Wednesday, July 8, 2026

4:30 PM - 6:00 PM

Room BM.1.26

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Details

Long-term, successful conservation of biodiversity requires looking past the immediate crises of mass extinction and climate change to focus on the potential for ecosystem recovery and rewilding across the global biosphere. The converging factors of falling human demographic rates, increasing urbanization and a rapidly increasing global awareness of the importance of sustainability and conservation provide a socioeconomic context for a bold revisioning of the future of humankind's relationships with nature and the biosphere. Over then next several centuries the human population will stabilize and then decline due to ongoing demographic change. At the same time the human population will continue to concentrate in urban and metropolitan areas. As a result, vast areas of currently impacted and degraded ecosystems will experience a reduction and release in anthropogenic pressure. A proactive, strategic and optimized approach to planning, prioritization, design and implementation will enable broad-scale, cross-biome, multi-taxa ecosystem recovery, restoration and rewilding. This symposium seeks papers on this broad topic, particularly those focused on (1) the state of the art of ecosystem recovery and restoration, (2) the emerging field of rewilding, (3) species reintroductions, (4) spatial planning and optimization methods to integrate the three topics above.

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Speakers and Presentation Titles

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Organiser