and Samburu recognized and adopted them. There were simple solutions to conservation problems, ready to hand. Conservancies worked, particularly when they granted legal rights and responsibilities; they functioned best when they included law enforcement. But there were also certain situations—wars, conflicts—when community conservation was not enough.
These issues are unresolved. Unfortunately, the conservation community has always been timid about both community relations and law enforcement. Through a fear of alienating their donor base or inciting the wrath of indigenous people, conservation groups have failed to grapple with profound and controversial issues. A refusal to engage honestly with local people about land use and trade treaties sealed the fate of the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor. After moving rhinos into the center of a war zone, the WWF responded to poaching inconsistently. In Corcovado, the Nature Conservancy helped create the park and sporadically supported rangers. Declaring success, it walked away, for a time, from further responsibilities.62
Joseph Kirathe was right: conservation is not about managing wildlife. It’s about managing people. That may be why putting even simple solutions to work seems to be the trickiest part of a very tricky business.

I think that development has to happen, but I'm skeptical about whether it's possible. For conservation/rewilding to work, we have to be able to value the wild. Not in some hippy sense, but putting an actual price tag on it. The problem with this was summed up by Kim Stanley Robinson, who points out that the price of everything today is drastically low, because we immediately discount the future. And so wilderness will never be able to compete against the things we almost inherently see as keeping civilization going, and we'll sell ourselves short every time. I don't think I'm articulating myself well here.

Like, all of these projects are either funded by people taking up small (quasi-)agricultural roles within the system, or from outside funding (either NGOs or, with Costa Rica, that fund or whatever that was set up). The problem is that agriculture is either successful, in which case people get greedy and the project fails in its conservancy role, or it's unsuccessful, and the project fails outright. And with outside funding, that money is inherently coming from something profitable, like oil, which means you're just trading off conservancy here for destruction elsewhere, and eventually the destruction will win out. And I don't think the tourism stuff will work either. But again, it's late on a Friday and I feel like I'm not doing my argument any justice.

There's a bit on Josh Donlan and Ted Turner's New Mexico plan, and as always I wish there was more. There's also a weird undercurrent about the effects of communism on conservancy: the Maoists in Nepal have been a disaster, the former Iron Curtain is seen as a huge opportunity, the standoff at the DMZ is a human nightmare but wildlife gold and Romanian shepherds have become tough as hell about predators (something the author thinks the rest of us need to get good at) because Ceaușescu liked to hunt bears. Would be interesting to see this theme followed up somewhere.

Highlights:
Wolves change the landscape: Wolves accomplished what biologists called “landscape-level change.”14 When browsers had the run of the place, feasting on tender vegetation that shaded rivers, they eliminated shade and raised the water temperature. Trout are exquisitely sensitive to changes in temperature; they need cool, well-oxygenated water to reproduce and avoid stress. Warm water contains less oxygen. The return of wolves moved elk away from rivers; trees and shrubs grew over the water, shading it; the water temperature dropped; trout benefited; fly fishermen rejoiced. Studies showed that, in addition to effects on elk, sixteen species of vertebrates were affected by wolf predation. Populations of coyote dropped in density. Grizzly bears, capable of driving wolves off a kill, feasted on carrion. Other scavengers benefited as well, including bald and golden eagles, ravens, and magpies. Songbirds and amphibians also began to return. “Soon after we bring wolves back, plants are flourishing again,” Ripple told the Seattle Times in 2005.15 What he termed “the ecology of fear” proved more consequential than anyone had foreseen.16


The European Green Belt and predators: In contradiction to this melancholy record stands the longest, strangest, most creative rewilding initiative in the world, the European Green Belt. Fashioned out of the former Iron Curtain, the European Green Belt is a continent-wide experiment in ecological restoration, ecotourism, and environmental tolerance. A test case in transforming former military or industrial installations, so-called brownfields, into recovering ecosystems, the Green Belt is a model for converting war-torn wastelands into wilderness havens.
...
Cautiously embracing the Green Belt, Europeans have nonetheless rejected the carnivores that go along with it. In France, sheepherders riot against wolves. Norway and Switzerland, with wolf populations in the single digits, have opened hunting seasons. And in Germany, a bear named Bruno inspired the kind of hysteria normally reserved for serial killers. ... At the height of World Cup frenzy in June 2006, a wild brown bear wandered into Germany for the first time in 170 years. For a few weeks, the animal, dubbed “Bruno” by the press, lived a charmed life, adored by fans following his feats in the media, giving the slip to pursuers who hoped to relocate him away from Bavarian tourist towns. Described as “brazen,” “a rogue,” and “a problem bear,” Bruno wandered north through the Italian Alps and into the mountains south of Munich, breaking into beehives, living large on sheep and goats. His most notorious exploit occurred in the lakeside resort of Kochel am See, where he snatched a little girl’s pet rabbit and guinea pig, sat down in front of the local police station, and ate them.9


