The economic opportunity of rewilding

5 A fundamental change to the way land is used

All the economic models explained in this module share a fundamental goal: to make land with wilder nature and natural processes more (or at least equally) financially profitable than land that is heavily managed and degraded.

The net costs per hectare of wild land needs to be lower than the costs per hectare of managed or degraded land to motivate and enable more people to adopt rewilding. It is not only about more income but it’s also about lowering the costs (less input) and this may mean reducing interventions, labour, depreciation or other (recurrent) costs.

Many of the new economic models that support rewilding are in development but recent research shows that there can be positive economic benefits of rewilding compared to the traditional land use.