PDF Hermeneutics of Human Animal Relations in The Wake of Rewilding The Ethical Guide To Ecological Discomforts Mateusz Tokarski Ebook Full Chapter

Hermeneutics of Human Animal
Relations in the Wake of Rewilding The

Ethical Guide to Ecological Discomforts
Mateusz Tokarski
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://textbookfull.com/product/hermeneutics-of-human-animal-relations-in-the-wake-
of-rewilding-the-ethical-guide-to-ecological-discomforts-mateusz-tokarski/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...
Rewilding The Radical New Science of Ecological

Recovery 1st Edition Paul Jepson
https://textbookfull.com/product/rewilding-the-radical-new-
science-of-ecological-recovery-1st-edition-paul-jepson/
The Economy of Salvation: Ethical and Anthropological

Foundations of Market Relations in the First Two Books
of the Bible Luigino Bruni
https://textbookfull.com/product/the-economy-of-salvation-
ethical-and-anthropological-foundations-of-market-relations-in-
the-first-two-books-of-the-bible-luigino-bruni/
Animal Ethos The Morality of Human Animal Encounters in

Experimental Lab Science First Edition Lesley A. Sharp
https://textbookfull.com/product/animal-ethos-the-morality-of-
human-animal-encounters-in-experimental-lab-science-first-
edition-lesley-a-sharp/
Ethical Practice in the Human Services From Knowing to

Being Richard D. Parsons
https://textbookfull.com/product/ethical-practice-in-the-human-
services-from-knowing-to-being-richard-d-parsons/
Rousseau and the Problem of Human Relations John M.
Warner
https://textbookfull.com/product/rousseau-and-the-problem-of-
human-relations-john-m-warner/
The Event of Meaning in Gadamer's Hermeneutics 1st

Edition Carlo Davia
https://textbookfull.com/product/the-event-of-meaning-in-
gadamers-hermeneutics-1st-edition-carlo-davia/
The Cambridge Companion To Hermeneutics Michael N.

Forster
https://textbookfull.com/product/the-cambridge-companion-to-
hermeneutics-michael-n-forster/
The Role of the EU in the Promotion of Human Rights and

International Labour Standards in Its External Trade
Relations Samantha Velluti
https://textbookfull.com/product/the-role-of-the-eu-in-the-
promotion-of-human-rights-and-international-labour-standards-in-
its-external-trade-relations-samantha-velluti/
The Educational Significance of Human and Non-Human

Animal Interactions: Blurring the Species Line 1st
Edition Suzanne Rice
https://textbookfull.com/product/the-educational-significance-of-
human-and-non-human-animal-interactions-blurring-the-species-
line-1st-edition-suzanne-rice/
The International Library of Environmental,
Agricultural and Food Ethics 30
Mateusz Tokarski
Hermeneutics of
Human-Animal
Relations in the
Wake of Rewilding
The Ethical Guide to Ecological
Discomforts
The International Library of Environmental,
Agricultural and Food Ethics
Volume 30
Series Editors
Michiel Korthals, Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands
Paul B. Thompson, Michigan State University, East Lansing, USA
The ethics of food and agriculture is confronted with enormous challenges.
Scientific developments in the food sciences promise to be dramatic; the concept of
life sciences, that comprises the integral connection between the biological
sciences, the medical sciences and the agricultural sciences, got a broad start with
the genetic revolution. In the mean time, society, i.e., consumers, producers,
farmers, policymakers, etc, raised lots of intriguing questions about the implications
and presuppositions of this revolution, taking into account not only scientific
developments, but societal as well. If so many things with respect to food and our
food diet will change, will our food still be safe? Will it be produced under animal
friendly conditions of husbandry and what will our definition of animal welfare be
under these conditions? Will food production be sustainable and environmentally
healthy? Will production consider the interest of the worst off and the small
farmers? How will globalisation and liberalization of markets influence local and
regional food production and consumption patterns? How will all these develop-
ments influence the rural areas and what values and policies are ethically sound?
All these questions raise fundamental and broad ethical issues and require
enormous ethical theorizing to be approached fruitfully. Ethical reflection on
criteria of animal welfare, sustainability, liveability of the rural areas, biotechnol-
ogy, policies and all the interconnections is inevitable.
Library of Environmental, Agricultural and Food Ethics contributes to a sound,
pluralistic and argumentative food and agricultural ethics. It brings together the
most important and relevant voices in the field; by providing a platform for
theoretical and practical contributors with respect to research and education on all
levels.
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/6215

Mateusz Tokarski
Hermeneutics
of Human-Animal Relations
in the Wake of Rewilding
The Ethical Guide to Ecological Discomforts
123
Mateusz Tokarski
Institute for Science in Society
Radboud University Nijmegen
Nijmegen, The Netherlands
ISSN 1570-3010 ISSN 2215-1737 (electronic)

The International Library of Environmental, Agricultural and Food Ethics
ISBN 978-3-030-18970-9 ISBN 978-3-030-18971-6 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18971-6
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part
of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations,
recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission
or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar
methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from
the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this
book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the
authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained
herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard
to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Acknowledgements
Many people have contributed significantly to this project. First of all, none of this
work would be possible if not for the Reading the Landscape: A Hermeneutic
Approach to Environmental Ethics project designed and supervised by Martin
Drenthen, in the context of which the research that contributed to this book has been
carried out. Special thanks go also to the other participants in this project, Andrea
Gammon and Glenn Deliège, for all the stimulating discussions, and to my former
supervisors, Hub Zwart and Jozef Keulartz, for their helpful feedback during the
research and writing. I would also like to thank Jochem Zwier, Mira Vegter, and
Claire Hamlett, who, though not directly engaged in the project, provided so needed
outside perspective. I am also grateful to all those with whom I had a chance to
discuss my ideas that ultimately made it to this book. The project Reading the
Landscape and the research on which this book is based were founded by The
Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO).
v
Contents
1 Introduction: Silent Spring, Raucous Summer, and the Looming

Winter of Our Discontent . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2 Ecological Discomforts and How to Study Them . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
2.1 Ecological Discomforts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
2.1.1 Material Difficulties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
2.1.2 Negative Emotions and Attitudes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
2.1.3 The Symbolic Dimension . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
2.1.4 The Cultural Dimension . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
2.2 Sociological and Managerial Approaches to Rewilding
and Its Discontents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
2.3 Ethical Approaches to Rewilding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
2.4 Environmental Hermeneutics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
2.5 Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
3 Risk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
3.1 Discomforts as Risks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
3.2 Comparability of Dangers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
3.3 (Ir)Relevance of Numbers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
3.4 Ridicule and the Loss of Meaning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
3.5 Importance of Discomforts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
3.6 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
4 Interests, Costs, Benefits, and the Social Complexity
of Discomforts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
4.1 The Use of Cost-Benefit Assessments in Discussions Over
Ecological Discomforts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
vii
viii Contents
4.1.1 Policy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
4.1.2 Ecosystem Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
4.1.3 Public Outreach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
4.1.4 Moral Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
4.2 CBA as a Frame for Specific Interpretation of Discomforts . . . . . . 74
4.3 Discomforts as Benefits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
4.3.1 The ‘Risk Is Fun’ Culture of Nature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
4.3.2 Wildness as a Useful Negation of Civilization . . . . . . . . . . 77
4.3.3 Discomfort as Benefit Does Not Require Wildness . . . . . . 79
4.3.4 Is Cost the Only Alternative to Benefit? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
4.4 Cost-Benefit Logic and Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
4.4.1 Management and the Instrumental Attitude to Nature . . . . . 82
4.4.2 The Preservationist Alternative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
4.4.3 The Rewilding Conundrum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
4.5 Political Meanings of Discomforting Nature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
4.5.1 Social Sciences and Wildlife Conflicts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
4.5.2 Wildlife Conflicts and Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
4.5.3 A Dialogical Approach to Wildlife Conflicts . . . . . . . . . . . 90
4.6 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
5 Wildness and the Preconditions for Meaningfulness of Nature . . . . . 101
5.1 Wildness as Self-Willed Nature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102
5.2 Self-Organization and Discomforts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
5.3 Wildness, Meaning, and Discomforts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
5.3.1 Searching for (and Failing to Find) External Nature . . . . . . 108
5.3.2 Externality of Nature and Resistance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
5.3.3 Experiencing Discomforts and Finding Meaning
in Nature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
5.4 Externality of Nature and Instrumental Practices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
5.4.1 From the Self-Willed to the Politicized Nature
(and Back Again) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
5.4.2 Farming and the Autonomy of Nature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
5.4.3 Nature as a Limit on Our Will . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
5.4.4 Discomforts and Identity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
5.5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
6 Discomforting Encounters with Nature as Moral Experiences . . . . . 125
6.1 Val Plumwood and the Crocodile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
6.2 Moral Experience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
6.2.1 Being Addressed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
6.2.2 Being Questioned . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
6.2.3 Interpretation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131
Contents ix
6.3 Wilderness Experience as Moral Experience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133

