Assistant Professor Biology Department, George Mason University Fairfax, VA, USA
The ecological aspects behind the success and failure of rewilding projects have been looked at in literature and case studies, but rarely have sociopolitical factors been included in these classifications. To truly determine which factors lead to success in rewilding projects, inclusive of sociopolitical factors, we created global models that analyze 120 case studies from IUCN’s “Global Re-introduction Perspectives” and later “Global Conservation Translocation Perspectives” that fit under IUCN’s definition of rewilding. These global models include the ten guiding principles for rewilding from IUCN’s Rewilding Thematic Group and success factors and threats to success from earlier literature. We measured the self-reported “level of success” from the case study examples against the guiding principles and success factors and threats to determine which, if any, when employed in a project, made it more likely to be successful. In particular, we determined that one guiding principle and a set of four success factors and threats were strongly correlated with higher levels of success.
