Environmental Philosophy and Ethics

Rewilding and restoration ecology examine how ecosystems can recover their complexity and self-regulating capacity after centuries of human simplification, asking not just whether we can return wolves to a valley or aurochs to a European plain, but whether we should—and what that choice reveals about our obligations to nonhuman life. Conservation ethics sits at the center of these debates, weighing the claims of species, ecosystems, and the people whose sense of home and identity is bound up in particular landscapes. De-extinction raises this tension to its sharpest point: if biotechnology can resurrect a lost species, the question of which extinctions we reverse, and why, becomes as much a moral problem as a scientific one. Researchers are also pressing on how aesthetic experience and place attachment shape public willingness to support restoration, recognizing that the values driving conservation practice are never purely ecological.

Works

28,974

Total citations

214,355

Keywords

RewildingConservationEcological CitizenshipEnvironmental EthicsDe-extinctionRestoration Ecology