6.3.1 Being Addressed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
6.3.2 Being Questioned . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
6.3.3 Truthful Interpretation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
6.3.4 Extending the Scope of Relevance of the Thoreauvian
Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
6.4 Distanciation and Appropriation: Acceptance of Discomforts . . . . 138
6.4.1 Structural Observations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
6.4.2 Problematic Application of the Thoreauvian Model:
From Human Decision to Human Passivity . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
6.4.3 Problematic Application of the Thoreauvian Model:
From Individual Choice to Normative Questions . . . . . . . . 142
6.4.4 Between Individual Justice and Radical Generosity . . . . . . 144
6.5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
7 Individual Sacrifices and the Flourishing of Ecosystems . . . . . . . . . . 149
7.1 Aldo Leopold and the Big Good Wolf . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
7.2 Intellectual Threats and the Early Naturalists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
7.3 Rolston’s Ecological Theodicy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
7.4 Appreciation of Nature and Ambivalence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
7.4.1 Disvalues and Moral Responsibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
7.4.2 Disvalues and Necessity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
7.4.3 Nature’s Ambivalence and Value . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
7.4.4 Ambivalence and Aesthetics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
7.4.5 Ambivalence and Meaning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
7.5 Coming to Terms with Individual Harms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
7.6 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
8 Towards a Wilder Community . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
8.1 Why Do We Care for Individual Animals? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
8.2 Moral Considerability of Animals and Discomforts . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
8.2.1 Moral Agents and Patients . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 178
8.2.2 Circumstances of Justice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
8.2.3 Fair Distribution of Risks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
8.3 Critiques of the Established Animal Rights Theories . . . . . . . . . . . 180
8.4 Building Community with Wild Animals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
8.4.1 Animals as Members of a Community . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
8.4.2 Maintaining Communities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
8.4.3 Moral Significance of Spatial Proximity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
8.5 Politics of Coexistence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
x Contents
8.5.1 Animal Denizenship as a Political Category . . . . . . . . . . . 190

8.5.2 Problematic Aspects of Animal Liminality . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
8.5.3 Radical Denizenship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
8.6 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 196
9 Conclusion: Practicing Coexistence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
9.1 The Many Meanings of Discomforts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
9.2 Symbolic Domestication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 202
9.2.1 Symbolic Power of Naming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
9.2.2 Accommodation and Consolation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
9.2.3 Becoming a Member of a Community . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
9.2.4 Dissatisfaction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
9.2.5 Disrespect for the Wildness of Mice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
9.2.6 Failure to Build a Community . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
9.3 Mutual Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
9.3.1 Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
9.3.2 Invariant Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
9.3.3 Giving a Chance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
9.3.4 Mutual Learning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
9.3.5 Limits to Tolerance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
9.3.6 Community Building . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216
9.4 Living the Ambivalence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 218
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 222
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
About the Author
Mateusz Tokarski, Ph.D. is currently an independent researched and writer. He

holds a B.A. in Film and Theater Studies from London Metropolitan University, an
M.A. in Cognitive Semiotics from Aarhus University, and a Ph.D. in Philosophy
from Radboud University Nijmegen. His main research interests center around
human-animal relations, the role of wildness in modern culture, and the processes
of meaning-making approached from both cognitive-scientific and hermeneutic
perspectives. In addition, he is interested in the role that arts can play in developing
environmental awareness and in restructuring human relationship with the
non-human world—a topic he engages with through his own experiments with
storytelling. He has published articles dealing with rewilding, wildlife conflicts, and
reconnecting to nature. Recently, he has completed his Ph.D. during which he
carried out a series of hermeneutic studies of the ways people make sense of
discomforting encounters with wildlife.
xi
Chapter 1
Introduction: Silent Spring, Raucous
Summer, and the Looming Winter of Our
Discontent
A wolf walks into a Dutch town… A couple of decades ago these words could have
announced a beginning of a joke. Not so today. In 2015, on the 9th of March to be
precise, the first wolf in almost 150 years was seen in the Netherlands. As if the
surprise was not big enough, rather than conventionally lurking in the woods, the
young animal was seen parading in broad daylight through the streets of a Dutch
town, crossing densely inhabited and industrial areas, causing a stir among the locals
1
who could observe it leisurely strolling along a sidewalk (Drenthen 2015). The
animal was not an escapee from a zoo, nor a wolf-dog hybrid abandoned by its
owner. It was a genuine wild wolf, identified as a juvenile member of a German pack
established near Hamburg. Though surprising, its appearance in the Netherlands was
not a freak incident but rather an instance of a well-established trend of wildlife
return throughout Europe. The history of wolves might very well be taken as a good
example of the process of rewilding we see currently across the continent.
After centuries of active persecutions through systems of bounties, communal
hunting, poisoning, and even intentional habitat destruction (Lopez 1978; Emel 1995;
Musiani and Paquet 2004) by the end of the nineteenth century wolves had been
eradicated from most of Western, Northern and Central Europe, with only small,
isolated populations remaining in the Baltic countries, Iberian Peninsula, and the
Italian Apennines.2 Fairly large populations survived only in Eastern Europe (Deinet
et al. 2013). In the 1970s, wolves were placed under legal protection in conservation
agreements such as the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species
of the Wild Fauna and Flora (1973), and the Convention on the Conservation of
1 The event is particularly poignant, as a year before a dead wolf found on a side of a road in the
Netherlands proved to be a morbidly elaborate prank by still unknown culprits. After the examina-
tion, it turned out that this animal had not been hit by a car, as was initially thought, but rather that
the wolf had been shot, probably somewhere in south-east Poland, and was then transported to the
Netherlands and dumped on the side of a road (Gravendeel et al. 2013).
2 Extirpation
of wolves in the U.S. has been carried out on a similar, if not greater scale (see e.g.
Lopez 1978).
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 1

M. Tokarski, Hermeneutics of Human-Animal Relations in the Wake of Rewilding,
The International Library of Environmental, Agricultural and Food Ethics 30,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18971-6_1
2 1 Introduction: Silent Spring, Raucous Summer …
European Wildlife and Natural Habitats (1979). Since then, their populations have
been growing and expanding into new areas from the refuges in the Apennines and
the East.
In 1992, wolves from the Apennines population reached the French Alps, and in
1996 they arrived in the Swiss Alps. Population estimates for 2016 set the amount of
wolves in France at around 300.3 Individuals from the same population have also been
identified west of the densely populated and highly trafficked Rhône valley, even as
far as the Pyrenees (Louvrier et al. 2018). In Scandinavia, wolves were extirpated by
the 1960s. In 1983, a single pack was discovered in south Sweden (Vila et al. 2003).
Presently, the whole Scandinavian population is estimated at around 460 individuals,
the majority of which live in Sweden (Hindrikson et al. 2016). According to genetic
analyses, all these animals are of eastern descent (Vila et al. 2003). The Baltic states
(Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia) and North-east Poland share between them about
900–1400 wolves (Hindrikson et al. 2016). Though wolves never went extinct in
these areas, their numbers were greatly reduced in the 1970s and 1980s. Germany
has been repopulated by wolves crossing over from Eastern Poland (Andersen et al.
2015b) and the individuals from established German packs, in turn, have moved
to Denmark, with the first sightings in 2012 (Andersen et al. 2015a; Madsen et al.
2015), and also to the Netherlands.
This return of wolves is just one example, though perhaps the most startling, of a
much broader process of wildlife return throughout Europe. In the wake of nature pro-
tection regulations, agricultural land abandonment, and significant social, cultural,
and economic changes, Europe has become a witness to a massive recolonization of
the continent by wildlife4 (Boitani and Linnell 2015). A recent report (Deinet et al.
2013) has documented a growth in the distribution and numbers of nearly 40 wild
mammal and bird species across Europe.
These recoveries are surely a success story for environmentalism, illustrating
the feasibility and efficacy of ecological restoration and as such are first of all an
ecological success, bringing hope for the future of European nature. It is true that
in the context of an ongoing plight of many species, runaway loss of biodiversity,
and the continuing destruction and fragmentation of ecosystems one might doubt the
importance of such recoveries. Many of the species involved are after all hardy and
adaptable generalists who never entered red lists, even if they became locally rare or
extinct. The small, fragile, rare, and specialized species, precisely the ones that are
seen as most in need of protection, continue to lose the battle for survival. However,
many of the recolonizing and recovering species have been characterized as keystone
species, having disproportional influence on the functioning of ecosystems and an
impressive power to shape landscapes.5 Their reappearance might thus be a first step
to a much wider recovery of European ecosystems.
3 http://www.ferus.fr/loup/le-loup-biologie-et-presence-en-france, accessed: 30.01.2017.

