Rewilding Shouldn’t Be Reactive: Fragas do Eume Natural Park in the Face of an Invasive Alien Species

Journal for Nature Conservation 69 (2022) 126252 Available online 26 July 2022 1617-1381/© 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier GmbH. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Rewilding Shouldn’t Be Reactive: Fragas do Eume Natural Park in the Face of an Invasive Alien Species Diego Cidr´ as * , Valeri` a Paül Departamento de Xeografía, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, Praza da Universidade, 1, 15703 Santiago de Compostela, Galicia, Spain ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Rewilding Invasive alien species Protected area Land abandonment Eucalyptus ABSTRACT Rewilding is growing worldwide as a conservation approach to face the restoration of all natural processes that are suppressed or degraded by human action. After plenty of theoretical discussion and some limited experimental practices, rewilding remained conceptually open and diverse with regard to its operational framework. However, little was discussed with regards invasive alien species (IAS) management within rewilding. Hence, the aim of this research is to bridge the gap between these two bodies of theory. To do so, this work explores, in situ, a protected area in which rewilding is discoursively expressed as a form of native forest conservation. Based on a qualitative approach, the results gather stakeholders’ discourses on the institutional advocacy for rewilding, expressed as a form of incentivizing land abandonment and hence leading to a decline in the plantation of invasive blue gums (Eucalyptus globulus). The research poses a discussion on the problematic assimilation that rewilding and IAS management may have when informally combined. Lastly, it is concluded that, when executed in coexistence with IAS, rewilding projects should elude reactive positions and, instead, formalize agreed restoration programs, so that conflictive IAS can be consensually treated together with landowners. 1. Introduction Since their inception, conservation projects have been state-driven given that they form part of the inherent territorial control function of modern nation-states (Lefebvre, 1974; Storey, 2001). Hence, environmentalism becomes “part of the armamentarium of the nation” (Vaccaro, Beltran, & Paquet, 2013, p. 260) and protected areas operate as important “meaning making machines” (Haraway, 1989, p. 54). Amongst the increasingly urbanized modern states, conservation projects tend to respond to the ideological characteristics of an urban elite (Guha, 2014). Therefore, legitimacy in conservation defends a collective good on the one hand and responds to culturally dominant discourses on the other (Vaccaro et al., 2013). However, since the classic cases of Western national parks playing a seminal role in the constitution of national identities (Runte, 1997), state involvement in the implementation and management of protected areas has transited from topdown interventionist models at the national scale, to more complex and sometimes less interventionist systems set at multiple scales (Neumann, 2015). Conceptually bringing non-interventionism to the maximum, “rewilding” has grown in conservation theory as a multi-form of passive management aiming at ecological succession (Cochet & Durand, 2018; Genes, Svenning, Pires, & Fernandez, 2019; Jørgensen, 2015; Lennon, 2019; Palau, 2020; Pereira & Navarro, 2015). The widespread perception that our world lacks wildness caused the popularization of this emerging paradigm, which started in the 1990s (Adams, 2006; Palau, 2020; Soule & Noss, 1998; Torres et al., 2018). Interestingly, policies such as invasive alien species (IAS) management are rarely integrated in the emerging rewilding paradigm, although human involvement in wildlife is both practically and ethically a cornerstone in rewilding, as well as in IAS management (Warren, 2007). This paper aims to bridge the gap between rewilding and IAS conceptualizations by researching a particular case-study. This is done by means of geographical lenses. However, geographers have mostly been silent on the native/alien debates, despite the interest that this discipline has had on questions of space, place and environment throughout the last decades (Harvey, 1996). The (re)introduction of species into ecosystems springs from a range of interests (ecology, agriculture, amenity, and so on). This action is developed with “desirable species” when these facilitate the provision of ecosystem services (Ewel et al., 1999). A small number of these species may become invasive (Blackburn et al., 2011) and potentially * Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (D. Cidr´ as), [email protected] (V. Paül). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal for Nature Conservation journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jnc https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jnc.2022.126252 Received 3 June 2021; Received in revised form 27 October 2021; Accepted 20 July 2022 Journal for Nature Conservation 69 (2022) 126252 2 “undesirable” for humans. Halfway, Novoa et al. (2018) highlight the existence of conflictive IAS, i.e. those invasive species providing some ecosystem services but incurring negative consequences for ecology at the same time. Conflictive IAS set a two-level ethical challenge in rewilding: in the first instance, because limiting the expansion of some listed species may go against the rewilding paradigm; and secondly, because when rewilding is too dislocated from the public’s understanding of nature, social friction may emerge and the degree of involvement of local stakeholders would be reduced (Corlett, 2016b; Nogu´ es-Bravo, Simberloff, Rahbek, & Sanders, 2016). In this context, the selected case-study area is pertinent given that rewilding is questioned in a highly anthropized conservation area affected by the expansion of a controversial IAS. By so doing, we aim to provide empirical evidence in a domain with limited theoretical developments and a near absence of practical verifications. Our study was conducted in Fragas do Eume Natural Park (9,125 ha), located in the Eume valley in the northernmost region of Galicia (Fig. 1). In essence, this area is protected because of the existence of a notable temperate rain-forest dominated by oaks (Quercus robur and Quercus pyrenaica), which is singularized by its ferns (e.g. Culcita macrocarpa and Cystopteris diaphana) and mosses (e.g. Cololejeunea microscopica and Lepidozia cupressina), some of them with a high biodiversity significance. In line with the nature of many temperate rainforests in the European Atlantic biogeographical region, this valley was used for timbering for generations, and the species remaining were allegedly native. Facing a more recent expansion of exotic tree plantations in the area, Fragas do Eume was designated a Natural Park (the highest-level of protection that can be designated by a Regional Government in Spain) by the Galician Government in 1996, with the conservation purpose of “prohibiting the introduction of invasive species” and “restricting human intervention in plant and animal communities, in order to allow their natural evolution” in the core of the park (Decree 211/1996; our translation). However, since its designation, this protected area has been run without a Management and Public Use Plan (Plan Reitor de Usos e Xesti´ on in Galician, subsequently mentioned as MP in this paper). Unsuccessful negotiations between the park managers and the locals for the approval of the MP continue today in an area characterized by the spread of alien species due to forestry plantations, mostly Tasmanian blue gums (Eucalyptus globulus). Fig. 1 shows the zoning passed with the park designation in 1996 and the situation of the native forests and the blue gum plantations in 2011. Table 1 presents the evolution of eucalypt plantations during the initial 13 years of management of the protected