Environmental Philosophy and Ethics

Rewilding and restoration ecology examine what it means to return ecological function to landscapes that human activity has simplified or degraded, asking not just how to reintroduce species but which species, to whose benefit, and according to whose vision of nature. Central debates turn on trophic rewilding—restoring predator-prey dynamics and the cascading effects they produce—alongside the more speculative prospect of de-extinction, which forces hard questions about authenticity, risk, and what conservation is actually trying to preserve. Underlying both is a tension between ecological science and environmental ethics: the measurable outcomes of restored food webs sit uneasily beside contested values like place attachment, aesthetic experience, and ecological citizenship, concepts that shape public acceptance as much as any field trial does. Active research is working out how these normative commitments can be made explicit and defensible rather than smuggled in as technical defaults.

Works

27,764

Total citations

210,903

Keywords

RewildingConservationEcological CitizenshipEnvironmental EthicsDe-extinctionRestoration Ecology