4 Very similar processes have been taking place in the U.S. (see e.g. Sterba 2012). This work,
however, will focus largely on Europe, though stories, experiences, and individuals from outside of
Europe will feature quite often as an inspiration, counterexample, or comparison.
5 This refers to both top-down influences of predators (Terborgh and Estes 2010) and bottom-up
effects of grazers. In terms of grazing, a popular but controversial theory of the impact of large grazers
1 Introduction: Silent Spring, Raucous Summer … 3
Such returns are also an impressive political achievement. Given the extinction
threats large fauna had faced in Europe up to the late twentieth century (Dein et al.
2013), and the perilous position of megafauna on other continents (Ripple et al. 2016),
the capacity to enforce the necessary legal frameworks and establish international
cooperation illustrates the strength and efficacy of the environmental movement. This
is especially so for predator species, which for many centuries, and even up to the
middle of the twentieth century, have been actively persecuted (Lopez 1978).
But these successes are not only an effect of top-down regulations. Indeed, the
new policies are to a large extent embraced by the broader publics, signaling broader
cultural shifts. Sociological studies show how general attitudes towards animals have
become more positive (Kellert and Westervelt 1983; Manfredo et al. 2003; Manfredo
et al. 2009) and how values have moved away from the focus on human instrumental
use of nature towards a ‘new biophilia’ characterized by the non-instrumental valua-
tion of nature (Van den Born 2001). Reflecting this general trend, in many European
countries, large segments of the population—usually the urban, young, educated,
and affluent—are positively predisposed towards the return of wildlife, including
predators (Williams et al. 2002; Kaczensky et al. 2004; Røskaft et al. 2007; Bauer
et al. 2009; Natuurmonumenten 2013; Dressel et al. 2015; Van Heel et al. 2017).
Consequently, with a broad change in attitudes and moral sensibilities, more and
more people see the need to protect wildlife and give animals place to roam.
Beyond the ethical concerns with nature, what influences the positive attitudes
to recolonization is the growing recognition that contact with nature contributes to
the maintenance of personal wellbeing. Studies have been carried out assessing the
benefits of being in nature for psychological and physical health (for reviews see:
Maller et al. 2006; Bowler et al. 2010; Hartig et al. 2014). Among these positive
effects we can count developmental benefits (Moore and Young 1978; Moore 1989;
Louv 2005), stress reduction (Kaplan and Peterson 1993), and support in recovery
from disease (Ulrich 1984; Park and Mattson 2009).
Establishing of such direct and ongoing contact has also been considered impor-
tant in relation to motivation for pro-environmental action. Studies strongly suggest
that direct engagement with nature is an important determining factor in the devel-
opment of positive environmental attitudes (Chawla 1988; Chawla and Hart 1995)
and the emergence of moral concern for nature (Palmer et al. 1998; Chawla 1999).
Lack of contact, on the other hand, has been associated with motivational difficul-
ties in terms of the ‘value-action gap’ in ethics, where positive attitudes to nature
do not lead to pro-environmental behavior (Van de Noortgaete and De Tavernier
2014). Interestingly, especially contact with wild nature has been identified as cru-
cial in developing the kind of deep moral engagement with non-human world that
motivates pro-environmental behavior (Van de Noortgaete and De Tavernier 2014).
Consequently, we could expect that the development of the ‘new biophilia,’ while
on landscapes motivating much of European rewilding is that of Frans Vera (2009). According to
Vera, the pre-agricultural European landscape was a patchwork of open grassland, shrubs, and
forests, with the open areas being kept such by large grazers.
supporting the recovery of species through changing values, might in turn receive
further boost from more of direct contact with wildlife that such recoveries enable.
These ideas on the importance of nature in our lives chime well with the rich
environmentalist tradition, which identifies contact with wildness as one of the things
that make us complete humans, something without which we cannot reach a fullness
of our being. Henry David Thoreau, one of the forefathers of modern environmental
movement, was among those who so singularly included wildness as an element of
the good life:
The most notable fact about [Walking] is that Thoreau virtually ignores our current concerns
with the preservation of habitats and species. His question, which he got from Emerson, is
about human life: “How ought I to live?” Thoreau is unique because part of his answer to
this old question involves wildness (Turner 1996, 82).
Those who follow in his steps obviously no longer ignore the issues of environmental
degradation. But they continue to regard wildness as an essential part of a good life,
and see its rehabilitation as part of our rehabilitation: “by enhancing wildness where
it exists and reintroducing wildness where it is absent, we enrich our personal lives,
our communities, and our culture, now and far into the future” (Partridge 2001, 200).
In response to the growing public interest in nature, initiatives all across the conti-
nent aim at reconnecting people with the natural world and increasing opportunities
for encountering wild animals. Wildlife tourism is currently a fast growing industry,
creating opportunities for people to come in touch with wild animals (Curtin and
Kragh 2014). Programs like Wild in the City!,6 Oerrr!,7 and RSPB’s Every Child
Outdoors project8 attempt to reestablish nature as an integral part of everyday life.
Conservation organizations like Rewilding Europe try to harness both the recolo-
nizations and the growing interest in wild nature, promoting a vision of the future
in which wildness becomes part of our everyday lives and an essential part of our
identity:
By 2023, wilderness, wildlife and wild nature have become essential elements of Europe’s
identity and are seen as a reflection of a new, modern society in the 21st century. The new,
liberated relationship with nature creates increasing health and happiness at a personal level
for many people – young and old, urban and rural – throughout our continent. […] Whales,
seals, wolves, eagles, bears, beavers, otters, bison, deer, tuna, salmon, sturgeon, cod and
many other species are experiencing a renaissance and provide joy, excitement, inspiration
and new income opportunities for all facets of society.9
6 http://wildinthecity.org.uk/, accessed: 13.03.2017. The motto states: “Making nature a meaningful
part of everyday life.”

7 https://www.natuurmonumenten.nl/kinderen/oerrr/wat-is-oerrr, accessed: 13.03.2017. Oerrr! Is a
program of a Dutch nature organization Natuurmonumenten aimed particularly at children.
8 http://www.rspb.org.uk/forprofessionals/policy/education/research/every-child-outdoors.aspx,
accessed: 13.03.2017. Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) is a conservation charity
founded in the 19th century and currently being the largest nature conservation charity in the UK.
9 A Vision for a Wilder Europe http://rewildingeurope.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/A-Vision-
for-a-Wilder-Europe-Oct-2013.pdf, accessed: 13.03.2017.

Such a vision of coexistence of humans and wild animals is not limited to wilderness
areas or nature reserves, but is envisioned as extending over all kinds of landscapes,
from the wildest and most remote ones to the most domesticated and intimate spaces.
Rewilding Europe hopes that in the future: “Rewilding has become the new conserva-
tion mantra and is applied in the green areas of cities as well as the wider countryside,
in all kinds of protected areas, on land as well as in wetlands, rivers, and the coastal
and marine environment.”10 Recently, Rewilding Britain, in a bid to prepare guide-
lines for small-scale rewilding, developed a questionnaire which is meant to help this
organization tailor the guidelines to the needs of prospective rewilders. They intro-
duced the questionnaire and the whole idea of small-scale rewilding as follows: “We
believe that rewilding is something that should happen at multiple scales, engaging
people at every level. That’s why we’re keen for everyone to have a go at rewilding
somewhere, whether that’s your garden, field or local park!”11
One of the most vocal proponents of this view is a journalist and environmental
activist George Monbiot. In an introductory chapter of his bestselling Feral: Search-
ing for Enchantment on the Frontiers of Rewilding (2013) he proposes a constructive
vision for environmentalism, which, next to curtailing our appetites and destructive
practices, offers new freedoms and expands, rather than limits, human life. This
expansion is predicated precisely on the possibility of engaging with wild, uncon-
strained nature that supposedly brings joy, wonder, and richness to human lives. In
a phrase that has become his motto for rewilding, and that refers to the famous title
of Rachel Carson’s book about the dangers of DDT use,12 he claims that thanks to
rewilding “our silent spring could be followed by a raucous summer.”13
From the picture painted above it might seem that the return of wildlife is an
unambiguously positive development, and that it is welcomed by the majority of
the European population. And certainly, we have to acknowledge that the animals
are returning to a political, cultural, and social landscape that is much different
from the one that had seen their extirpation. However, there are important issues
that complicate this image. One fundamental source of difficulties can be found
precisely in the relatively new spatial configurations of human-animal relations that
recolonization creates—that is in the very proximity that, as the above-summarized
statements show, is otherwise so excitedly embraced.
When the wolf that arrived in the Netherlands was observed walking through
villages and using roads, many professed their disbelief that a wolf arriving in the
10 A Vision for a Wilder Europe http://rewildingeurope.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/A-Vision-
for-a-Wilder-Europe-Oct-2013.pdf, accessed: 13.03.2017.