area. The processed data reveals that, despite the conservation intentions stated in the Decree 211/1996, landowners have continued to plant eucalypts (+214 ha), in some cases illegally, according to the applicable management zoning (check Table 1), with an evolution from 12 to 15 % of the Natural Park being covered by active or abandoned eucalypt plantations in the 1998–2011 period. Inversely, native forests are losing ground. Teixido et al. (2010) suggest that such oak forest regression is due to an increase in forest fragmentation affected by the intensification of monospecific tree plantations. Teixido et al. (2010) also argue that the expansion of eucalypts is eminently owner-induced, which constitutes a relevant, if not the main, conflict of interests for the management of the park. Given the absence of a MP, rewilding intentions remain unsettled. The remainder of the paper is structured as follows: firstly, a revision of rewilding in conservation theory is provided, highlighting its conceptual diversification towards its application in protected areas. This theoretical section also notes the marginal significance that the management of IAS has had in this theorization on rewilding. The paper then goes on to explain the use of interviewing as a research method to explore the implicit meanings of rewilding in the Eume valley. The results section of the article is based on three detected discourses attributed to rewilding and their common linkage to the removal of an IAS in the study area. Lastly, rewilding and IAS management are discussed considering the analysed social rejection of rewilding experienced in the case-study area, and a set of recommendations to aggregate the management of IAS in a rewilding project are finally stated. Fig. 1. Maps of Fragas do Eume Natural Park. On the left, the zoning of the park. On the right, a contrast of the areas of native forests [in dark green] and blue gum plantations [in light green]. Maps were made by D. Cidr´ as based on the data provided by the Galician Government and Mapa Forestal de Espa˜ na for 1996 and 2011. D. Cidr´ as and V. Paül Journal for Nature Conservation 69 (2022) 126252 3 2. Rewilding in conservation In Adams’ (2019, p. 1) words, “the first and most basic observation about conservation spaces is that ambition to expand them is still growing”. This “conservation boom” (Zimmerer, 2000) has been critically reviewed by social scientists, specifically under a political ecology lens (Mathis & Rose, 2016): whilst conservation projects are breeding on the classic idea of pristine and wild nature (Watson et al., 2018), socialspatial inequalities derived from associate neoliberal policies cause what Green and Williams (2015) state as “green grabbing”. In this regard, criticisms have been directed, in recent decades, at the role of institutions, identities, spatialities and capitalisms in the implementation of protected areas (Neumann, 2015). Namely in terms of scale, Zimmerer’s (2000) call for scaling up fairer action towards conservation resulted in diverse but comparable academic appeals for “large scale conservation areas” (Shwartz et al., 2017). Among others, rewilding emerged at this stage as a multi-form of large-scale restoration practices (Jørgensen, 2015; Monbiot, 2014). Rewilding was firstly formalized in 1991 through a collaborative project in North America called The Wildlands Network (Sandom et al., 2013). Basically, this programme aimed to recreate extensive natural landscapes through three lines of work, often referred to as the “three Cs”: cores, corridors and carnivores (Soule & Noss, 1998). Hence, large areas free from humans and connected by means of corridors were designated, together with the introduction of carnivores therein (Lennon, 2019; Palau, 2020; Soule & Noss, 1998). The temporal reference of this project was very vague: according to Jørgensen (2015, p. 483), “under this earliest rewilding concept, the wild is a time when large carnivores were abundant in North America”. A reconfiguration and popularization of rewilding was applied in Donlan et al.’s (2006) revision of The Wildlands Network. Rewilding was then constructed towards the mimicking of ecological realities in the Pleistocene era, which ended with the last glacial period (ca 12,000 BP). Therefore, this model implied the reintroduction of substitutes for extinct species with surrogate surviving ones (Donlan et al., 2006). Overall, rewilding as first proposed meant to restore “big wilderness” in North America, dating back to the past when humans were absent or had just arrived. Subsequent stages of rewilding practices have been diverse to the point that Nogu´ es-Bravo et al. (2016) argue that current heterogeneity is excessive. Rewilding models experimented worldwide are, among others: •trophic rewilding (Svenning et al., 2016); •taxon replacement on islands (Hansen, 2010); •reintroductions of ecologically functional substitutes for extinct species (Garrido et al., 2021, 2019); •the re-establishment of self-sustaining native forests (Sandom, Hughes, & Macdonald, 2013); •soil improvement and native species outplanting (Burney & Burney, 2007); •microbiome rewilding in urban areas (Mills et al., 2017). More recently, rewilding has been reformulated from an ecological services focus (Pettorelli et al., 2018) with the purpose of not only fitting it for policy, but also for society (Dickie et al., 2014). Conversely, Genes et al. (2019) have questioned the recent emergence of an ecosystemservice-focused definition of rewilding. In their view, its former significance as a provision of biodiversity towards the restoration of “big wilderness” (Soule & Noss, 1998) may be disrupted at this new stage. Ecosystem-service-focused rewilding “could be interpreted to point to a domestication of nature for our purposes, which is the opposite of the idea of making something ‘wild’ again” (Genes et al., 2019, p. 1286). Overall, as a sign of worldwide scope, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has recently launched a task force on rewilding (IUCN, 2017) and today several countries have multiple rewilding projects implemented (Pettorelli et al., 2018). Nonetheless, Table 1 Evolution of Eucalyptus spp. and native forests in Fragas do Eume Natural Park (1998–2011), according to management zones. Table by D. Cidr´ as, with data from the Spanish Forestry Map. Zoning Plantation restrictions (Decree 211/1996) Land area ha (1998) ha (2011) % ha Park (1998) % ha Park (2011) Δha Δ%ha Park Z1 Natural reserve Plantations are extremely restricted Eucalyptus 0 3.24 0 0.04 3.24 0.04 Native forests 302.76 268.08 3.32 2.94 −34.68 −0.38 Z2 Atlantic forest Exotic plantations are not permitted Eucalyptus 373.84 452.21 4.10 4.96 78.37 0.86 Native forests 2466.67 2257.02 27.03 24.73 −209.66 −2.30 Z3 Plantations area Plantations are not permitted in +35 % slopes Eucalyptus 338.96 416.43 3.71 4.56 77.47 0.85 Native forests 234.94 69.48 2.57 0.76 −165.46 −1.81 Z4 Scrub & pasture Plantations need a specific permit Eucalyptus 327.18 352.88 3.59 3.87 25.71 0.28 Native forests 498,14 304.14 5.46 3.33 −194.00 −2.13 Z5 Agriculture & livestock No restrictions stated Eucalyptus 85.87 115.85 0.94 1.27 29.98 0.33 Native forests 105.69 63.16 1.16 0.69 −42.52 −0.47 NATURAL PARK Eucalyptus 1125.84 1340.61 12.34 14.69 214.77 2.35 Native forests 3608.20 2961.88 39.54 32.46 −646.32 −7.08 D. Cidr´ as and V. Paül Journal for Nature Conservation 69 (2022) 126252 4 rewilding has kept its core commitment to biodiversity and natural processes (Pereira & Navarro, 2015). European materializations of rewilding are centred either on the restoration of abandoned agricultural lands (Jørgensen, 2015; Loth & Newton, 2018) or large scale non-agricultural landscapes (Lennon, 2019; Palau, 2020). The former emphasizes naturalistic grazing regimes, such as processes “in which a formerly cultivated landscape develops without human control” (H¨ ochtl, Lehringer, & Konold, 2005, p. 86), whereas the latter adopts a similar geography