Romanian shepherds:Both the pollution and the haven are down to Ceauşescu. While disfiguring the landscape with mines and noxious factories, the dictator loved bear hunting, and the animals were reserved for him alone. The fruit of that autocracy is 5,000 bears, 3,000 wolves, 2,000 lynx, and a sheepherding culture largely inured to living with predators. Romanian shepherds, who spend months of the year on remote hilltops eating homemade cheese and guarding 4.5 million sheep and 1.5 million cattle, make American cowboys look like crybabies.


There is one perfect corridor, protected by 2 million heavily armed park rangers: There is one perfect corridor—not a conservation project at all but a strip of no-man’s-land—that suggests a metaphor for the difficulties and opportunities of such voluntary, grassroots initiatives. In a region where there are no large-scale core protected areas left, it is a fully restored corridor for wilderness, where tigers and leopards hunt in freedom, a mysterious space known only by the beasts and birds who flourish there in solitude.
In July 1953, the Korean Demilitarized Zone was scorched earth. Now it is Eden. Eden with a million land mines. The 38th parallel, a border 155 miles long and 2½ miles wide, guarded by two million North and South Korean soldiers, is believed to be the best-preserved piece of land on earth. It is also the most dangerous. No human being has set foot in it in fifty-five years. ... While six-party talks between North and South Korea and their intermediaries have stalled, the DMZ still shines as a coveted prize. Conservationists want it preserved. Developers want it for factories. Farmers from North Korea have already planted a strip of it along a highway between the countries. The DMZ holds all the peninsula’s remaining biodiversity; it is the last stronghold of Korea’s wildlife, with “near-primary forest vegetation.”16 Partial surveys conducted with satellite imagery and spotting scopes reveal 2,700 species of plants and animals, including 1,100 plants, 50 mammals, and 80 species of fish. Its wetlands, plains, and forests are home to 67 endangered species, including Asiatic black bears, lynx, the endangered Amur goral mountain goat, and one of the rarest cats in the world, the Amur leopard. Siberian tigers have been spotted. Reports of occasional explosions testify to the fact that occasionally one of the heavier mammals triggers a land mine. But overall, lack of human interference has encouraged an ecological rebirth. Hundreds of species of birds migrate in and out of the DMZ, including half of the world’s last 2,000 red-crowned cranes, white-naped cranes, and black-faced spoonbills. There are only 1,000 black-faced spoonbills left on earth; 90 percent of them breed in the DMZ.



elephants: The elephants that frequent the rain forests act as “forest engineers,” creating openings in the understory called “light gaps,” encouraging decomposition by trampling rotten logs, aerating soil as they dig for minerals, providing the mechanism for the dispersal and germination of many plants: up to a third of tree seeds in West Africa must pass through an elephant’s gut to germinate. Their capacious deposits of dung spread the seeds of hundreds of species; their feeding habits, rooting out tender saplings and consuming young trees and shrubs, keep the savannah open. In the absence of elephants, woody plants would have shaded out grasslands and forests would have claimed the Serengeti long ago.
The social dynamics of elephant herds are only beginning to be understood. It has long been known that elephants form tight bonds in breeding herds, led by an older matriarch who monitors and teaches younger females, subadults, and infants. Adult males may wander on their own or travel with other bachelors, coming together with females when they enter the breeding phase known as musth. Recently, evidence has emerged confirming that elephants possess a previously unimagined capacity to communicate over long distances through low-frequency infrasonic rumbling, sounds pitched below human hearing but apparently detectable through vibration, which elephants feel through their feet. Adults are believed to pass on knowledge of migratory routes and the location of water sources to the young. Our growing understanding of elephant intelligence and complexity has only deepened feelings, shared by biologists and animal rights advocates, that the species deserves to be treated with sensitivity and respect. Even scientists who support culling, the selective reduction of a population through shooting individuals or entire herds, often express reluctance about the process.

elephant ptsd: Recently, rangers in Pilanesberg National Park in South Africa reported that young male elephants had attacked, raped, and killed sixty-three rhinos, hitherto unheard-of and aberrant behavior.6 The three elephants responsible, subsequently shot by park officials, were found to have been adolescents who had witnessed the shooting of their families in other parks, where it was a common practice to tie the young to the bodies of the dead before they could be collected and moved. Bradshaw and her colleagues argue that neurological development of young elephants subjected to trauma and maternal deprivation can be damaged in ways similar to that seen in human victims. They call for “new conservation strategies that promote normal social patterns.”7 One of those strategies is to restore large-scale elephant habitat.

