I have to agree that official efforts are insufficient both in speed and scale, so I understand the need for civil society rewildering efforts regardless of law. However I’d like to hear from scientists in the field what should and shouldn’t be done, because I am sure that misguided efforts can be destructive too.

Ideally there should be a science-backed civil society guerilla force for rewilding to take the right necessary steps at a time where political action is too motivated by other motives, like protecting various lobbies and financial interests or simply their own asses.

And I am quite fed up with farmers concerns given the huge environmentally destructive force that monoculture and animal farming are to our nature. If our current farming practices are incompatible with wildlife existing, then our farming practices need to change instead of wildlife being pushed to extinction.

Thanks for sharing, this was a very enjoyably written article!

Well wildlife is killed/habitat is removed without permission much much more frequently and is immensely more upsetting than this permissionless ‘beaver bombing.’ This was a particularly infuriating example from Aus - the punishment for ‘permissionless’ killing of Eagles - only $60 per eagle and 14 days in jail.

Ecologists have to jump through so many hoops for reveg/rewilding projects (not saying its a bad thing, we have rules for a reason) but it can still feel quite demoralising and frustrating when it hinders work that those with the local, on the ground expertise fully support… makes it hard not to smile when a passionate local takes matters into their own hands for the good of the environment. One of my best frog survey sites was almost certainly started with a bit of ‘guerilla frogging’ on the part of the landholder.