to the 3Cs model (Lennon, 2019). In this second case, rewilding is active in the sense that the reintroduction of robust herbivores is enhanced (Cochet & Durand, 2018; Jørgensen, 2015). Instead, abandoned farmlands are passively rewilded by advocating succession towards native vegetation. Differing from the North American approaches, both rewilding trends in Europe assume the human-nature co-production of landscapes (Hall, 2014), which are expected to be restored to a pre-clearance state. Thus, “the objective is to withdraw human intervention from the management of the landscape, but not necessarily remove humans themselves from that landscape” (Jørgensen, 2015, p. 485). More attention has been given to keystone but controversial “rewilder” faunal species, like large carnivores. The overlapping of their presence with human activities such as farming, hunting or even tourism often emerges (Gort´ azar, Herrero, Villafuerte, & Marco, 2000). The reintroduction of certain large carnivores commonly collides, particularly in Europe, with an age-old perception of fear transmitted through oral tradition, present even in current generations (Cochet & Durand, 2018; Wilson, 2004). Indeed, despite the implementation of policies regulating hunting practices, groups from the local population supporting the eradication of particular feral species due to their alleged effects on livestock farming still remain (Bauer, Wallner, & Hunziker, 2009). Although less than 10 % of wild carnivores’ diets are domesticated animals, economic losses for affected farmers may be considerable (Wilson, 2004), resulting in public institutions feeling pressured to facilitate economic indemnifications. In fact, it is argued that large grazers may also attack crops, pastures and even tree plantations (Goulding & Roper, 2002). These tensions are often faced by institutions promoting rewilding practices through educational programmes and the reformulation of these problems by means of ecosystem services language (Navarro & Pereira, 2012). An example of that was captured by Enserink and Vogel (2006), who conclude that the presence of wolves and bears caused the attraction of visitors to the region of Abruzzo in Italy. However, Warren (2007) has shown that, when rewilding of faunal species happens, human attitudes do not respond exclusively to issues such as nativism and invasiveness. At the European Union level, Jepson (2016), Lennon (2019) and Pettorelli et al. (2018) concur that rewilding projects are challenging due to the institutional configuration of nature conservation. Current biodiversity policy is basically regulated by the so-called “Birds Directive” and “Habitats Directive”, respectively passed in 1979 and 1992. These directives are grounded in a compositionalist ecological perspective, where particular habitats and species form the end-point of conservation policies. As argued by Lennon (2019), compositionalist ecology is opposed to functionalist ecology, the latter being grounded in ecological succession processes, implying that a particular habitat or species cannot be valued above others. Thus, the EU policy framework is detached from this functionalist approach. It is also relevant that agrienvironmental schemes framed in current Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) provide incentives to farmers for environmental improvement through the maintenance of marginal lands in agricultural production (Merckx & Pereira, 2015; Pettorelli et al., 2018). As stated by Lennon, “it is against this backdrop of institutionalized nature conservation policy that the abandonment of farmland to passive rewilding is perceived as a threat to biodiversity” (2019, p. 511). At the heart of this debate remains the significance of wilderness (H¨ ochtl et al., 2005; Zanolin & Paül, 2022) and, therefore, the limits of human intervention towards conservation ecology. Finally, as already stated, interactions between rewilding and IAS management theory are scant (Corlett, 2016a), implying a major scientific challenge. This theoretical gap points out the ongoing questioning of the relationship of our own species with non-human nature (Warren, 2007). How should we as humans classify ourselves in any rewilding project? Are we natural? If researchers are increasingly understanding humans as invasive (Low, 2002; Sanford Jr & Horn, 2000) or even catastrophically invasive (Van Driesche & Van Driesche, 2004), human persecution of any other alien species would be meaningless, and everything done, including conservation, unnatural. Rewilding is, in the words of Warren (2007, p. 535), “afflicted by many of the same definitional and implementational dilemmas as the native/alien construct”. Accordingly, any decision involving spatiotemporal choices, such as the time set for a restoration practice, is arbitrary (Van der Heijden, 2005; Warren, 2007). In short, IAS management theory consists of defining how exotic species that have, or could potentially have, an impact on endemic ecosystems should be managed (Sharp et al., 2011); to name a few, the Australian-originated plants Acacia dealbata or A. longifolia in Portugal (Marchante, Kjøller, Struwe, & Freitas, 2009) but also, and ironically, Ulex europeaeus (Davies, 2006), a species native to coastal Northern and Central Portugal, in Tasmania. Despite the obvious ecological benefits of limiting their expansion, it is improbable that all stakeholders involved support the removal of IAS. Firstly, because of the common difficulties in recognizing non-native species (Vaz, Ribeiro, Honrado, & Vicente, 2020); and, secondly, due to the wide range of perceived benefits an IAS can provide, for instance, to refer again to the same example, acacias are today used for firewood or even photographic safaris in Portugal (Shackleton et al., 2019). These uneven views concur on the idea that a more cultural and political account of contemporary species expansion is needed (Robbins, 2004). In this respect, IAS management shares the problem with rewilding and other conservation practices of being dislocated from the public’s understanding of nature within their lives, which implies that social friction may emerge and the degree of involvement of local stakeholders would be reduced (Corlett, 2016b; Jepson, 2016; Nogu´ es-Bravo et al., 2016). 3. Methods The empirical results of this research are based on an ethnographic exploration carried out between April 2019 and June 2020. We conducted 16 semi-structured in-depth interviews, including two representatives of the park, two managers, six landowners and six residents and/or workers in the area. Criterion and snowball sampling were applied with the purpose of achieving diverse understandings of the management of the park (Dunn, 2010). Hence, the research did not focus on choosing a representative sample of the whole population, but rather “to understand how individual people experience and make sense of their own lives” (Valentine et al., 2005, p. 22). We have chosen to focus on how all perceived rewilding strategies are expressed in the current discussions about the management, planning and policies of Fragas do Eume Natural Park. To do so, we vetoed our use of rewilding, invasive species and semantically related derived words, following Cameron’s (2016, p. 212) advice to “deliberately avoid” words to ensure that the “participant’s mind” steers clear of particular “connection[s]” and responding to interviewer’s expectations. The designed interview agenda consisted of five content-focused areas: •Getting to know the interviewee: open discussion around the informant’s experiences with, duties and attachments to the Eume valley and surroundings. •Personal construct of the area: exploration of past and present meanings and emotions, leading towards the current geographical understandings of the valley. •Practices in the area: revision of personal events and alliances that conform formal and informal management practices in the valley. D. Cidr´ as and V. Paül Journal for Nature