Tourism leakages: But for all the excitement attendant upon these Voortrekker fantasies, the economic argument on which the marketing plans were based was fraught with problems. Tourism in Africa has been plagued by “leakages,” or profits that end up back in the developed countries where ownership of hotels, lodges, or resorts often resides, rather than remaining in the region and buoying local economies. The UN Conference on Trade and Development estimates that up to 85 percent of tourism profits in African countries leak back to wealthier countries, leaving only a fraction behind.47 Assumptions about ecotourism’s economic potential may be overly optimistic.


Crocodiles: Crocodylus niloticus is a long-lived reptile, with a long-lived effect on its environment. Its lifespan, sixty to seventy years, approaches that of the elephant. ... The crocodile is the apex predator in African rivers, affecting every trophic, or nutritional, level. Baby crocs feed many species, from herons, storks, and eagles to big fish and bigger crocs. Crocodiles also remove waste and recycle nutrients. With their massive bodies and constant activity, hippos and crocodiles together are credited with maintaining the system of open-water canals and channels in the Okavango Delta, which might otherwise become clotted and overgrown with reeds. Ecologically, the delta may not be able to function without them. ... As in all other reptiles and amphibians, the nervous system of the crocodile is exquisitely sensitive to endocrine disruptors, compounds found in plastics and pesticides that mimic hormones and can affect reproduction. ... Visible in each scale was a sensory pit, the exact function of which has yet to be determined, although it is believed that the pits around the jaw detect changes in water pressure caused by movement. A snap of the jaw, an instant meal. .... (Africaphile Peter Beard) refused to heed warnings not to swim in the croc-infested Baro River in Ethiopia on a hot day in April 1966. He was last seen standing on a rock midstream. The next day, a local hunter shot a huge croc basking nearby, with a strip of pale flesh hanging from its mouth. Inside the croc, the hunter found “his legs, intact from the knees down, still joined together at the pelvis. We found his head, crushed into small chunks, a barely recognizable mass of hair and flesh; and we found other chunks of unidentifiable tissue.”9 Originally printed in Time magazine, the photo showed a bloodstained cardboard box, two human legs flopping out at crazy angles.

Maybe send elephants to the DMZ: Chase had also begun to suspect that elephants had learned or were sensing—perhaps through an ability to smell explosives, proven in rats and dogs—where it was safe to walk. He had seen them carefully navigate areas where elephants had previously been maimed and killed. Now they were surviving. ... Having studied in New Mexico, where chili peppers are an important commercial crop, he was experimenting with hot peppers as both an agricultural product—chilies are also beloved in southern Africa—and an elephant deterrent, to keep them away from crops and settlements. “We mix it with elephant dung and burn it, and it irritates them,” he said. “They try to avoid it.”
Cheetahs in Namibia: The country continued to be a primary stronghold for cheetah, with 95 percent of Namibia’s 2,500 cheetahs roaming on privately owned farms and ranches. The conservancies facilitated a friendlier relationship between cats and farmers, providing accurate information on cheetah predation on livestock and implementing a “Cheetah Country Beef” ecolabel certification program, bringing premium prices to farmers agreeing to practice nonlethal predator control through the use of calving “kraals,” or corrals, as well as guard dogs and donkeys.

I think that eventually we're going to have a Marshall Plan for the environment, so it's good that it can provide jobs (though no one will want to pay):Worldwide, restoration has the potential to generate millions of jobs, for both skilled and unskilled workers: preparing soil, planting, and tending native species; fighting fires or setting controlled burns; removing invasive species; restoring streams and wetlands; monitoring water quality. People currently despoiling the oceans through illegal fishing and diving can be put to work protecting, repairing, and monitoring coral reefs. Poachers can be retrained as park rangers for restored areas. Vegetation in some projects stores carbon over decades; carbon credits can then be sold to companies looking to offset greenhouse gases.