11 http://us10.campaign-archive2.com/?u=0e536fd9cf797106c905024e6&id=4eaeccd289&e=
55998ea073, accessed: 12.10.2016.

12 That book is Silent Spring (1962). In it, Carson painted a chilling picture in which due to pesticide
use related die-off no birds welcome the coming of spring.

13 http://www.bbc.com/earth/bespoke/story/20141203-back-to-nature/, accessed: 09.01.2017.
Netherlands could be a ‘real’ wolf, pointing out its ‘strange behavior’ (Drenthen
2015). Such disbelief is common in places where wolves have recently returned.
For instance, stories commonly circulating in Scandinavia and France claim that
the animals appeared there only as an effect of clandestine reintroductions14 or that
the animals are wolf-dog hybrids (Skogen et al. 2008). Such narratives reveal how
shocking it is for people to find wild animals entering human-dominated landscapes,
even when GPS tracking, genetic profiling, and scat analyses confirm that such
dispersals are indeed spontaneous15 (Valiere et al. 2003).
Perhaps such reactions should not be too surprising; after all, arrival of wolves
in places dominated by humans stands in stark opposition to the common imagery
which links these animals to wilderness areas (Lescreux and Linnell 2010). Instead,
the spontaneous dispersal of the species across the continent reveals that wolves are
in fact very well capable of living in proximity to humans (Linnell et al. 2001). In this
context, their survival and dispersal are significantly dependent on human attitudes
and management regimes (Mech 1995; Linnell et al. 2001; Boitani and Linnell 2015;
Behr et al. 2017).
Although, as was noted above, the attitudes towards these animals are changing
and on general becoming more positive, we cannot take these cultural transitions for
granted. The disbelief in the face of wolves appearing in urban areas and conspiracy
theories are just a tip of an iceberg of a general sense of perplexity and stupefaction
that actual encounters with wildlife often provoke. There is nothing surprising about
such reactions, no matter how positive the generally professed attitudes might be. As
many have observed, the dominant trend of the last several decades, if not centuries,
has been that of separating humans from animals:
The 19th century, in western Europe and North America, saw the beginning of a process,
today being completed by 20th century corporate capitalism, by which every tradition which
has previously mediated between man and nature was broken. Before this rupture, animals
constituted the first circle of what surrounded man. Perhaps that already suggests too great
a distance. They were with man at the centre of his world (Berger 1991, 3).
Many parallel processes have catalyzed this separation. In Europe and large parts
of North America, intensive hunting led to drastic diminishing of populations of
wild ungulates while most predators were eradicated or pushed to distant refuges
deep in forests and mountains (Deinet et al. 2013). Ongoing habitat loss due to
anthropogenic causes like urbanization, agriculture, and resource extraction have led
14 In fact, there have indeed been documented cases of clandestine reintroductions by environmen-
talists. One example is a secret reintroduction of beavers in western Pyrenees, carried out by an
environmental organization (Vaccaro and Beltran 2009). Such cases make the conspiracy theories
more credible.
15 The spontaneity of such return must, however, be qualified. Recolonization would not be possible
without the strict protection of the species involved. The decreasing interest in hunting also plays a
part. Thus, following James Feldman, professor of history and environmental studies, who analyzed
the rewilding of the Apostle Islands (2011), one must note that the spontaneity of natural processes
is often deeply enmeshed in social and cultural processes and changes.
to a drastic diminishing of wildlife populations and extinctions (Hanski 2005; Gordon