Conservation 69 (2022) 126252 5 •Perceived management of the Natural Park: debate on the designation of the park, from its meanings to any legal considerations. Potential discussion on power relations. •Involved stakeholders: discussion about the others; stakeholders who play a role in the park, namely public institutions. Exploration of perceived interests and expectations. Interviews were recorded with permission but anonymously; therefore, a set of numbers (i.e. “[1]”) will be used. Data analysis was carried out with NVivo 12 through a thematic coding approach. Inspired by Braun and Clarke (2006), our aim was to engage with data and explore both overt (semantic) and implicit (latent) meanings for rewilding. The analytical process firstly had a total of 127 codes, later congregated in four overreaching topics (conditions, interactions, strategies and consequences of rewilding) and subtopics. Next, following Braun and Clarke (2006), we attempted to go beyond the surface meaning of our data with the purpose of obtaining an accurate narrative from our source materials. To do so, we refined and aggregated codes with the purpose of making meaningful contributions to the aim of the research (Braun & Clarke, 2006), that is, bridging the gap between rewilding and IAS management. The three resulting themes, which structure our results, constitute three discursive enabler dimensions for rewilding related to IAS management. Each theme is illustrated with vivid examples or extracts that provide a collective story of the data, while providing an analytic narrative that makes an argument in relation to the research. 4. Results Beyond the heterogeneity of discourses obtained about the management of the valley that are going to be analyzed in this section, it seems essential to underscore a detected shared perception: Fragas do Eume Natural Park has been managed under a precarious policy setting. That is to say, stakeholders at every level assume that weakening public investment has led to defective conservation policies. As a matter of fact, since the post-2008 global financial crisis, the Galician Government has reduced the budget for conservation by more than 50 %, according to the data facilitated by the Galician Ministry of Finance, 1 and in 2012 the local Director of the Natural Park was removed and never replaced. Among other aftereffects, park management directly depends on a head office located in Santiago, the capital city of Galicia and 85 km from the main entrance to the park. At least since 2012, all interviewees acknowledge that rewilding is seen, by those in Santiago, as a low-cost management practice in the context of a minimal interventionist policy. This situation is perceived as a passive management, understood by non-governmental actors as an opportunity for the public sector to reduce not only investment, but the degree of interaction and, in practical terms, tension with stakeholders in the area. Therefore, given that there is only an overall call for rewilding in Decree 211/1996 which designates the Natural Park and that the MP has not been passed, as previously explained, rewilding acts institutionally as a mere rhetoric therein. Hence, there are no regulated rewilding policies in situ. Based on this policy setting, described by all the respondents, we have identified three discursive enabler dimensions for rewilding, which we diagram in Fig. 2. Firstly, we highlight the transition from an active to a preventive management approach; then, we explore human depopulation as an informal, non-verbalized but institutional strategy; and, thirdly, we formulate the implications of landcare over land-tenure in such an unregulated context. These three categories concur on limiting blue gum (Eucalyptus globulus) plantations, which are seen as the source of bio-invasions by respondents. Importantly, the expressed drawbacks of rewilding in the park are derived from this particular issue of removing the blue gums. 4.1. Promoting rewilding through preventive conservation The first notion attached to rewilding is based on the general assumption that shrinking budgets have reformulated the way the park is managed. A keystone for this perception has been the continued postponement of the legally planned MP, which should define regulations and interventions, but also specific economic incentives for landowners: “Every drafted MP claimed there will be compensations [to protection], but they’ve never confirmed anything” [6]. Therefore, in the face of a lack of regulated interventions, conservation is perceived as a vague avoidance of degradations. This expression is argued under differing interpretations. In the eyes of the interviewed head officers in Santiago, the nonapproval of the MP springs from an exercise of prudence, caused by “the complexity of the area, the number of landowners and other contextual aspects (…). Imagine that you take action and in the following day someone sets the forest on fire” [13]. This call for caution accounts for the formulation that the essence of conservation should be the reversion of human degradations in the valley: “We need to reverse the hand of man, which has erased what we know as natural habitat in the area, with deciduous leaf species… what is, in essence, a fraga [the Galician word for a native forest]” [13]. Particularly, planted blue gums constitute, in the opinion of the park officers, the main threat for conservation: “they are putting the natural evolution of those habitats in serious danger”. Hence, “if we don’t remove those eucalypts and take resolute and efficient action, (…) natural regeneration will no longer be as it should be” [14]. In short, preventive conservation appears to be constructed as from the dichotomy pristine forests vis ` a vis planted blue gums. Secondly, the interviewed park managers see the absence of an MP as a sign of political disinterest in conservation policy. Whilst in the early years of the Natural Park they perceived a political ambition to fulfil regulations, managers assume that, over time, their superiors (politicians) tend not to comply with legal obligations for conservation. Instead, the park managers see themselves periodically following renewed and vague guidelines provided by the each newly appointed Government: “I don’t need to explain what the legislation states. (…) When I started working here, the law was fulfilled. There was a goal: an intention to fulfil and apply regulations. That loss, I mean, giving up the law, giving up obligations stated by legislation, in this case of the Natural Park… that was the change I am talking about.” [15] “The main issue is that… we are periodically changing the spokesperson in Santiago. Eh, the Government changes every-four years, hence, yeah… the Government changes the guidelines. And that’s the problem. Every now and then, ideas change (…). All these issues are political; over which we have no control [laughs]. We need to provide technical solutions to those questions.” [1] In the face of a non-existent MP and consistent political directives, park managers concur that they can only run the park through preventive conservation. In their view, active conservation would intrinsically mean setting conservation goals and long-term guidelines, which it lacks, “but fortunately, at the European, national and regional level, we have a bunch of regulations (…) which are valid to us for carrying out preventive conservation. We talk about passive management. This is to say, blocking problems, stopping degradations” [15]. In line with their superiors, park managers identify planted invasive species, namely blue gums, as a keystone threat to the valley: “the fraga is about to suffer a planted invasion; in any case a natural invasion: it’s an invasion of planted blue gums” [1] (See Fig. 3). Although preventive conservation enables the forbidding of new illegal plantations, the managers see themselves unable to take any step forward. 