This is something I've worried about but didn't know it had a name: That phenomenon—the failure to recognize damage already suffered by natural systems—has been dubbed “shifting baselines” by a group of marine biologists and divers ... Marine scientists were particularly concerned about the issue: aside from specialists and lifelong divers, few people have any sustained experience of marine ecosystems; few people know what underwater habitats look like now, much less what they looked like fifty years ago.

Parataxonomists: Some of these coinages have fallen by the wayside, but there is at least one, coined in both English and Spanish by Janzen and Hallwachs, that has entered the lexicon: parataxonomist. Inspired by paramedic, parataxonomists were envisioned as on-the-ground foot soldiers in the great struggle to identify and restore the vast riches of the ACG’s forests.
The beauty of the parataxonomy plan is that it provides gainful employment and valuable education to those living alongside parks or conservation areas...Local people living around the ACG or other conservation areas around Costa Rica are trained in fieldwork and “bioliteracy”—how to collect insect specimens, process, and catalog them, for example.

[Catherine Siemann · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Rewilding the World, Caroline Fraser provides an accessible, engaging introduction to the concept of "rewilding"- of restoring sufficient areas of wilderness that various species of wildlife have enough room to engage in their normal behavior. Focusing on the notion of "island biogeography," Fraser clearly explains the limits of current conservation programs (national parks and otherwise) and demonstrates what needs to be done.

The book then takes on a global scale, moving from North America to South and Central America, Europe, Asia, and particularly Africa, surveying various wildlife preservation efforts. Fraser examines what has succeeded, and the very many causes of complete or partial failure. The book's ultimate message is that, despite the many complications along the way, this work is well worth doing, and that the limited success of programs that currently exist is only a starting place.

[Nate Lim · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read it on my 8 hour flight, so it is actually an easy to read book, presented very clearly, not very deep into the science (not technical) of it and not too deep into the theory (not philosophical) of it all, just meandering nicely between the two.

if you are interested in some aspects of sustainability, our endangered species and their extinction, of parks and wildlife and discussion surrounding them; or just want to be inspired on what we can do on a global scale and how people are doing it and what sort of obstacles there are to them, and also what little or big things we can also do and finally, the importance of thinking beyond the immediate, and then how important it is to connect.

my thoughts after reading it. the world is so much bigger than we realise and we must not forget that we are by virtue of being in the ecosystem -earth- are connected to it, and that connection we taken for granted for way to long. worth thinking about.

[Chris Leuchtenburg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting travelogue of restoration projects from Costa Rica to the former Iron Curtain to Zambia to Australia. Not exactly a review, more a series of stories. (The author is a consummate story teller.) In addition to fascinating accounts of exotic animals and dedicated world-savers, the book builds an argument that conservation requires the support of the local, often desperately poor, community. There is very little discussion of the DER-style physical restoration; the focus is on returning keystone species (buffalo, prairie dogs, elephants) and top predators (crocodiles, cheetah, grizzly bears) to newly protected areas. There is a sobering and occasionally demoralizing analysis of the challenges and limits to restoration -- Humpty Dumpty cannot be put back together again completely.

[Craig · Rating 5 out of 5]

Imperative concepts include establishing wildlife corridors that better match migration routes, ending our prejudice against large carnivores, and shifting our baseline of how wild areas should be preserved from what we can remember to what those areas were like before the encroachment of man. Radical environmentalism that is not cookie cutter, but geared helping current islands of biodensity and neighboring communities.

[Tuck · Rating 4 out of 5]

a fantastic book synthesizing best known theories of island biogeography, trophic cascades, and alternative states and how they all explain why biodiversity is going down, why all kinds of plants and animals are going extinct in a great worldwide extinction and how and why we can help. rewilding means the 3 C's. carnivores, cores, and connectivity. think about it and you'll see.

[Gordon · Rating 4 out of 5]

I hope this is one of those "receives 4 stars and above" books, not "receives 4 stars and below" ones.

It's an incredible combination of stories, describing a voyage around the world (no, seriously, if you just want to read the journals of a true world traveler, this is your story) and connecting it to a complexity of issues facing the earth... including the involvement of local populations and "pay to stay" as applied to an incredible number and diversity of global ecological emergencies and a number of other potential dilemmas facing conservative revolutionaries today.

