The NPR radio show On Point had a re-broadcast recently of a fantastic conversation with Caroline Frasier (author of “Rewilding the World; Dispatches from the Conservation Revolution“) about the concept and progress of “rewilding”: bringing back large areas of wilderness around the globe. An example of this is the Y2Y – Yukon to Yellowstone Initiative.
The process of rewilding (and the part of the radio program I was able to listen to) brought up some questions for me, which are probably answered in Caroline’s book. I wonder what the criteria is for rewilding. What is the state of wilderness that people want to bring back (and why)? What about human-wildlife interactions? Everything from wildlife in backyards to mitigating roadkill when major roads and highways are part of a proposed wilderness/wildlife corridor are important parts of the conversation. Not to mention that there is a large segment of the population (at least in this country) that doesn’t want to see an increase in wildlife interactions (particularly with larger carnivores) in their towns/neighborhoods.
Another part of the rewilding conversation is the reintroduction of top-level predators where they’ve been extirpated, something that is near and dear to me as I’ve been studying the wolf reintroduction process for some time. I’m quite interested in find out how this topic is broached by the different conservation projects in Caroline’s book.