1 Consellería de Facenda (2020): Orzamentos xerais 2020 da Xunta de Galicia. Source: https://www.conselleriadefacenda.es/areas-tematicas/orzamentos/or zamentos (cons. 27/10/2020). D. Cidr´ as and V. Paül Journal for Nature Conservation 69 (2022) 126252 6 Lastly, the residents and landowners who took part concur with park managers that the park has been progressively unlinked from its original intentions made explicit in Decree 211/1996, mentioned above. After several inconclusive meetings with the Government for the approval of the MP, local stakeholders perceive that there is no longer political interest in this instrument: “You know that we have an advisory board… well, it’s been two years since the last meeting” [6]. This lack of a real planning tool is seen locally as an institutional strategy to avoid friction: “I don’t know why they don’t give an explanation. I guess they think that the further they are from a conflict, the better they can avoid it” [6]. Consequently, residents and landowners argue that there is a laissezfaire attitude in the way the Nature Park management is carried out, merely applying the different legislations in place for the whole of Galicia in aspects such as timber, agriculture and the like (sectoral policies). For instance, it is argued that whilst formal limitations for blue gums in forestry legislation are in practice obviated in Galicia, park managers in Fragas do Eume take particular care of their fulfilment in the valley: “They just operate strictly here, because they want the valley to become a forest of oaks, chestnuts trees, ashes and so on” [7]. All in all, preventive conservation is seen as positive by the officers, while the interviewed locals tend to disagree. 4.2. Promoting rewilding through depopulation The second identified overarching theme is based on the assumption that the landowners’ main land-use (blue gum plantations) is incompatible with the conservation of the native species forests. As seen in the previous section, various stakeholders acknowledge that blue gums pose a threat to native forests. However, presently and in spite of the designation of the park in 1997, blue gums are consolidated all over the peripheral hillsides of the valley, thus constituting an income source for a set of residents and/or landowners: “Blue gums are a way… a way to make a living for many of us, you know? I mean, whatever [economic] urgency you may face, then you have a plot of land with gums.” [5]. From this conflict of interests, we highlight the emergence of a strategy built around the idea that a strong demographic decline in the valley would facilitate its conservation. In light of the shrinking budgets for conservation policy, head officers in Santiago formulate the need to find unregulated methods to demobilize blue gum plantations: “There are only two ways to operate: buying or seizing [lands]. The second one is impossible; the first one improbable. We are in that position” [13]. Based on the idea that the valley is, in line with most Galician rural areas, suffering from a severe demographic decline, officials presume that there will be a shift towards their own interests in the near future because there won’t be any landowners at all and future generations will be different. “Presently, we will start to talk with the heirs; and these heirs have a different mentality” [13]. Particularly, the archetypical transition from an heir in place to an heir abroad would constitute the basis for the conservancy of the fraga: “Two prototypes still exist: the heir who remains in the valley and keeps working there. He has, let’s say, a more productivist attitude regarding his plot of land. On the other hand, we have those heirs who moved to A Coru˜ na, Barcelona… who migrated; who inherited that land, for which they feel a limited bond. However, in this second case, their [environmental] consciousness… because they’ve travelled, been elsewhere, because they probably have a higher education, their environmental mentality is higher than the ones that remained in the valley.” [14] Fig. 2. Representation of discursive rewilding in Fragas do Eume Natural Park. Fig. 3. Panoramic view of land-cover transitions between blue gum plantations and the native forest. Picture by D. Cidr´ as (June 11th, 2020). D. Cidr´ as and V. Paül Journal for Nature Conservation 69 (2022) 126252 7 “I believe that this change in the trend implies, eh, that a change in the needs and interests regarding that plot of land is about to happen. It’s easier that… those new generations, who in practice do not live in the fraga, will be open to assuming a shift in the model; a shift in the strategy, and stop planting blue gums. This is to say, ‘given that I won’t make any profit, I’ll make it beautiful’” [13] This generational shift is also perceived by the villagers and landowners in the valley who were interviewed. In their eyes, the Government “assumes that we will tire out; that the park knows it is going to be abandoned; that new generations are less involved… that’s why they work in the long term” [7]. Overall, current landowners in the valley argue that their own presence is problematic for the head office of the Natural Park. Hence, landowners perceive that head officers see themselves as a counter-balance to the silent rewilding policy strategy of the latter. Either if they end up migrating or the government buys their lands, residents consider that the valley would become abandoned: “When you see the few public plots of land they have here… you realize how abandoned they are. That’s the mirror we have for a hypothetical expropriation of our lands. And that will be to let the wolves, wild boars and deer loose in the fraga, but then they don’t take care of them! No, they come to us, the stockbreeders. My cows haven’t had problems with the wolves yet, but they have with wild boars. And? Nothing happens. We will just end up giving up” [3] Lastly, park managers haven’t introduced any operational strategies regarding depopulation, sustaining that “we have no directives to run. Not even on this [demographic] issue” [15]. In light of the current loss of inhabitants in the valley and its implications for conservation, we observed diverging interpretations by the managers. For instance, [1] states that “the abandonment of traditional practices… of the relationship of humans with the valley, has motivated an abandonment which resulted in what we know as a fraga (…) that inactivity is enabling rewilding, which is happening now”. On the other hand, showing an antithetical interpretation to their colleague, [15] indicates that “one of the major errors in a place like this, in which there have been intensive human, agricultural land uses, is to think that rewilding will be positive (…). Abandonment and rewilding won’t drive the valley to a state of conservation, quite the contrary”. 4.3. Promoting rewilding through landcare Land tenure congregates a third theme around rewilding. In the face of a lengthy-period without formal regulations in the park, some landowners express a growing demand today: the desire to divest themselves of their land in the park. Hence, these actors formulate the expropriation of their own lands: “If you want to conserve the park, you have to reward stakeholders operating here for carrying out that conservation. If you cannot… you have to buy. They [head officers] have not done things right” [3]. With all that, these expropriative claims became futile, given the already described resignation of the Government to fixedly buy agroforestry lands in the valley. Within this dispute, an external association for landcare, Betula, arrived to Fragas do Eume in 2019. The perceived role and implications that this association could have on the hereafter development of the valley suggests what we understand as the last rewilding wave in the Park. [2] is an active member of Betula. 