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Nature recovery

Introduction



A rural landscape.

Genista sp. shrub vegetation natural recovery, Pyrenean oak plantation, Serra da Malcata Nature Reserve, Greater Coa Valley, Portugal Credit: Juan Carlos Muñoz / Rewilding Europe.

In Module 1 you learned about natural processes and how rewilding works to restore them.

In this module we will explore:

  • Potential barriers to the restoration of natural processes.
  • Different ways rewilding can help nature heal itself.
  • How people and natural processes can coexist in Europe.

Rewilding is about working with nature to restore natural processes that are missing or degraded.

If humans can recognise and restore these natural processes, then nature can function as it should, allowing it to support life in all its breathtaking diversity.

The restoration of natural processes can deliver wide-ranging benefits to people. But with many Europeans only now learning to live alongside wild nature once again, nature recovery can often lead to challenges.

Rewilding can help to transform these challenges into opportunities. Measures to promote human–wildlife coexistence, revitalise cultures and traditions, support the development of nature-based economies and harness the wide range of other benefits that nature recovery can deliver, all have a role to play.

Learning outcomes

After completing this module, you should be able to:

  • Explain how rewilding aims to restore natural processes with minimal human intervention and describe the role of ecological integrity in ecosystem health.
  • Reflect that nature recovery can generate both challenges and opportunities.
  • Evaluate how rewilding's various tools and approaches can transform challenges into opportunities, and how different tools and approaches are applicable in different contexts.
  • Evaluate the importance of identifying and removing artificial barriers to enable the recovery of natural processes.
  • Evaluate the impact of species translocations in situations of poor connectivity and analyse the effectiveness of focusing on keystone species to restore ecosystem functionality.