Approaching rewilding from different national historical contexts: a cultural rather than natural question

Mainstream environmental protection has increasingly moved towards an understanding of the linkages between humans and nature, but with a wide diversity in how different conservation approaches are developed. This chapter summarises the discourse on and critique of a rewilding approach and the related discussion of wilderness, and traces it back to a particularly United States-based understanding. It then compares these assumptions with the established broad systems for land use in European cases, particularly Sweden. It is argued that land use in the Swedish case illustrates a model of organisation that significantly differs from a rewilding assumption, resulting in great risks of conflict in the case of applying a rewilding approach. Understanding this type of variation in cultural and institutional assumptions regarding land use and its role in societal systems is considered relevant in discussions and research related to rewilding, as well as more broadly to conservation and restoration in land-use systems.