2 They argue that the area is particularly attractive to them for three reasons: (i) the environmental situation of the park, that they perceive as degraded; (ii) the popularity of the area with the Galician public; and (iii) the increasing accessibility of the properties in the park: “We think that, today, lots of landowners in the fraga detect some kind of problems with the Government. So, well, they want to sell their properties” [2]. When discussing the operating mode of the association, this member states the existence of two strategies: •Acquisition of property rights: the association looks to acquire plots of land in the valley, preferably forestry land, either through a donation or a transaction for a token amount. “Some landowners are open [to donating], especially for reasons associated with age, but also due to the limitations that the administration has posed” [2]. Following that, the association cuts down invasive trees “and once blue gums are gone, we let nature take its course” [2]. •Temporary transfer agreements: the association negotiates a five to ten-year transfer of a plot of land consisting of native forests for conservation. Betula is committed to restoring or simply caring for the plot, as well as providing advice to landowners on future decisions. Due to the temporality of this agreement, the association remarks that this path “does not ensure definitive conservation” [2]. We detect two opposite interpretations of landcare as exercised by Betula in the park. In the understanding of the head officers, having these custodians operating in the valley is “wonderful” [13] and “fantastic” [14], considering that they would play a relevant role in the rewilding of Fragas do Eume. “They are, evidently, a key piece to reverting the current situation”. Again, in light of the limited capacity for a public conservation policy, it is assumed that “the emergence of an association like this can reach goals that the government cannot” [16]. Conversely, Betula clashes with many of the local voices present in the area. Landowners and residents perceive this association as a Trojan horse of the Government, primarily because, as they explain, in 2019 a public institution provided public funding to Betula to operate in the park; and secondly because the head office in Santiago could assume the ownership of acquired lands in the event that Betula disappears in the future. This interpretation sees Betula as a tool to indirectly and cheaply expropriate private lands: “The association [Betula], as any group, may have its own beliefs and strategies to get funding. What I find unbelievable is what the [public] institutions are doing (…). Why do [public] institutions proceed like that? How do I know that this group is not using public funds to buy, just as an example, lands from a family member in the fragas? [6] “I told them [head officers]: Buy us. But do it properly! Because a way of buying cheap land is: I let you do nothing at all; you are strangled; your lands are useless and, when you are rushed, you sell (…). Betula is not a bad idea itself. The problem is in its background.” [12] 5. Discussing IAS management within rewilding As noted above, the aim of this research is to bridge the theoretical gap between IAS management and rewilding, by means of a case-study in which an IAS (Eucalyptus globulus) used for forestry has become conflictive. Our interviews allow us to empirically connect these bodies of theory, given that the main discourses on rewilding in Fragas do Eume are dependent on the control of invasive blue gums. In fact, since the designation of the park in 1996, the presence of Eucalyptus globulus has been labelled as problematic and central to the debate of conservation. It is key to note that whilst the former academic idea of wilderness has traditionally referred to unmodified natural environments (H¨ ochtl et al., 2005; Zanolin & Paül, 2022), our case reinforces the two main distinctive features of rewilding, as noted by Palau (2020): the initial state of partial degradation; and the need for a restoration process, both of which are present in the Natural Park due to the expansion of eucalypts. 2 Betula is a Galician landcare association focused on the custody of the native forest. It operates, mainly, in northwestern Galicia, where most of its active members are from. Betula sustains its custodian work on the “worry for the loss of natural values in the Galician territory, due to the insufficient involvement of the different tiers of government in environmental policy” (Betula, 2020). D. Cidr´ as and V. Paül Journal for Nature Conservation 69 (2022) 126252 8 A keystone for this discussion lays precisely in the fact that blue gums were planted by landowners, hence reopening the academic debate on the conceptual dimension of IAS. On the one hand, assigning themselves a role of legitimate planters, some interviewees limited the invasive character to the species itself, claiming that Eucalyptus globulus will only expand if irresponsible landowners abandon their plots. Inversely, detractors of blue gums echo Low’s (2002) and Shackleton et al.’s (2019) notion of humans operating invasively through the plantation and abandonment of blue gums. Both discourses concur with the cultural and political account of IAS, as discussed by Robbins (2004, p. 1): “it is not species but sociobiological networks that are invasive”. Therefore, the analysis of the interviews allows us to highlight that, beyond the degree of ecological invasiveness attributed to a given species, invasion networks around that species constitute a source of social concern (Robbins, 2004; Shackleton et al., 2019). So, if a cornerstone of rewilding is based on the integration of the local understanding of nature (Corlett, 2016; Palau, 2020), our case-study proves that rewilding theory should consider the cultural aspects of IAS management. Accordingly, with the purpose of discussing IAS within a more specific rewilding model, we discuss our findings in terms of target, model and goal. Firstly, the attention given to the management of one single target species, combined with factors like the limited extension of the park, eventually distances Fragas do Eume from most rewilding models (Cochet & Durand, 2018; Moorhouse & Sandom, 2015; Palau, 2020). So does the relatively weak importance assigned to ecological succession (Genes et al., 2019) beyond tree plantations. However, rewilding is both formally and discursively present in the valley due to a set of rewildinglike factors that have been analyzed there. As expressed by Palau (2020, p. 137), this discipline could even be reduced to the consideration of “keystone ecological, rather than natural, processes” (our translation). That may be the case of Fragas do Eume, whose current management is dependent on the constant problematization of blue gums. In fact, the broad presence of small-acreage forestry landowners has arguably limited the approval of a MP in the in recent decades. In consequence, the analysis of our interviews depicts a casuistry of a compositionalist approach, as discussed by Lennon (2019). The absence of long-term conservation policies within a formal project, the oversizing of the EU regulations by the park managers and the extended popular demands of payments for environmental improvements set the basis for this non-functionalist rewilding approach. Fragas do Eume may constitute a clear example of Lennon’s statement on passive rewilding in Europe, as “it is against this backdrop of institutionalized nature conservation policy that the abandonment of farmland to passive rewilding is perceived as a threat to biodiversity” (Lennon, 2019). In fact, in line with Goulding and Roper’s (2002) study, this research has shown that passive rewilding is locally perceived as a facilitator of potentially unwelcome ecological features, such as IAS or wildfires. Therefore, in terms of Navarro and Pereyra (2012) and Lennon (2019), Fragas do Eume would consist of a new European variety of rewilding, driven by a compositionalist mentality. However, our findings echo a divergence between the initial goals of the park and the factual non-interventionist policies. As