2009). Industrialization of agriculture has meant the loss of the earlier extensive
cultivation methods that actually promoted biodiversity and created habitats for many
wild creatures (Bignal and McCracken 2000; MacDonald et al. 2000). The varied
landscapes created by place-specific, extensive farming practices have since been
largely replaced by homogeneous mono-cultures (Jongman 2002; Halada et al. 2011),
the ‘green deserts’ as they are sometimes called. Automation and mechanization of
agricultural production had initiated a rural exodus as a consequence of which more
and more people have been spending their whole lives in artificially constructed urban
environments. Already in the early days of urbanization, city walls were erected not
only to protect citizens against human enemies, but also to keep wild nature out, thus
providing a material and symbolic separation between the wild world and that of
civilized, ordered human life16 (Hughes 2001, 34). The modern era saw a systematic
exclusion of most domesticated animals from cities, leaving well-behaved pets as the
only acceptable non-human neighbors (Philo 1995). Nature protection has largely
proceeded through establishment of nature reserves often located far from peoples’
dwellings, further diminishing opportunities for interaction (Soga and Gaston 2016).
The only major remaining sources of information and contact with wild nature for
urban citizens have been zoos, occasional excursions to distant national parks, and
TV nature programs locating wildlife in an exotic far-far-away (Wolch et al. 1995;
Clarke 1998).
Thus, the return of wild animals comes at a time when the majority of European
population has had practically no direct experience with wildlife, and certainly none
in actually living with it. Some have characterized this progressive alienation from
nature and the near-total disappearance of nature from peoples’ daily lives as the
‘extinction of experience’ (Pyle 1993; Miller 2005; Stokes 2006; Samways 2007;
Finch 2008) or the ‘nature deficit disorder’ (Louv 2005).
Somehow ironically, some of the processes catalyzing this alienation are also
precisely the ones that have contributed to the recovery of many species. First, inten-
sification of agriculture, policy changes, international competition, and rural exodus
have all contributed to the abandonment of agricultural land of low productivity
(Pointereau et al. 2008). Although it is difficult to make precise estimates, careful
assessments for the EU suggest as much as 3–4% of total land area (126,000–168,000
km2 ) is expected to go out of cultivation (Keenleyside and Tucker 2010). This land,
left to itself, is overtaken by wild vegetation and eventually becomes a habitat for wild
animals (Prach 2003; Bowen et al. 2007; Gordon 2009). Some conservation organi-
zations try to harness this trend by proposing to transform the abandoned farmland
16 An example that encapsulates the greatest fears linked to the breakdown of such borders comes
from 15th century Paris, where, in the winter of 1450, a wolf pack exploited holes in the defense
walls caused by recent warfare to get into the city. Before the man-eating pack was killed, supposedly
40 citizens had fallen prey to the animals.
into nature protection areas17 (see: Navarro and Pereira 2012; Monbiot 2013). Sec-
ondly, urbanization has been associated with significant changes in the meanings,
values, and attitudes related to wildlife, replacing utilitarian attitudes with moral
concerns (Manfredo et al. 2003; Patterson et al. 2003; Buller 2004). Separation from
wild animals might actually have had an important role to play here, as living far
from wildlife populations has been associated with more positive attitudes to animals
(Williams et al. 2002; Karlsson and Sjöström 2007; Dressel et al. 2015). Following
these changing attitudes, meanings, and values, there is a growing pressure on rural
areas to transition from agricultural production and domestication to making more
and more space for wildness (Buller 2004).
Beyond these, the other important reasons behind animal recoveries are linked to
direct protective measures like limits on hunting harvests, legal protection of species
and specific areas, changes in management regimes, and intentional reintroductions
(Deinet et al. 2013).
In the wake of all these changes, wild animals previously pushed to remote refuges
more and more often enter not only agricultural areas but also suburbs and cities. Deer
herds walk the streets, boars, badgers, and foxes visit gardens, wolves scout pastures,
bears feed from trash bins… Wild nature makes a very visible reappearance in the
places we live and work in, and this brings many features that depart significantly
from the kinds of engagements with animals we have been familiar with for the last
several decades.
In contrast to the protection of fragile and rare animals or plants, here we are
forced to confront wildlife that is powerful, numerous, and widespread. Where we
previously sought to protect distant populations and control ourselves from infringing
on the little habitat that is left to them, today, recolonizing animals appear in spaces
we have been thinking of in exclusively human terms. Different from living with
domesticated animals, here we are dealing with independent creatures, whose lives
have not been bent into harmony with ours through years of selective breeding.
Finally, these are animals that in accordance with some of the most fundamental
cultural distinctions do not belong in civilized quarters. It is not a mere historical
contingency that wild animals do not share living spaces with us. As many scholars
argue, such separation is predicated upon a fundamental binary—that between wild
and civilized, nature and culture—along which our culture thinks and shapes its
world (MacCormak and Strathern 1980; Plumwood 1993; Linnell et al. 2015).
It is important to understand the extent to which the reality of rewilding departs
even from coexistence with some other wild creatures that have been sharing cities
and gardens with us for a long time. This is especially important given that recent
years have seen a surge of writing that points out that we have always already coex-
isted with wild nature, even in our most intimate places. In an oft-quoted passage,
Aldo Leopold claims: “The weeds in a city lot convey the same lesson as the red-
woods. […] Perception, in short, cannot be purchased with either learned degrees or
17 E.g. Rewilding Europe has been openly arguing about making use of land abandonment. Rewilding
advocate George Monbiot (2013) goes even further, arguing we should in fact promote abandonment
of low-productivity farmland.
dollars; it grows at home as well as abroad” (1970, 292). In his critique of the wilder-
ness idea, William Cronon suggested that in contrast to wilderness, “wildness […]
can be found anywhere: in the seemingly tame fields and woodlots of Massachusetts,
in the cracks of a Manhattan sidewalk, even in the cells of our own bodies” (Cronon
1996, 89). In The Wild Places (2008), British writer Robert Macfarlane describes
his journey through the most remote parts of Britain in search of wildness. But ulti-
mately he discovers that wildness exists also very close to home. We can find a
similar opinion voiced by poet and environmentalist Gary Snyder, who claims that
wildness is not limited to the 2 percent formal wilderness areas. Shifting scales, it is every-
where: ineradicable populations of fungi, moss, mold, yeasts, and such that surround and
inhabit us. Deer mice on the back porch, deer bounding across the freeway, pigeons in the
park, spiders in the corners (Snyder 1990, 14).
The purpose of these elaborations, and many similar ones, has been to show that
wild nature worthy of our attention and protection exists close to home and that it
should be treated with the same sort of respect and awe that we normally reserve for
the distant and sublime wilderness areas. Such reappraisals of the wild in terms of
location and scale have been motivated by a perceived need to move away from the
so called “received wilderness idea” (Callicott and Nelson 1998b) holding that true
nature worthy of respect can only be found in remote wilderness areas. In the words
of The Wilderness Act of 1964, which formalized the concept and established the US
wilderness preservation system, “a wilderness, in contrast with those areas where
man and his own works dominate the landscape, is hereby recognized as an area
where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man is a
visitor who does not remain.” This conception of wilderness has been criticized for
separating humans from nature, reaffirming the ontological divide between us and
the rest of the world, perpetuating counterproductive ethical dualisms, contributing
to erasure of the indigenous populations and their histories from their land, and
many more.18 In response to these issues, many voices have argued for abandoning
the rigid understanding of what constitutes nature, wildness, and the appropriate
human engagement with them embodied in the received wilderness idea. Instead,
they proposed to move towards a more open and distributed idea of wildness as a
quality that pervades all, or nearly all, of the world. As a consequence we should see
trees in a park, flowers on our lawn, and sparrows in garden hedges as just as wild
as wolves stalking through primeval forests.
Starting from this perspective, wildness can indeed be found virtually everywhere.
A recent study (Bertone et al. 2016) assessed the numbers and diversity of arthropods
living in houses, finding significant numbers and diversity of flies, spiders, beetles,
and wasps. Various insects, birds, and mammals have inhabited our cities for a long
time. Rats and mice have been common companions of humans through the ages.
There is a surprising wildness to be found in sprouting trees, blooming flowers, and
18 Foran extensive discussion of the controversies surrounding the change of focus from concern
with wilderness to that with wildness, see two volumes edited by J. Baird Callicott and Michael
Nelson, which contain the most extensive collection of articles on this subject (Callicott and Nelson
1998a; Nelson and Callicott 2008).
congregating flocks of birds. Infestations by bed bugs, lice, rats, or slugs can be just
as overwhelming as invasions of boars, bears, and wolves. It seems we have always
already lived with wild nature and have always already been discomforted by it. Are
we then really confronted with anything new with the arrival of wild megafauna like
wolves, bears, deer or boar? Perhaps our surprise at seeing boars and foxes in our
gardens and on city streets is simply a matter of incomplete integration of the insights
summarized above?
Despite these hesitations, intuitively, there seems to be a difference. American
naturalist, activist, and author Doug Peacock captures this sentiment in his charac-
teristically radical manner: “My friend […] could find humility before nature in his
backyard. I cannot: I need to confront several large fierce animals who sometimes
make meat of man” (1990, 6–7). Perhaps there is more to this pronouncement than
just masculine bravado. I do not want to overstate the difference between meeting a
grizzly in a national park and observing a butterfly in one’s garden. Most likely there
is some continuity of wildness between the two. But it will not do to skip over the
dissimilarities that do exist.
First, there are the different meanings the animals have acquired through the ages.
A mouse means to people different things than a wolf. Perhaps this is a consequence
of our culture—of the ways we classify animals and the contingent factors that have
led to the way we perceive nature. Most probably this is true, but it makes the situation
none the less real. The cultural significance of many of these recolonizing animals
places them apart from humble spiders and mice. The stories we tell about wolves
differ significantly from those we tell about mice and the cultural associations we
have with each of the species significantly change the role these different creatures
play in our lives. This might have negative consequences, as when demonization
of wolves in stories has led to continuing persecutions. But on the other hand, the
special cultural connotations of wolves mean that hearing a wolf howl on a hike in
a nature reserve becomes for many people an unforgettable experience. What would
it mean, then, to catch a glimpse of a wolf on the outskirts of one’s city? Certainly,
the significance of such an event would be much different than that of seeing a
spider in a corner of ones bedroom. This does not establish an impermeable cultural
dichotomy but merely notes that differences in meaning are relevant to understanding
our experience of nature.
Secondly, if we are to develop perceptual sensitivity to wildness, this must be
developed somewhere. Something must attract our attention, direct our gaze to what
we have not noticed, shake us out of the comfort of a routine. And there certainly
is a routine in the way we deal with spiders, mice, snails, and cockroaches. The
relative novelty of boars and deer in gardens certainly attracts attention and might be
an opening to a re-appraisal of other, already well-established relations. As Claude
Lévi-Strauss famously stated “natural species are chosen not because they are ‘good
to eat’ but because they are ‘good to think’” (1964, 89). Sometimes this is paraphrased
as “animals are good to think with.” Perhaps some animals afford for a clearer grasp
of the dilemmas, ambivalences, and conflicts at play in coexistence with wildness?
The focus on large megafauna, and especially on predators, which will be dominant
through this work, is therefore not to be taken as an exclusive claim that somehow
only predators give rise to certain experiences of nature. Rather, I take predators to
be particularly good animals to think with on the subject of the changes that take
place in human-animal relations in the wake of recolonizations.
Thirdly, there is an ethical question. In as much as we already do face multiple
discomforts from mosquitoes, slugs, cockroaches, etc., it appears we are already
struggling with plenty of ecological discomforts. The difference is that these creatures
have never been endangered, and, due to being in a constant state of conflict with
them through millennia, we do have firmly established and widely accepted ways
of dealing with them. They do not pose such immediate ethical and conservation
dilemmas as the larger animals do.
Finally, there is an important issue of power. In the age of environmental crisis,
there is a false ring to the claim that there is little difference between the unobtrusive
wildness of flowers and that of the challenging fauna. I find a similar intuition in the
reflections of environmental historian Paul Warde on a recent rewilding workshop
he attended:
In fact, my sense of the drift of conversation was that ‘wild’ was being used, increasingly, in
a purely descriptive manner, and ‘wilding’ is simply finding spaces, interstices, where non-
human nature can flourish. The mood was against the requirement that the wild belonged
only to the ‘wilderness,’ probably remote places, people-free and grand of scale. […] And
I wondered – are we losing something here? And that is the emotional power of the wild,
something that for us is unbridled, not in the sense of being disordered, but in the fact that we
do not have control. The wild as something, whether interior or exterior, that overwhelms;
that is not the same as taking delight in a sparrowhawk or a hedgehog that happens to have
wandered into your garden. […] There is perhaps a lot to be said for living with the wild
in your garden, in the sense of people becoming better at co-habiting a space with a range
of other species, but this is very much still a garden. In fact, to use the more conventional
language of history and the social sciences, I think the distinction I want to make is about
asymmetries of power, and in the garden, people hold all the power.19
The return to the idea of wilderness that Warde proposes is not what I have in mind.
Rather, the point I would like to stress is that we already have these uncontrolled
elements sneaking into our gardens, altering the balance of powers. Perhaps recol-
onizing animals are not fully overwhelming, but they are more than grass between
pavement cracks. Boars and foxes are good examples of the kind of overwhelming
wildness where the balance of powers is less skewed to our advantage. We can cer-
tainly find symbols and specks of wildness in the interstices of concrete and asphalt.
But to recognize and accept powerfully wild nature in our cities and farms is an alto-
gether different matter. It is a question of power and scale. More wildness is not just
more of the same. More wildness, very possibly, brings with it qualitative shifts in
what is demanded of us and what we have to deal with. Different non-human entities
make different demands on us and these differences must be given due attention.
19 http://www.environmentalhistories.net/?p=725, accessed: 13.06.2016.