That phrase, "conservation revolution," drew me to this book and won't let me go. It's an incredibly difficult and interesting sticking point -- how, exactly, are we supposed to fix and generally react to the issues described in "An Inconvenient Truth" and other informative biopics? Is it simply "be custodians of the world as it was at point/time X?" If so, what on earth is X supposed to be? There's a reason the next century (2000-2100) has been described as the century of biology. We, as a species, have a lot to learn about complex systems that cannot be described in a few simple laws, but rather encompass an interaction of dynamic systems.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely fantastic read. I've been involved in conservation efforts as a lay citizen ever since I was a child, but hearing the "doom and gloom" about how everything is dying off and "we" (aka, the people with the real money, who are so far out of my control that you only feel even more helpless) are destroying so many irreplaceable pieces of this planet can really exhaust you.

Thankfully, Fraser's book brought forward real solutions - and, especially important, the places where those solutions didn't work - that are being used around the world to actually do something about the whole picture of the environmental crisis. After all, saving our planet isn't only about counting the number of tigers we have in the wild - it is about managing the people, too.

I loved this book and will be purchasing it to go on my shelves ASAP. For those of us who already feel called to conversations efforts, this is a fantastic read that offers insights, warnings, and plenty of ideas to really take action and get going.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very well reported and written book on a fascinating and hopeful trend in conservation. Fraser makes some important points about why some Rewilding efforts succeed and others fail, and I finished this book feeling I had learned a lot, about the history of this approach to large-scale conservation, the scientific reasoning behind it, some of the pitfalls it has encountered, and even where it might be headed in the future.

My only quibble with the book is that it is connected by a concept rather than a story, and it seems such a structure can never quite become as compelling as a book with a narrative. But that shouldn't obscure the fact that this is a very good book that is well worth reading.

[Dave · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have some mixed feelings on rewilding (rewilding of landscapes, as opposed to the rewilding of humans which I have some mixed feelings on as well). While I agree with the general idea that we need to protect keystone species, ecosystems, etc., how is it better to make the world's poor more dependent on eco-tourism and serving rich white people in hotels, dragging more into the global economy? There's also the fact that Native Americans and Australian aborigines showed that the land can be managed without all the original megafauna, so why risk causing more problems just to make more interesting parks? I have a lot of problems with the solutions these people are proposing. The book does do a good job summarizing these ideas though.

[Frances Dinger · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The environment is the economy. No problem -- not poverty, not climate change, not the economic downturn -- can be addressed without simultaneously restoring the systems that are life itself."

This is a fantastic overview of the planet's myriad problems with disappearing nature and how we continue to be unable/unwilling to take the long view in conservation and ecological restoration. It also features some great facts to pull out at cocktail parties (North America was once home to tapirs, cheetahs, and dire wolves!).

[Tina Cipolla · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed Caroline Fraser's engaging discussion on the concepts of corridors, cores and carnivores. I have been particularly interested in the Yellowstone to Yukon corridor for many years and I was happy to see it discussed in this book. How anyone can discuss Y2Y without mentioning Karsten Hauer is a mystery to me, but I digress.

In all books of environmental topics I am particularly sensitive to how the author handles the question of what to do about the world's desperately poor people. My rating will always go down if that topic is either addressed insensitively or is skirted altogether. This book lost stars from me because when discussing the farmers in Romania, she had a real tendency to simply brush off the poverty and romanticize their farming methods as their environmentally sensitive life ways. Well, if more money was available to these people, I'm sure they'd install plumbing and flush toilets.

Then comes the complex, difficult and heartbreaking subject of Africa. Where do I begin? While I do indeed support the concept of wildlife corridors in Africa to protect apex predators, a plan has to be made for the people who are already eeking out a living in these places. There is no such plan discussed in this book. No discussion of the notion of property ownership for the desperately poor. No plan on where they can go to do their food growing, their gathering and their pasturing of animals. I am far less sympathetic to wealthy American ranchers whining about wolves than I am about a desperately poor person in Africa complaining about hyenas eating her animals at night while she tries to sleep in her hut. One is sympathetic, the other not so much.

Lastly, this author falls into the same trap as many writers on environmental topics in that she seems to want to freeze the world into staying exactly as it is today. Yes, the climate will change, yes, we will endure extinction events. I'm not suggesting we ignore these things, just that very few environmental essayist are discussing what we should do IF we can't stop climate change; what we should do if we can't stop the 6th major extinction event. I wish some space had been devoted to those topics.