a matter of fact, the area was designated as protected at a time when its forests were becoming degraded due to timber production. Hence the purpose of conservation. Whilst a form of active conservation was expected by this designation, our results show that Fragas do Eume Natural Park is grounded on the above-mentioned passive rewilding approach (Gillson, Ladle, & Araújo, 2011; H¨ ochtl et al., 2005). However, if passive rewilding “is a process in which formerly cultivated landscapes develop without human control” (H¨ ochtl et al., 2005, p. 86), then it would be meaningless for Fragas do Eume Natural Park to state the removal of blue gums as a conservative goal. The described assimilations of Fragas do Eume into rewilding concur on a common problematization, as expressed by the interviewees: the observed passive policies are inconsistent with the removal of invasive blue gums. Namely, the obtained results allow us to formulate three sources of inconsistency on this topic: •Preventive conservation is inefficient towards the reduction of blue gums. Whilst the head office’s direction of the park presumed, in line with Bosch et al.’s (2019) case-study, that a long-term and noninterventionist control of plantations would imply a kind of spontaneous restoration of the native forest, the capacity of blue gums to withstand and expand has been, in the eyes of local participants, miscalculated. In this sense, stakeholders in the valley advocate for a restoration of native forests as they were described by their ancestors, in line with Van der Heijden’s (2005) approach. •Advocating for human depopulation puts the removal of blue gums at risk. Since the designation of the park, the environmental authority rules out the approval of a MP and, instead, assumes depopulation as a long-term strategy against plantations. This phenomena places rewilding far from its main social commitment, as expressed by Adams (2006), Cochet and Durand (2018) and Palau (2020): to locally convey enthusiasm and hope. Besides, landowners in the valley predict that a potential migration of the remaining residents would accentuate the abandonment of plantations and, therefore, the expansion of blue gums. Our results are consistent with Jepson (2016) and Palau (2020), who concur that rewilding in anthropized areas intrinsically needs to build new narratives in conservation policy through a more integrative “positive restoration” approach, rather than incurring on social costs. •Commissioning external actors to remove eucalypts causes controversy. The arrival of a landcare association appeared to build a subtle form of Bluwstein et al.’s (2018) dispossession in the valley. As foreseen by Partington (2012), the unnegotiated and unregulated integration of a partner like Betula impels locals to reject the restorative work, due to the assumption that it may affect land tenure. Legitimacy behind public conservation is questioned in the double sense expressed by Vaccaro et al. (2013): the park does not carry out conservation according to legislation and, in parallel, the protected area does not operate following popular demands. 6. Conclusions The case-study from Fragas do Eume Natural Park has shown what we define as a reactive rewilding approach. Reactive rewilding consists of an arrangement in which passive conservation policies towards the restoration of nature are locally perceived as a threat, instead of an opportunity. Reactive rewilding takes a step away from the new conservation position, aiming for a win–win situation in which involved stakeholders benefit from conservation. Instead, reactive rewilding perpetuates the restrictive approach of conservation policy. Above all, we conclude that rewilding should never be reactive, particularly in those areas where there are local inhabitants. Besides this rewilding approach, our research has proven the broad impact that IAS management potentially has on rewilding. Despite being two bodies of theory that have barely been combined in previous research, our interpretation of the Fragas do Eume case-study shows how the management of invasive blue gums was crucial in both social and ecological debates on the conservation of the valley. Whilst our study expounds a case of low-interventionist and informal policy against planted Eucalyptus globulus, we conclude that any technical and/or political decision regarding the management of an IAS needs prior agreement with the involved landowners. To do so, the development of transitional restoration programs would benefit rewilding, as highlighted by Corlett (2016b). Within this paradigm shift, restrictions on IAS should no longer constitute the axis of conservation. If rewilding aims to achieve self-sustaining ecosystems in areas inhabited by humans, step-back strategies must concern the factual effects that changing human behaviour will have on the role played by IAS. D. Cidr´ as and V. Paül Journal for Nature Conservation 69 (2022) 126252 9 Funding The authors acknowledge the scholarship Programa de axudas ´ a etapa predoutoral provided by the Xunta de Galicia to D.C. (Grant No ED481A2018/263). Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper. References Adams, J. S. (2006). The future of the wild: Radical conservation for a crowded world. Boston: Beacon Press. Adams, W. M. (2019). Geographies of conservation III: Nature’s spaces. Progress in Human Geography, 44(4), 789–801. Bauer, N., Wallner, A., & Hunziker, M. (2009). The change of European landscapes: Human-nature relationships, public attitudes towards rewilding, and the implications for landscape management in Switzerland. Journal of Environmental Management, 90(9), 2910–2920. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2008.01.021 Betula. (2020). Que ´ e betula? Retrieved from http://betula-atlantico.eu/que-e-betula/. Blackburn, T. M., Pyˇ sek, P., Bacher, S., Carlton, J. T., Duncan, R. P., Jaroˇ sík, V., … Richardson, D. M. (2011). A proposed unified framework for biological invasions. Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 26(7), 333–339. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. tree.2011.03.023 Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2), 77–101. Cochet, G., & Durand, S. (2018). R´ e-ensauvageons la France. Plaidoyer pour une nature sauvage et libre. France: Actes Sud. Corlett, R. T. (2016a). Restoration, reintroduction, and rewilding in a changing world. Trends in Ecology and Evolution, 31(6), 453–462. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. tree.2016.02.017 Corlett, R. T. (2016b). The role of rewilding in landscape design for conservation. Current Landscape Ecology Reports, 1(3), 127–133. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40823-0160014-9 Davies, J. T. (2006). The efficacy of biological control agents of gorse , Ulex europaeus L ., in Tasmania. University of Tasmania. Dickie, I. A., Bennett, B. M., Burrows, L. E., Nunez, M. A., Peltzer, D. A., Port´ e, A., … Van Wilgen, B. W. (2014). Conflicting values: Ecosystem services and invasive tree management. Biological Invasions, 16(3), 705–719. Donlan, C. J., Berger, J., Bock, C. E., Bock, J. H., Burney, D. A., Estes, J. A., … Greene, H. W. (2006). Pleistocene rewilding: An optimistic agenda for twenty-first century conservation. American Naturalist, 168(5), 660–681. https://doi.org/ 10.1086/508027 Dunn, K. (2010). Interviewing. In I. Hay (Ed.), Qualitative Research Methods in Human Geography (pp. 101–139). Don Mills, Canada: Oxford University Press. Enserink, M., & Vogel, G. (2006). The carnivore comeback. Science, 314(5800), 746–749. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.314.5800.746 Ewel, J. J., O’Dowd, D. J., Bergelson, J., Daehler, C. C., D’Antonio, C. M., G´ omez, L. D., … Vitousek, P. M. (1999). Deliberate introductions of species: Research needs. BioScience, 49(8), 619–630. https://doi.org/10.2307/1313438 Garrido, P., Edenius, L., Mikusi´ nski, G., Skarin, A., Jansson, A., & Thulin, C.