So even though we might accept the wildness continuity thesis, there is some-
thing more involved in the willingness to put up with problematic and ‘charismatic’
wildlife—more than is present in recognizing the wildness of grass in pavement
cracks. While wildness might exist everywhere to one degree or another, embodied
in the beauty or complexity of self-organizing, playful wild entities, in recoloniza-
tion we are facing this aspect of wildness which confronts us most directly with
its unruly agency independent from our desires and needs. Consequently, we may
speak not only about recolonization—a spreading of animals over spaces from which
they have been long absent—but also about rewilding—a making wild of spaces that
we have been thinking of as civilized and domesticated. And the crucial difference
from the intentional, orchestrated acts of rewilding that are carried out by ecological
restoration organizations is that here the animals exert their own will from the very
start, ending up in places we have not pre-approved, and employing their agency in
ways that often surprise us.
The confrontation with this agency of wild animals is something that often pro-
vokes rather ambivalent responses. Conservationist and wolf expert John Linnell
captures the ambivalence connected with the return of wildlife quite well, focusing
on the example of wolves and bringing together some of the most important and
recognizable aspects of our experience of these predators:
The more I learn about how these animals live their lives the more I appreciate them as
masterpieces of evolutionary adaptation. They also trigger some emotional responses deep
inside. The combination of grace, power, silence, resilience and adaptability in such a beauti-
ful packaging can only induce a sense of awe. These animals demand your respect simply by
looking at you. They are also truly wild. Completely independent of us humans, unapologetic
about their actions, their persistence in our modern urbanised world provides a refreshing
reminder that there is still some wildness left in nature. Predators above all other species
remind us that nature is still something of a dynamic process and made up of interactions
rather than just being static scenery. The idea that nature is something bigger than us humans
and that it [is] still not tamed provides a refreshing tonic to human arrogance and egotism.
However, many of these characteristics are also the source of conflicts. The sources of my
fascination can easily become another person’s frustrations or fears. Predators don’t always
make easy neighbours, and many rural people living in their proximity experience very real
problems.20
Ambivalence is part of an experience not just among environmentalists and con-

servationists, but also among those who find themselves living with such difficult
neighbors. Research shows that even those who identify themselves as anti-wolf
openly recognize the wild and charismatic nature of these animals:
Even though there have been strong antagonisms between Norwegian wolf supporters and
wolf adversaries, our interview data show that people with opposing views on carnivore pro-
tection also seem to share a basic understanding of wolves as superior, social, wild and pure.
[…] They frequently used words and expressions such as ‘genuine’, ‘pure’, ‘unpolluted’,
‘smart’, ‘socially intelligent’, ‘strategic’, ‘dominating’ and ‘beautiful’ to describe the wolves
and their behaviour, and this was done independently of their position in the debate. Even
those who classified themselves as ‘anti-wolf’ were openly impressed by the large carnivore
(Figari and Skogen 2011, 322).
20 https://www.iucn.org/content/boldly-go-where-no-continent-has-gone, accessed: 13.03.2017.

