Presentation short abstract:

This paper describes the multispecies entanglements (past and present) that Scottish rewilders are turning to in the search for a new, collaborative “wild” that offers liveability for all species, and reflects on how histories of extinction are drawing rewilders into new ecological responsibilities.

Presentation long abstract:

“The biggest [environmental] challenge is that, although people are trying to fix little things, perhaps even believe in self-governing ecosystems and stepping back [from landscape management], we cannot get full trophic cascades without top predators,” one of my collaborators tells me. It has been around three-hundred years since wolves, the last remaining large predators, were extirpated from Scotland. Amongst the reasons for their persecution was the perception that they posed a competition to humans in the hunting of deer and the consumption of domesticated livestock. But in the absence of wolves, Scottish landscapes have transformed: Deer populations have boomed and, with the increased grazing pressure, forests have dwindled – and with them, many critters that depend on this habitat. Contesting narratives of interspecies competition, Scottish rewilders are increasingly turning their attention to wolves and other “missing keystone species” who they consider to be essential contributors to Scottish econsystems, and whose absences are thought to impact Scottish biodiversity gravely.

Based on ethnographic research with Scottish rewilding initiatives, this presentation describes the multispecies entanglements – past and present – that my collaborators are turning towards in their search for a new, collaborative “wild” that offers liveability for all species. It pays particular attention to the ways in which histories of extinction are drawing rewilders into new interspecies relations and issuing them with new environmental responsibilities, where, for example, in absence of other predators “humans must be the wolves” and take on the tasks they would have otherwise performed in Scottish ecosystems.