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our perceptions of our place in the world, of its ecosystems and of the
means by which we might connect with them.
In doing so, I hope to encourage a positive environmentalism. The
treatment of the earth's living systems in the twentieth and early
twenty-irst centuries has been characterized by destruction and de-
gradation. Environmentalists, in seeking to arrest this carnage, have
been clear about what people should not do. We have argued that cer-
tain freedoms - to damage, to pollute, to waste - should be limited.
While there are good reasons for these injunctions, we have offered
little in return. We have urged only that people consume less, travel
less, live not blithely but mindfully, don't tread on the grass. Without
offering new freedoms for which to exchange the old ones, we are
often seen as ascetics, killjoys and prigs. We know what we are against;
now we must explain what we are for.
Using parts of Wales, Scotland, Slovenia, Poland, East Africa, North
America and Brazil as its case studies of good and bad practice, Feral
proposes an environmentalism which, without damaging the lives of
others or the fabric of the biosphere, offers to expand rather than con-
strain the scope of people's lives. It offers new freedoms in exchange
for those we have sought to restrict. It foresees large areas of self-willed
land and sea, repopulated by the beasts now missing from these
places, in which we may freely roam.
Perhaps most importantly, it offers hope. While rewilding should
not become a substitute for protecting threatened places and species,
the story it tells is that ecological change need not always proceed in
the same direction. Environmentalism in the twentieth century fore-
saw a silent spring, in which the further degradation of the biosphere
seemed inevitable. Rewilding offers the hope of a raucous summer, in
which, in some parts of the world at least, destructive processes are
thrown into reverse.
Nevertheless, like all visions, rewilding must be constantly ques-
tioned and challenged. It should happen only with the consent and
enthusiasm of those who work on the land. It must never be used as
an instrument of expropriation or dispossession. One of the chapters
in this topic describes some of the forced rewildings that have taken
place around the world, and the human tragedies they have caused.
Rewilding, paradoxically, should take place for the benefit of people,
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