Consequently, very few people today argue for a total eradication of these creatures,
not even those opposing the recolonization due to the difficulties it brings. Most
people recognize the animals’ right to life and living space, and many admit to
being moved by their magnificence. But at the same time they are deeply worried
over the specifics of coexistence, including numbers and distribution of wildlife, and
management regimes (Blekesaune and Rønningen 2010).
The problem with wolves, as with many other wild creatures, begins precisely
with the way that their admirable qualities play out in situations of coexistence.
So while wolves, bears, and other wild animals might be seen as pure, smart, and
charismatic, problems start precisely when a smart, independent, and social predator
comes to live nearby one’s sheep herd, chicken coop, or home. This is the moment
when living with nature becomes truly challenging. As the recently popular phrase
has it, we have to ‘learn to live with success’ (see e.g.: Swenson et al. 1998; Primm
and Murray 2005; Linnel et al. 2011; Trouwborst 2014). We cannot simply reap
the benefits of the success—though success means the achievement of a desirable
state, this state is apparently not without its own difficulties that require further
learning and adjustment. In some strange way we might even be happy with the
difficulties: “the apparent vigor with which wild nature reasserts itself in interstitial
wilderness spaces, in the face of unbelievable human depredation, seems strangely
comforting” (Jorgensen and Tylecote 2007, 454) (emphasis added). This ability of
nature to reassert and reinvigorate itself is ‘strangely comforting’ because, while we
are overjoyed at the hope this brings for the future in terms of nature’s recovery, it
is associated with awareness of how difficult life with such unruly and opportunistic
nature may be.
Given the experience of such difficulties, the raucous summer of which Monbiot
spoke might turn out to be much more problematic than the optimistic discourses
of rewilding organizations make us believe. Extending Monbiot’s witty phrase, we
might legitimately worry whether the raucous summer will soon turn into a winter
of our discontent. Indeed, in the voices skeptical of rewilding, as well as in the social
conflicts that arise in response to rewilding, we can already notice the beginnings of
such discontents.
Consequently, what seems needed to better understand the potential consequences
of rewilding are approaches that seriously reflect on the resistance of nature and its
disconcerting agency, the possibilities of coexistence with such agency, and the sig-
nificance it acquires in our lives and in shaping our relations with nature. It is partic-
ularly the problematic aspects of living with such agency that form a challenge that
we find difficult to accommodate and so must pay attention to—perhaps much more
than we have so far. Dutch environmental philosopher Martin Drenthen summarizes
the task ahead as follows:
It is easy to feel love and care for cute, fluffy animals. It is quite another thing to give room
to animals that can be inimical to us. To co-exist with predators, we need to tolerate that they
can be dangerous to us, which means that we will need to develop an environmental culture
that helps us to adapt and reconcile our wishes and aspirations with the needs of these other
beings (Drenthen 2015, 322).
While predators might constitute the clearest example of such challenge, the difficul-
ties extend over a much broader range of animals. Unconcerned with our desires and
needs, wild animals in pursuing their own way of life often create material damages,
provoke stress and unease, occasionally can even directly threaten humans. Thus,
rewilding creates a situation in which we are forced to reflect on whether we are
willing, or even able, to coexist with such unruly wild agents. From environmen-
talists and environmental philosophers this requires more attention to the difficult,
disturbing, and discomforting aspects of engagement with the non-human world,
particularly to how the ambivalent attitude towards nature can be integrated with
nature protection and how it stands in relation to the ongoing attempts to promote
pro-environmental attitudes.
Following these observations, this book aims to provide a philosophical input for
developing an environmental culture that takes seriously the difficulties arising from
recolonization and explicitly considers their impact on various aspects of our lives.
How philosophy can contribute to the task of developing such a culture I will show
in the following chapter. But before setting the agenda for this book, I will first spend
some more time describing the kinds of issues that we often face when wild creatures
express their unruly agency in co-inhabited landscapes, and how these have been
addressed so far both in environmental sciences and humanities. The identification
of lacunae in the existing scholarship and practice will allow us to better understand
the specific methodological choices I will present at the end of the next chapter.
References
Andersen, Liselotte Wesley, Verena Harms, Romolo Caniglia, Sylwia D. Czarnomska, Elena Fabbri,
Bogumiła J˛edrzejewska, Gesa Kluth, et al. 2015a. Long-distance dispersal of a wolf, Canis lupus,
in northwestern Europe. Mammal Research 60 (2): 163–168.
Andersen, Liselotte Wesley, Morten Elmeros, Peter Sunde, Kent Olsen, Christina Vedel-Smith,
Thomas Secher Jensen, and Aksel Bo Madsen. 2015b. DNA-baseret bestandsovervågning afslører
ulve (Canis lupus) i Danmark. Flora og Fauna 121: 60–64.
Bauer, Nicole, Astrid Wallner, and Marcel Hunziker. 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.
Behr, Dominik M., Arpat Ozgul, and Gabriele Cozzi. 2017. Combining human acceptance and
habitat suitability in a unified socio-ecological suitability model: a case study of the wolf in
Switzerland. Journal of Applied Ecology.
Berger, John. 1991. About Looking. New York: Vintage International.
Bertone, Matthew A., Misha Leong, Keith M. Bayless, Tara L.F. Malow, Robert R. Dunn, and
Michelle D. Trautwein. 2016. Arthropods of the great indoors: characterizing diversity inside
urban and suburban homes. Peer J 4: e1582.
Bignal, Eric M., and David I. McCracken. 2000. The nature conservation value of European tradi-
tional farming systems. Environmental Reviews 8 (3): 149–171.
Blekesaune, Arild, and Katrina Rønningen. 2010. Bears and fears: Cultural capital, geography and
attitudes towards large carnivores in Norway. Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift-Norwegian Journal of
Geography 64 (4): 185–198.
References 15
Boitani, Luigi, and John D.C. Linnell. 2015. Bringing large mammals back: large carnivores in
Europe. In Rewilding European Landscapes, ed. Henrique M. Pereira, and Laetitia M. Navarro,
67–84. Springer International Publishing, Berlin.
Bowen, Michiala E., Clive A. McAlpine, Alan P.N. House, and Geoffrey C. Smith. 2007. Regrowth
forests on abandoned agricultural land: a review of their habitat values for recovering forest fauna.
Biological Conservation 140 (3): 273–296.
Bowler, Diana E., Lisette M. Buyung-Ali, Teri M. Knight, and Andrew S. Pullin. 2010. A systematic
review of evidence for the added benefits to health of exposure to natural environments. BMC
Public Health 10 (1).
Buller, Henry. 2004. Where the wild things are: the evolving iconography of rural fauna. Journal
of Rural Studies 20 (2): 131–141.
Callicott, J.Baird, and Michael P. Nelson. 1998a. The Great New Wilderness Debate. Athens: Uni-
versity of Georgia Press.
Callicott, J. Baird, and Michael P. Nelson. 1998b. Introduction. In The Great New Wilderness
Debate, ed. by J. Baird Callicott, and Michael P. Nelson, 1–20. Athens: University of Georgia.
Carson, Rachel. 1962. Silent Spring. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company.
Chawla, Louise. 1988. Children’s concern for the natural environment. Children’s Environments
Quarterly 5 (3): 13–20.
Chawla, Louise. 1999. Life paths into effective environmental action. The Journal of Environmental
Education 31 (1): 15–26.
Chawla, Louise, and Roger A. Hart. 1995. The Roots of Environmental Concern. NAMTA Journal
20 (1): 148–157.
Clarke, Chris. 1998. Nature by design. New Internationalist 308 (28).
Cronon, William. 1996. The trouble with wilderness or getting back to the wrong nature. In Uncom-
mon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature, ed. William Cronon, 69–90. New York: W.
W. Norton & Co.
Curtin, Susanna, and Gitte Kragh. 2014. Wildlife tourism: Reconnecting people with nature. Human
Dimensions of Wildlife 19 (6): 545–554.
Deinet, Stefanie, Christina Ieronymidou, Louise McRae, Ian J. Burfield, Ruud P. Foppen, Ben
Collen, and Monika Böhm. 2013. Wildlife comeback in Europe: The recovery of selected mam-
mal and bird species. Final report to Rewilding Europe by ZSL, BirdLife International and the
European Bird Census Council. London: ZSL.
Drenthen, Martin. 2015. The return of the wild in the Anthropocene. Wolf resurgence in the Nether-
lands. Ethics, Policy & Environment 18 (3): 318–337.
Dressel, Sabrina, Camilla Sandström, and Göran Ericsson. 2015. A meta-analysis of studies on atti-
tudes toward bears and wolves across Europe 1976–2012. Conservation Biology 29 (2): 565–574.
Emel, Jody. 1995. Are you man enough, big and bad enough? Ecofeminism and wolf eradication
in the USA. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 13 (6): 707–734.
Feldman, James. 2011. A Storied Wilderness. Rewilding the Apostle Islands. Seattle: University of
Washington Press.
Figari, Helene, and Ketil Skogen. 2011. Social representations of the wolf. Acta Sociologica 54 (4):
317–332.
Finch, Ken. 2008. Extinction of experience: A challenge for environmental education. New England
Journal of Environmental Education.
Gordon, Iain J. 2009. What is the future for wild, large herbivores in human-modified agricultural
landscapes? Wildlife Biology 15 (1): 1–9.
Gravendeel, B., A. de Groot, M. Kik, K.K. Beentjes, H. Bergman, R. Caniglia, H. Cremers, E.
Fabbri, D. Groenenberg, A. Grone, G.G. Bruinderink, L. Font, J. Hakhof, V. Harms, H. Jansman,
R. Janssen, D. Lammertsma, I. Laros, L. Linnartz, D. van der Marel, J.L. Mulder, S. van der
Mije, A.M. Nieman, C. Nowak, E. Randi, M. Rijks, A. Speksnijder, and H.B. Vonhof. 2013. The
first wolf found in the Netherlands in 150 years was the victim of a wildlife crime. Lutra 56 (2):
93–109.
