article · Current Biology
Rewilding serves as an ecological restoration strategy that fosters self-regulating ecosystems by reinstating natural processes and reducing human control. Rather than seeking to recreate historical states, it prioritises functional dynamics, making it suitable for modern environmental conditions shaped by human activities. Trophic rewilding specifically focuses on restoring trophic complexity through the reintroduction or expansion of megafauna, or large-bodied wild animals. Re-establishing diverse megafauna populations enhances essential ecological processes, including seed dispersal, nutrient cycling, vegetation heterogeneity, and habitat formation. Non-native megafauna can also serve as functional surrogates for extinct species within novel ecosystems. Through natural population expansion, trophic rewilding offers strong potential for scalable restoration. This approach can support climate adaptation, bolster ecosystem resilience against collapse, and limit the spread of invasive plant species, although managing these initiatives within densely populated landscapes presents ongoing practical challenges.
Human activity has transformed the planet, driving climate shifts and the loss of major wildlife species. Trophic rewilding offers a forward-looking way to rebuild natural ecosystem functions rather than chasing static historical conditions. By harnessing large animals to regenerate landscapes and regulate invasive species, land managers can foster self-sustaining nature reserves that withstand climatic stresses and support global biodiversity.
This conceptual research informs conservation management, environmental policy, and nature-based land restoration initiatives. Potential end users include conservation agencies, rewilding organisations, and private land stewards seeking scalable, lower-intervention ecological management. The work appears to be at an early conceptual stage, presenting strategic frameworks rather than tested commercial products, meaning practical deployment will require site-specific ecological assessments and conflict-management protocols for populated areas.
AI-generated from the published abstract. Always read the original work before citing.
Rewilding is a restoration approach that aims to promote self-regulating complex ecosystems by restoring non-human ecological processes while reducing human control and pressures. Rewilding is forward-looking in that it aims to enhance functionality for biodiversity, accepting and indeed promoting the dynamic nature of ecosystems, rather than fixating on static composition or structure. Rewilding is thus especially relevant in our epoch of increasingly novel biosphere conditions, driven by strong human-induced global change. Here, we explore this hypothesis in the context of trophic rewilding - the restoration of trophic complexity mediated by wild, large-bodied animals, known as 'megafauna'. This focus reflects the strong ecological impacts of large-bodied animals, their widespread loss during the last 50,000 years and their high diversity and ubiquity in the preceding 50 million years. Restoring abundant, diverse, wild-living megafauna is expected to promote vegetation heterogeneity, seed dispersal, nutrient cycling and biotic microhabitats. These are fundamental drivers of biodiversity and ecosystem function and are likely to gain importance for maintaining a biodiverse biosphere under increasingly novel ecological conditions. Non-native megafauna species may contribute to these effects as ecological surrogates of extinct species or by promoting ecological functionality within novel assemblages. Trophic rewilding has strong upscaling potential via population growth and expansion of wild fauna. It is likely to facilitate biotic adaptation to changing climatic conditions and resilience to ecosystem collapse, and to curb some negative impacts of globalization, notably the dominance of invasive alien plants. Finally, we discuss the complexities of realizing the biodiversity benefits that trophic rewilding offers under novel biosphere conditions in a heavily populated world.
This page summarises published work. The authoritative version sits with the publisher.
DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2024.02.044
Is something wrong with this record? Report it or request removal.
Discussion
Have you built on this work, tried to replicate it, or seen it applied in practice? Share what you know. Verified researchers and MARATTO™ domain experts can open a discussion, and any member can reply. Contributions are reviewed before they appear.
No discussion yet. Open the first thread.
New to MARATTO™? Create a free account.
