Smithsonian Magazine featured Daniel Simberloff in this story examining the idea of “rewilding” landscapes to return them to a natural state. The magazine highlighted Simberloff’s recent study, which indicates that efforts to restore land back to its natural state by reintroducing wild animals may be limited at best.
Simberloff told the magazine that his message isn’t that reintroduction or restoration is always bad, but that the whole cascade of possible effects to an ecosystem needs to be considered rather than looking at things one- or two-dimensionally.
Simberloff is the Gore Hunger Professor of Environmental Studies in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.
“We’re not saying [rewilding] should never be done. We’re saying that it requires a lot more systematic and comprehensive thought than seems to have gone into it in many cases,” Simberloff said. Read the full story online.