[Martin Rowe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written with a lively eye for human and natural detail, and with a sprightliness and geniality that belies the weight of research and amount of mileage that Caroline Fraser must have racked up to complete this expansive volume, REWILDING THE WORLD travels the globe to examine the efforts of conservation biologists to keep natural systems from being destroyed by hunting, extraction, human population pressures, and pollution—and those who are trying to bring back places in the world that have been affected. She shows how there are many ways to do this: from setting up parks to conservancies to promoting core areas and corridors for wildlife. Throughout, Fraser makes it abundantly clear that problem of conservation does not reside with the fauna and flora, which show astonishing capacities to survive and thrive if the conditions are right, but with us. She catalogues our tendencies to exhaust a region's natural resources for our own (short-term) gain, how the powerful keep others out of biologically sensitive regions and leave them resentful and disenfranchised, and how we all don't see how our deeply set prejudices, assumptions, and cultural practices blind us to opportunities and make failure inevitable.

She does show successes—all of which involved local people being literally and psychologically invested in keeping the animals alive and the ecosystems intact—but these successes are sometimes fragile and never assured. Nonetheless, to her credit, Fraser leaves you, the reader, feeling hopeful and (more importantly) committed to the notion that "rewilding" is more than just a pipe-dream but a powerful means of restoring landscape, culture, and even the individual soul.

[Jo · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an incredible book. It covers conservation all over the world; what has seen amazing success, and what has failed miserably. As well as what is doing OK, but could be better. It is an incredibly inspirational read, especially if you plan on being a conservation biologist like me. I hope a second edition comes out maybe a decade after the original publishing with updates on different projects she researched, and any new ones she thinks are promising. One thing I wasn't thrilled with: trophy hunting was mentioned several times, and she didn't explicitly say anything about whether it was good or bad. She did say that some programs talked about how the long term tourism from keeping an animals alive is better than the big bucks from a single trophy hunt. I understand why she didn't go to into detail, as the book was written passively for the most part. I can appreciate that. It's just... I don't understand how killing an animal, even a threatened or endangered animal, is conservation! I understand logistically how hunters pay as much as a car for these hunts, which can then be used for conservation programs, but I am suspicious that much of that money is used to line the pockets of already wealthy people.

[Nola · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is such a useful and inspiring book. I wonder what the author’s motivation was and if she had affiliations with any particular conservation groups before beginning this book. She certainly has strong opinions on the value and success of the projects she discusses. I don’t know if her opinions are justified or even widely shared. I also don’t know how comprehensive the projects discussed in the book are. There is an extensive bibliography in the back that may help me get a sense for value of the opinions and for the completeness of this book. The book is nicely organized starting with projects that have had significant problems. This serves as an introduction to the issues that are encountered in trying to conserve habitat, and is added to with each new chapter, giving a base that grows throughout the book and provides context to each successive area and strategy discussed. The part of the book title that says “dispatches from the conservation revolution” is exactly what you get from this book.

[Foggygirl · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating and excellent read. Intellectually you realize that rewilding is a necessary element to the earth's and human survival but then there is the reality of finding a moose wandering through your backyard or more startlingly a black bear! But these are the things we are going to have to acclimatise ourselves to in order to have a healthy and liveable planet for future generations. And if the richer western countries are going to shake their fingers at poorer countries for not protecting rare and endangered animals like lions, tigers and rhinos living within their borders then countries like Canada and the US need to practice what they preach and get past the instinctual prejudice against animals like bears and wolves, a difficult concept because they are predatory animals.

[Hectaizani · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rewilding is a process which will save the planet and all of its creatures by restoring habitats, replacing migration corridors and teaching humans to live in concert with predators. The idea is fascinating and I started this book with much interest but also afraid that it would have the same message, ie. we're doomed, but without any clear solutions. Instead I found a fairly readable account of things that conservationists have done or are doing with varying degrees of success. The author discusses both the positive changes, and the negative and also discusses what should be done in the future.

[Jan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Inspirational! Conservation has often come across as being exclusively about rescuing, as in fighting against a clock that is slowly ticking in the direction of biological doom. However, in "Rewilding the World" inspirational tales of "rewilding" projects are presented with all of the challenges.

Changing the way we think about conservation is going to be extremely difficult in the light of narratives enforced by mainstream conservation organisations. However, the promise that habitats can be restored is a comforting one and rather than encouraging despondency in the act, it should increase awareness and funding in this specific direction.