-G. (2021). Experimental rewilding may restore abandoned wood-pastures if policy allows. Ambio, 50(1), 101. Garrido, P., Mårell, A., ¨ Ockinger, E., Skarin, A., Jansson, A., & Thulin, C. (2019). Experimental rewilding enhances grassland functional composition and pollinator habitat use. Journal of Applied Ecology, 56(4), 946–955. Genes, L., Svenning, J. C., Pires, A. S., & Fernandez, F. A. S. (2019). Why we should let rewilding be wild and biodiverse. Biodiversity and Conservation, 28(5), 1285–1289. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10531-019-01707-w Gillson, L., Ladle, R. J., & Bastos Araújo, M. (2011). Baselines, patterns and process. Conservation Biogeography, 3, 31–44. Gort´ azar, C., Herrero, J., Villafuerte, R., & Marco, J. (2000). Historical examination of the status of large mammals in Aragon, Spain. Mammalia, 64(4), 411–422. https:// doi.org/10.1515/mamm.2000.64.4.411 Goulding, M. J., & Roper, T. J. (2002). Press responses to the presence of free-living Wild Boar (Sus scrofa) in southern England. Mammal Review, 32(4), 272–282. Green, K. E., & Adams, W. M. (2015). Green grabbing and the dynamics of local-level engagement with neoliberalization in Tanzania’s wildlife management areas. Journal of Peasant Studies, 42(1), 97–117. https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2014.967686 Guha, R. (2014). Environmentalism: A global history. Penguin UK. Hall, M. (2014). Extracting culture or injecting nature? Rewilding in a transatlantic perspective. In Old world and new world perspectives in environmental philosophy (pp. 17–35). Cham: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-32669-6. Hansen, D. M. (2010). On the use of taxon substitutes in rewilding projects on islands. Islands and Evolution, 111–146. Haraway, D. J. (1989). Primate visions: Gender, race, and nature in the world of modern science (Routledge). New York: Psychology Press. Harvey, D. (1996). Justice, nature & the geography of difference. Oxford: Blackwell. H¨ ochtl, F., Lehringer, S., & Konold, W. (2005). ‘Wilderness’: What it means when it becomes a reality - A case study from the southwestern Alps. Landscape and Urban Planning, 70(1–2), 85–95. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2003.10.006 IUCN. (2017). Rewilding. Retrieved 12 March 2020, from https://www.iucn.org/ commissions/commission-ecosystem-management/our-work/cems-task-forces/ rewilding. Jepson, P. (2016). A rewilding agenda for Europe: Creating a network of experimental reserves. Ecography, 39(2), 117–124. https://doi.org/10.1111/ecog.01602 Jørgensen, D. (2015). Rethinking rewilding. Geoforum, 65, 482–488. https://doi.org/ 10.1016/j.geoforum.2014.11.016 Lefebvre, H. (1974). La production de l’espace. L’Homme et La Soci´ et´ e, 31(1), 15–32. Lennon, M. (2019). Rewilding as rural land management. In M. Scott, N. Gallent, & M. Gkartzios (Eds.), The Routledge Companion to Rural Planning (Routledge, pp. 508–516). Routledge. 10.4324/9781315102375. Loth, A. F., & Newton, A. C. (2018). Rewilding as a restoration strategy for lowland agricultural landscapes: Stakeholder-assisted multi-criteria analysis in Dorset, UK. Journal for Nature Conservation, 46, 110–120. Low, T. (2002). Feral future: The untold story of Australia’s exotic invaders. University of Chicago Press. Marchante, E., Kjøller, A., Struwe, S., & Freitas, H. (2009). Soil recovery after removal of the N2-fixing invasive Acacia longifolia: Consequences for ecosystem restoration. Biological Invasions, 11(4), 813–823. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10530-008-9295-1 Mathis, A., & Rose, J. (2016). Balancing tourism, conservation, and development: A political ecology of ecotourism on the Galapagos Islands. Journal of Ecotourism, 15 (1), 64–77. https://doi.org/10.1080/14724049.2015.1131283 Merckx, T., & Pereira, H. M. (2015). Reshaping agri-environmental subsidies: From marginal farming to large-scale rewilding. Basic and Applied Ecology, 16(2), 95–103. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.baae.2014.12.003 Mills, J. G., Weinstein, P., Gellie, N. J. C., Weyrich, L. S., Lowe, A. J., & Breed, M. F. (2017). Urban habitat restoration provides a human health benefit through microbiome rewilding: The Microbiome Rewilding Hypothesis. Restoration Ecology, 25(6), 866–872. Monbiot, G. (2014). Feral. The University of Chicago Press. https://doi.org/10.7208/ chicago/9780226205694.001.0001 Moorhouse, T. P., & Sandom, C. J. (2015). Conservation and the problem with’natural’- does rewilding hold the answer?, 100, 45. Navarro, L. M., & Pereira, H. M. (2012). Rewilding abandoned landscapes in Europe. Ecosystems, 15(6), 900–912. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10021-012-9558-7 Neumann, R. P. (2015). Nature conservation. In T. Perreault, G. Bridge, & J. McCarthy (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of political ecology (Routledge (pp. 391–405). Routledge. Nogu´ es-Bravo, D., Simberloff, D., Rahbek, C., & Sanders, N. J. (2016). Rewilding is the new pandora’s box in conservation. Current Biology, 26(3), R87–R91. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.cub.2015.12.044 Novoa, A., Shackleton, R., Canavan, S., Cyb` ele, C., Davies, S. J., Dehnen-Schmutz, K., … Wilson, J. R. U. (2018). A framework for engaging stakeholders on the management of alien species. Journal of Environmental Management, 205, 286–297. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2017.09.059 Palau, J. (2020). Rewilding Iberia: Explorando el potencial de la renaturalizaci´ on en Espa˜ na (Lynx Editi). Barcelona. Partington, Adam (2012). Plans in Place. City of Lincoln Council/English Heritage: Taking a Local Approach toCharacter in Lincoln. Pereira, H. M., & Navarro, L. M. (2015). Rewilding European Landscapes. London, UK: Springer. 10.1017/CBO9781107415324.004. Pettorelli, N., Barlow, J., Stephens, P. A., Durant, S. M., Connor, B., Schulte to Bühne, H., … du Toit, J. T. (2018). Making rewilding fit for policy. Journal of Applied Ecology, 55 (3), 1114–1125. 10.1111/1365-2664.13082. Robbins, P. (2004). Comparing invasive networks: Cultural and political biographies of invasive species. Geographical Review, 94(2), 139–156. Runte, A. (1997). National parks: The American experience. Lincoln: Univeristy of Nebraska Press. Sandom, C., Donlan, C. J., Svenning, J., & Hansen, D. (2013). Rewilding. Key Topics in Conservation Biology, 2, 430–451. Sandom, C., Hughes, J., & Macdonald, D. W. (2013). Rooting for rewilding: Quantifying wild boar’s Sus scrofa rooting rate in the Scottish Highlands. Restoration Ecology, 21 (3), 329–335. Sanford, R. L., Jr, & Horn, S. P. (2000). Holocene rain-forest wilderness: A neotropical perspective on humans as an exotic, invasive species. USDA Forest Service RMRS-P15, 3, 168–173. Shackleton, R. T., Richardson, D. M., Shackleton, C. M., Bennett, B., Crowley, S. L., Dehnen-Schmutz, K., … Larson, B. M. H. (2019). Explaining people’s perceptions of invasive alien species: A conceptual framework. Journal of Environmental Management, 229, 10–26. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2018.04.045 Sharp, R. L., Larson, L. R., & Green, G. T. (2011). Factors influencing public preferences for invasive alien species management. Biological Conservation, 144(8), 2097–2104. Shwartz, A., Davies, Z. G., Macgregor, N. A., Crick, H. Q. P., Clarke, D., Eigenbrod, F., … Metcalfe, K. (2017). Scaling up from protected areas in England: The value of establishing large conservation areas. Biological Conservation, 212, 279–287. Soule, M., & Noss, R. (1998). Rewilding and biodiversity: Complementary goals for continental conservation. Wild Earth, 8, 18–28. Storey, D. (2001). Territory: The claiming of space. London, UK: Pearson Education. Svenning, J. C., Pedersen, P. B. M., Donlan, C. J., Ejrnæs, R., Faurby, S., Galetti, M., … Vera, F. W. M. (2016). Science for a wilder anthropocene: Synthesis and future directions for trophic rewilding research. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 113(4), 898–906. https://doi.org/10.1073/ pnas.1502556112 D. Cidr´ as and V. Paül