Rewilding the World: Dispatches from the Conservation Revolution
by Caroline Fraser. Metropolitan. 2009. 400 pages. $28.50.
In just one century, we could undo hundreds of millions of years of natural evolutionary processes, according to ecologist Caroline Fraser. She warns that the loss of ecosystems to growing human populations and rampant development could wipe out half the world’s animal and plant species by 2100.
Rewilding, however, might stop this massive extinction before it happens, she argues. Rewilding consists of preserving and expanding key habitat areas; linking them with “corridors,” or intersecting patches of land; then mobilizing local people to participate in caring for these ecosystems.
Conservationists now agree that rescuing isolated patches of earth is not enough. It is also necessary to save the greater system of which individual lands are just parcels.
Fraser shares examples of successful rewilding in North America, South America, Europe, and Africa. She sees a bright future ahead for it. The establishment and maintenance of corridors and reserves is an engine of job creation. Plus, these projects might mitigate climate change by stabilizing forests and sequestering carbon dioxide.
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