[Ryan · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book deserves a pass rating for its effort and good intention to address and update on current conservation issues around the world. Seemingly promising given the large ground covered (spanning the globe literally), but the author's unfamiliarity with natural history reveals itself quite often in simple factual errors. A tendency to ramble along with overload of unnecessary detail and data, combined with lack of a coherent focus results in a disappointing read. It is neither a good science book nor travel narrative.

[Wendy Capron · Rating 4 out of 5]

Similar to Half Earth, but a bit more optimistic since she gives many examples of large scale conservation areas, at least some of which have been successful. The Nature Conservancy doesn't come off looking too good in Costa Rica. Tons of information - too much to absorb in the 3 weeks I have the book from the library.

[Joel Allen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was looking forward to dispatches from places other than Africa, which demonstrated the paths of success rather than the path of failure. Hard to stick with, I would've best enjoyed this book had I read the first 50 and last 50 pages.

[Margery · Rating 2 out of 5]

A review of studies on "rewilding" on several continents. Fairly technical - some interesting stories. A real alert to how we need to proceed to "save us" and maybe "save the world."

[Ben Hamilton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting book on the struggle to save endangered wildlife. Acutally made me a bit depressed because of all the wildlife that is going to go extinct.

[Cecelia Juszczak · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading this book right now-excellent

[Kira · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent intro to the concept with wide-ranging examples of successes and failures. Easy to read, gave me 20 new topics I want to research.

[David Ivory · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is important context for anyone interested in the environment as it reminds us that there is no us and them when it comes to the wild parts of the world and the human centred landscape of farms and cities. It's a continuum. Animals and plants don't respect the boundaries of national parks - they can't afford to. Larger connected spaces are required not pockets of zoo, of other. Small reserves can not support the biodiversity required for healthy ecosystems, largely because top predators need a lot more space than the national parks they are confined in - and that assuming large carnivores are permitted.

This book describes how the movement towards enlarging and connecting ecosystems has progressed in fits and starts, and what has worked and what hasn't. How creating buffer zones supported by the local community through revenue share and economic and social development creates a shared incentive to preserve natural ecosystems.

It's a fascinating and wide ranging survey through time and across all continents. And important. Humans are part of nature, and we need to connect better with what remains of the disrupted holocene ecosystem in order to create better lives for all of us - humans and our fellow travellers on planet earth. This is not wide-eyed idealism but a practical down to earth program for securing our future. And it is surprisingly optimistic. There are successes and they need to be celebrated so we can do more.

[T.R. · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a good book that probably deserves a higher rating than I have given it. My reason for not liking it so much is that the title is a tad off-the-mark in relation to contents. There is less about rewilding and restoration per se in this book--the practice, the dilemmas, the challenges--than I expected. Instead, a large part of the book is devoted to the ideas of "preservation" (establishing protected areas of one sort or the other), writ large. Grand corridors, trans-boundary parks, community conserved areas, and so forth. It is written in a sort of standard journalistic style, informative, but not very engaging. There is little that is incisive in terms of questioning or insight. Still, a useful book to gather a snapshot of some recent conservation initiatives in various parts of the world.

[Hannah · Rating 5 out of 5]

A synthesis with a call to arms

I’m a conservationist, 29, working in the field for 6 years, living between Indonesia and kenya. I’ve been thrust into the middle of many of these arguments - protect or restore? Forests or biodiversity? Empower locals or restrict their actions? Fraser does a wonderful job of synthesizing 100 years of conservation thinking and philosophy. After all this time working in the field I now have my bearings. I cannot thank her enough for writing this! In her last chapter she also voices an argument I’ve been trying to make for many years - other species, or nations, should have the rights to coexist with us. As controversial as it is true, Fraser had the bravery to end a technical book with an impassioned and informed call to arms for compassionate conservation!!

[Brian Griffith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fraser investigates progress on the biggest, most innovative nature conservation ideas around the world. She examines the very uneven progress in trans-border "peace parks" all over Africa, and the piece by piece development of wildlife corridors connecting islands of wilderness. The report is dotted with dramatic failures, like the temporary collapse of Nepal's wildlife during the recent civil war. She conveys the horrors suffered by elephants in war zones. But the accumulating successes in preserving, connecting, or restoring wild habitat on every continent indicate a gathering global momentum. For all her sensitivity to the difficulties involved, Fraser is excited. She dares speak of "the conservation revolution" and shows how dreamers, scientists, and local villagers are making it happen.