Tuesday, July 7, 2026

2:30 PM - 4:00 PM

Room C3

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Details

Rewilding has established itself as a key transformative approach to ecosystem restoration. Meanwhile, implementation frequently meets critical responses from society, including landowners and other stakeholders. Despite its growing popularity, rewilding literature is often criticized for being dominated by opinion pieces and conceptual papers with limited empirical evidence. Moreover, social, economic, governance and interdisciplinary perspectives are often overlooked, despite their importance for the success of rewilding in human-dominated landscapes. This session will strengthen the scientific foundation of rewilding, inspire evidence-based approaches, while exploring the critical intersection of ecological restoration and human dimensions, emphasizing the need for interdisciplinary and inclusive collaborations for effective and transformative rewilding practice. By integrating insights from natural and human dimension studies, including ecology, economy, sociology, psychology, anthropology, ethics and political science, this session will examine if and how rewilding can be co-designed and implemented in more inclusive and participatory ways, sensitive to local values, knowledges, and practices and yet deliver ambitious ecological outcomes. Through case studies from the Global North, pan-European insights, conceptual inferences, and a plenary interdisciplinary discussion, speakers will debate about the key challenges and potential avenues for an impactful rewilding practice.

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Speakers and Presentation Titles

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Organiser