Rewilding: Radical Rewards — Financial Times Review
In August 2020, the Financial Times published a review of Rewilding: The Radical New Science of Ecological Recovery, the book I co-authored with Paul Jepson. The review, written by deputy books editor Laura Battle, appeared in the FT’s science books section.
Challenging Assumptions
The review highlights how the book challenges common assumptions about what “pristine” nature looks like. During the Pleistocene, much of the world was a mosaic of grassland and scrub shaped by megafauna — mammoths, mastodons, and sabre-toothed cats — rather than the dense forests many assume to be the natural baseline. Around 130,000 years ago, these megafauna began disappearing, likely from overkill, and with them went much of the natural diversity they had maintained.
This connects to the concept of “shifting baselines” — each generation assumes the nature of their youth is normal, unwittingly accepting generations of prior decline. It is one of the most important ideas in the book, because it reframes what conservation should be aiming for.
Ecospace Over Preservation
The review notes the distinction we draw between traditional conservation — the managed protection of individual species — and rewilding’s more open-ended concept of “ecospace.” Rather than trying to freeze ecosystems in a particular state, rewilding creates the conditions for nature to find its own dynamic equilibrium.
The Yellowstone wolf reintroduction illustrates this beautifully: 66 wolves released in 1995 triggered cascading effects on elk populations, tree growth, aquatic ecosystems, and beaver recovery — outcomes that no conservation plan could have designed.
Climate and Economy
The review also highlights the climate dimension: restoring Arctic grassland steppe grazed by herbivores could protect carbon-rich permafrost, while rewilded landscapes create opportunities in eco-tourism, government funding, and carbon finance. These are themes I continue to work on through CreditNature and the broader nature finance movement.
Originally reviewed by Laura Battle in the Financial Times, 13 August 2020. The book, Rewilding: The Radical New Science of Ecological Recovery by Paul Jepson and Cain Blythe, is published by Icon Books.