Pitfalls of Rewilding Definitions

LD Nov-Dec Resolved: The United States ought to rewild substantial tracts of land.

Depending on the way you define rewilding, you could be ceding substantial ground to the opposition. Most of the case briefs out for the November–December topic refer to Merriam Webster as their definition:

"an effort to increase biodiversity and restore the natural processes of an ecosystem that typically involves reducing or ceasing human activity and often the planned reintroduction of a plant or animal species and especially a keystone species"

There is a huge weakness in this definition.

“an effort to… restore the natural processes of an ecosystem” 

Which natural processes? There are four essential processes in ecosystems: energy flow, the water cycle, the nutrient cycle, and community dynamic.

Merriam-Webster further defines “restore,” as “to put or bring back into existence or use,” or “to bring back to or put back into a former or original state.”

The first definition is not applicable. The above processes never stop, although they may become weakened or unstable. Someone could argue that “restor[ing] the natural processes of an ecosystem" is impossible because these processes have never stopped, though I doubt that’ll be an argument debaters will actually use.

More likely, you will hit people who ask, “Restoring the natural processes of an ecosystem to what?” Is there a certain time period we are modeling rewilding after? A relative time period, or an ideal level of ecological functioning? Which time period, how would you even define an ideal level of ecological functioning?

I have seen multiple other briefs defining “restoration” as being restored to “pre-human” levels. This has a couple problems:

• This would imply that humanity, by nature of its existence, is not “wild.” What makes an early Homo sapien, living a hunter-gatherer lifestyle 300,000 years ago, fundamentally “unwild?” You would need a much more modern time period to go off as the turning point for when humanity was no longer “wild.”

• Defining this as “pre-human levels of functioning” would also say that indigenous presence within the land now held by the US government is an inherently bad thing. This could be an easy catch for a SetCol.

You could also advocate for land to be restored to pre-Industrialization levels, but colonization of US lands occurred before the Industrial revolution ever happened, which would cede a lot of ground for a SetCol.

The best definition I’ve seen is by English journalist and activist George Monbiot in his book Feral: Rewilding the Land, the Sea, and Humanity. The book is an easy and narrative read with great evidence that would work well in a Setcol, Cap K, or even identity based Ks. I would highly recommend it. Monbiot defines rewilding as:

“Rewilding… is about resisting the urge to control nature and allowing it to find its own way. It involves reintroducing absent plants and animals (and in a few cases culling exotic species which cannot be contained by native wildlife), pulling down the fences, blocking the drainage ditches, but otherwise stepping back… The ecosystems that result are best described not as wilderness, but as self-willed: governed not by human management but by their own processes. Rewilding has no end points, no view about what a ‘right’ ecosystem or a ‘right’ assemblage of species looks like… It lets nature decide.

This definition is by far a favorite of mine because it emphasizes that rewilding is about human interference stepping back. It draws a line between rewilding and conservation ecology—two definitions that are very likely to be confused—and also points out that when rewilding, there is no “right” or “wrong” way for an ecosystem to exist. Monbiot disagrees with traditional preservation stances, and in 2013 wrote,

In my view most of our conservation areas aren’t nature reserves at all. They are museums of former farming practices, weeded and tended to prevent the wilds from encroaching. The ecosystem’s dynamic interactions are banned. Animals and plants are preserved as if they were a jar of pickles, kept in a state of arrested development, in which little is allowed to change. The problem begins with designation. The “interest features” of a site of special scientific interest – its species and habitats – must be kept in “favourable condition”. Often this means the condition in which they happened to be when the reserve was created. In most cases that’s a condition of dire impoverishment and depletion: ecosystems missing almost their entire trophic structure, most of their large herbivores, all their large predators, in many cases even the trees. They have to be kept like this by extreme and intrusive management, in order to sustain the impacts which reduced them to this woeful state.

Take care not to advocate for the “National Park-ification” of land in the US—it’s in direct contradiction to what rewilding actually is. The lack of human intervention and allowing nature to find its own way are the key principles of rewilding. This can also serve as a hit on the aff economically—the US would make less money on parks tourism if these areas were rewilded rather than “preserved.” It’s an essential distinction to make in this debate, and failing to do so can be an easy round loser for an aff or neg caught unawares.