Rewilding and farmland: Restoring ecosystems, rebuilding biodiversity

Half of Earth’s habitable land is used for agriculture, with ranchland and livestock grazing pastures accounting for most of that figure. In the United States, financial pressures, political lobbying campaigns and government subsidies incentivize farms and ranches to engage in ecologically harmful practices, including monocropping (the practice of only growing one crop on a plot of land), overuse of pesticides and chemicals, and continuous grazing (nonstop grazing on one pasture, as opposed to rotational grazing, which lets land regenerate in between seasons). These practices have caused severe damage to human, animal, and environmental health, triggering mass biodiversity loss and species extinction.

This is where rewilding comes in. Rewilding is the practice of reintroducing native plant and animal species to the land with the aim of restoring ecological balance. Rather than simply abandoning land that’s been drained of its fertility, rewilding restores natural processes, offering a path forward to the restoration of vibrant, biodiverse ecosystems.

Rewilding can lower greenhouse gas emissions by reducing soil erosion and enhancing carbon sequestration and improve biodiversity levels in ecosystems. Some of the most well-known and successful examples of rewilding include the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone National Park in the 1990s, and more recently, the UK’s efforts to grow the Eurasian Beaver population.

How rewilding works on farms

For farmers and ranchers, rewilding land looks a little different than the above examples. By definition, farmland is more cultivated than any national park or wild forest, but rewilding is not necessarily merely parceling off land as spots devoid of human activity. Rewilding can go hand-in-hand with farming – it’s just that the practices to achieve that require a little more nuance.

Some farmers, like British conservationist Derek Gow, have gone all in. Gow has remodeled his farm in western England to mimic Britain’s traditional landscape, even replacing his livestock with animals that resemble ancient breeds, like the iron age pig, our closest approximation to wild boars. As magical as Gow’s farm is, however, rewilding on this kind of scale is not a viable alternative for most farmers. More cautious proponents advocate instead for a split solution. Patches of farmland are worked, and others are designated “rewilding spots” to be restored to a native state. Theoretically, this allows farmers to maintain the same levels of productivity, if the land used for agricultural purposes is farmed doubly-intensively. Unfortunately, intensive farming is not always reliable, and studies show that holistic rewilding efforts are more beneficial to ecosystem health and resilience in the long-term.

Alternatively, the land around farms can be rewilded. This would support necessary ecosystem functions and increase biodiversity, though it may not solve problems related to deteriorating soil health on farms themselves. One study found that farms situated near wild lands had healthier bird species, which reduced the risk of foodborne pathogens contaminating the crops.

Biodiversity-focused ranchers have made efforts to show that ranching, too, can be combined with rewilding. Historically, bison and, later, other grazing animals freely roamed the American plains, and some ranchers have mimicked these traditional grazing patterns using a practice called holistic management. Holistic management seeks to regenerate grasslands by re-developing the symbiotic relationship between grazers, insects and the land. Critics of holistic management argue 1) it’s not as effective a climate solution as its users claim because of the greenhouse gas emissions associated with cattle; and, 2) it’s not a “true” example of rewilding since it doesn’t reintroduce a keystone species explicitly for ecosystem purposes. Nevertheless, the practice provides a good example of how people are applying patterns of the past to modern-day agricultural practices to combat ecosystem degradation.

Benefits of rewilding

Though the benefits of rewilding farmland are numerous, it is a big undertaking that requires, among other things, proper consideration of agricultural yields. It is worth recalling, though, that less than half of the world’s current crop yields are actually consumed by people, with a disproportionate amount of crops being used instead for biofuel production (nearly half of all U.S. corn production, for example, goes to subsidized biofuels). Reducing pressure on lands to produce fuel – or to grow food that ultimately goes to waste – can enable the development of a food system that is more sustainable and intentional while keeping people adequately fed.

While there are many challenges and choices with rewilding, hard work pays off. Rewilded ranchland has lower environmental impacts and is more self-sustaining than its conventional counterparts, and farms like Derek Gow’s have re-introduced species that haven’t thrived in their native environments in years. In our increasingly barren world, farmers and ranchers can be the bridge between the natural and anthropogenic. In the process of feeding the nation, farmers can provide their land with the tools it needs to thrive.