Halada, Lubos, Doug Evans, Carlos Romão, and Jan-Erik Petersen. 2011. Which habitats of
European importance depend on agricultural practices? Biodiversity and Conservation 20 (11):
2365–2378.
Hanski, Ilkka. 2005. The Shrinking World: Ecological Consequences of Habitat Loss, vol. 14.
Oldendorf/Luhe: International Ecology Institute.
Hartig, Terry, Richard Mitchell, Sjerp De Vries, and Howard Frumkin. 2014. Nature and health.
Annual Review of Public Health 35: 207–228.
Hindrikson, Maris, Jaanus Remm, Malgorzata Pilot, Raquel Godinho, Astrid Vik Stronen, Laima
Baltrūnaité, Sylwia D. Czarnomska et al. 2016. Wolf population genetics in Europe: a systematic
review, meta-analysis and suggestions for conservation and management. Biological Reviews.
https://doi.org/10.1111/brv.12298.
Hughes, Johnson Donald. 2001. An Environmental History of the World: Humankind’s Changing
Role in the Community of Life. London: Routledge.
Jongman, Robert H.G. 2002. Homogenisation and fragmentation of the European landscape: eco-
logical consequences and solutions. Landscape and urban planning 58 (2): 211–221.
Jorgensen, Anna, and Marian Tylecote. 2007. Ambivalent landscapes—wilderness in the urban
interstices. Landscape Research 32 (4): 443–462.
Kaczensky, Petra, Mateja Blazic, and Hartmut Gossow. 2004. Public attitudes towards brown bears
(Ursus arctos) in Slovenia. Biological Conservation 118 (5): 661–674.
Kaplan, Stephen, and Christopher Peterson. 1993. Health and environment: A psychological anal-
ysis. Landscape and Urban Planning 26 (1–4): 17–23.
Karel, Prach. 2003. Spontaneous succession in Central-European man-made habitats: What infor-
mation can be used in restoration practice? Applied Vegetation Science 6 (2): 125–129.
Karlsson, Jens, and Magnus Sjöström. 2007. Human attitudes towards wolves, a matter of distance.
Biological conservation 137 (4): 610–616.
Keenleyside, Clunie, and Graham Tucker. 2010. Farmland Abandonment in the EU: an Assessment
of Trends and Prospects. Report prepared for WWF. London: Institute for European Environ-
mental Policy.
Kellert, Stephen R., and Miriam O. Westervelt. 1983. Historical trends in American animal use and
perception. International Journal for the Study of Animal Problems 4 (3): 133–146.
Leopold, Aldo. 1970. A Sand County Almanac. New York: Ballantine.
Lescreux, Nicolas, and John D.C. Linnell. 2010. Les montagnes sont-elles le dernier refuges des
grands predateurs? Histoire des Alpes – Storia delle Alpi – Geschichte der Alpen 15: 195–210.
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1964. Totemism. London: Merlin Press.
Linnell, John D.C., Jon E. Swenson, and Reidar Anderson. 2001. Predators and people: conservation
of large carnivores is possible at high human densities if management policy is favourable. Animal
Conservation 4 (4): 345–349.
Linnell, John D.C., Petra Kaczensky, Ulrich Wotschikowsky, Nicolas Lescureux, and Luigi Boitani.
2015. Framing the relationship between people and nature in the context of European conserva-
tion. Conservation Biology 29 (4): 978–985.
Lopez, Barry Holstun. 1978. Of Wolves and Men. New York: Scribner Classics.
Louv, Richard. 2005. Last Child in the Woods. Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder.
Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books.
Louvrier, Julie, Christophe Duchamp, Valentin Lauret, Eric Marboutin, Sarah Cubaynes, Rémi Cho-
quet, Christian Miquel, and Olivier Gimenez. 2018. Mapping and explaining wolf recolonization
in France using dynamic occupancy models and opportunistic data. Ecography 41: 647–660.
MacCormack, Carol P., and Marilyn Strathern. 1980. Nature, Culture and Gender. Cambirdge:
Cambridge University Press.
MacDonald, Donna, J.R. Crabtree, Georg Wiesinger, Thomas Dax, Nikolaos Stamou, J. Philippe
Fleury, Gutierrez Lazpita, and Annick Gibon. 2000. Agricultural abandonment in mountain areas
of Europe: environmental consequences and policy response. Journal of environmental manage-
ment 59 (1): 47–69.
References 17
Madsen, Aksel Bo, Morten Elmeros, Liselotte Wesley Andersen, Louise Solveig Nørgaard, Dorthe
Malene Götz Mikkelsen, Peter Sunde, Kent Olsen, Christina Vedel-Smith, and Thomas Secher
Jensen. 2015. De første analyser af ulvens (Canis lupus) føde i Danmark. Flora og Fauna 121:
55–58.
Maller, Cecily, Mardie Townsend, Anita Pryor, Peter Brown, and Lawrence St Leger. 2006. Healthy
nature healthy people: ‘contact with nature’as an upstream health promotion intervention for
populations. Health Promotion International 21 (1): 45–54.
Manfredo, Michael J., Tara L. Teel, and Alan Bright. 2003. Why are public values toward wildlife
changing? Human Dimensions of Wildlife 8 (4): 287–306.
Manfredo, Michael J., Tara L. Teel, and Kimberly L. Henry. 2009. Linking society and environment:
A multilevel model of shifting wildlife value orientations in the western United States. Social
Science Quarterly 90 (2): 407–427.
Mech, L.David. 1995. The challenge and opportunity of recovering wolf populations. Conservation
Biology 9 (2): 270–278.
Miller, James R. 2005. Biodiversity conservation and the extinction of experience. Trends in Ecology
& Evolution 20 (8): 430–434.
Monbiot, George. 2013. Feral: Searching for Enchantment on the Frontiers of Rewilding. London:
Allen Lane.
Moore, Robin. 1989. Before and after asphalt: Diversity as an ecological measure of quality in
children’s outdoor environments. In The Ecological Context of Children’s Play, ed. Marianne N.
Bloch and Anthony D. Pellegrini, 191–213. Greenwich, CT: Ablex Publishers.
Moore, Robin, and Donald Young. 1978. Childhood outdoors: Toward a social ecology of the
landscape. In Children and the environment, ed. Irwin Altman, 83–130. New York: Springer.
Musiani, Marco, and Paul C. Paquet. 2004. The practices of wolf persecution, protection, and
restoration in Canada and the United States. BioScience 54 (1): 50–60.
Natuurmonumenten, Alterra Wageningen UR, amd SjansenDesign. 2013. Resultaten Groot Wild
Enquete.
Navarro, Laetitia M., and Henrique M. Pereira. 2012. Rewilding Abandoned Landscapes in Europe.
Ecosystems 15 (6): 900–912.
Nelson, Michael P., and J. Baird Callicott. 2008. The Wilderness Debate Rages On: Continuing the
Great New Wilderness Debate. Athens: University of Georgia Press.
Palmer, Joy A., Jennifer Suggate, Barbara Bajd, and Elissavet Tsaliki. 1998. Significant influences
on the development of adults’ environmental awareness in the UK, Slovenia and Greece. Envi-
ronmental Education Research 4 (4): 429–444.
Park, Seong-Hyun, and Richard H. Mattson. 2009. Therapeutic influences of plants in hospital
rooms on surgical recovery. HortScience 44 (1): 102–105.
Partridge, Ernest. 2001. The tonic of Wildness. In Wolves and Human Communities: Biology,
Politics, and Ethics, ed. Virginia A. Sharpe, Brian Norton, and Strachan Donnelley, 199–207.
Washington: Island Press.
Patterson, Michael E., Jessica M. Montag, and Daniel R. Williams. 2003. The Urbanization of
wildlife management: social science, conflict, and decision making. Urban Forestry & Urban
Greening 1 (3): 171–183.
Peacock, Doug. 1990. Grizzly Years. In search of American Wilderness. New York: Owl Books.
Philo, Chris. 1995. Animals, geography, and the city: Notes on inclusions and exclusions. Environ-
ment and planning D: Society and space 13 (6): 655–681.
Plumwood, Val. 1993. Feminism and the Mastery of Nature. London: Routledge.
Pointereau, P, Coulon, F, Girard, P, Lambotte, M, Stuczynski, T, Sánchez Ortega, V and Del Rio.
2008. A. Analysis of farmland abandonment and the extent and location of agricultural areas
that are actually abandoned or are in risk to be abandoned. JRC Scientific and Technical Reports
(EUR 23411 EN).
Primm, Steve, and Karen Murray. 2005. Grizzly Bear recovery: Living with Success? In Coexist-
ing with Large Carnivores: Lessons From Greater Yellowstone, ed. Tim W. Clark, Murray R.
Rutheford, and Denise Casey, 99–137. Washington: Island Press.
Pyle, Robert Michael. 1993. The Thunder Tree: Lessons from an Urban Wildland. Boston: Houghton
Mifflin.
Ripple, William J., Guillaume Chapron, José Vicente López-Bao, Sarah M. Durant, David W.
Macdonald, Peter A. Lindsey, Elizabeth L. Bennett, Robert L. Beschta, Jeremy T. Bruskotter,
Ahimsa Campos-Arceiz, Richard T. Corlett, Chris T. Darimont, Amy J. Dickman, Rodolfo Dirzo,
Holly T. Dublin, James A. Estes, Kristoffer T. Everatt, Mauro Galetti, Varun R. Goswami, Matt
W. Hayward, Simon Hedges, Michael Hoffmann, Luke T.B. Hunter, Graham I.H. Kerley, Mike
Letnic, Taal Levi, Fiona Maisels, John C. Morrison, Michael Paul Nelson, Thomas M. Newsome,
Luke Painter, Robert M. Pringle, Christopher J. Sandom, John Terborgh, Adrian Treves, Blaire
Van Valkenburgh, John A. Vucetich, Aaron J. Wirsing, Arian D. Wallach, Christopher Wolf,
Rosie Woodroffe, Hillary Young, and Li Zhang. 2016. Saving the world’s terrestrial Megafauna.
BioScience 66 (10): 807–812.
Røskaft, Eivin, Barbara Händel, Tore Bjerke, and Bjørn P. Kaltenborn. 2007. Human attitudes
towards large carnivores in Norway. Wildlife biology 13 (2): 172–185.
Samways, Michael J. 2007. Rescuing the extinction of experience. Biodiversity and Conservation
16 (7): 1995–1997.
Skogen, Ketil, Isabelle Mauz, and Olve Krange. 2008. Cry wolf!: narratives of wolf recovery in
France and Norway. Rural Sociology 73 (1): 105–133.
Snyder, Gary. 1990. The practice of the wild. New York: North Point Press.
Soga, Masashi, and Kevin J. Gaston. 2016. Extinction of experience: the loss of human–nature
interactions. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment 14 (2): 94–101.
Sterba, Jim. 2012. Nature Wars. The Incredible Story of How Wildlife Comebacks Turned Backyards
into Battlegrounds. New York: Broadway Books.
Stokes, David L. 2006. Conservators of experience. BioScience 56 (1): 7–8.
Swenson, Jon E., Finn Sandegren, Anders Bjärvall, and Petter Wabakken. 1998. Living with success:
research needs for an expanding brown bear population. Ursus 17–23.
Terborgh, John, and James A. Estes. 2010. Trophic Cascades: Predators, Prey, and the Changing
Dynamics of Nature. Washington: Island Press.
Trouwborst, Arie. 2014. Living with success – and with wolves: addressing the legal issues raised by
the unexpected homecoming of a controversial carnivore. European Energy and Environmental
Law Review 23 (3): 89–101.
Turner, Jack. 1996. The Abstract Wild. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press.
Ulrich, Roger. 1984. View through a window may influence recovery. Science 224 (4647): 224–225.
Vaccaro, Ismael, and Oriol Beltran. 2009. Livestock versus ‘wild beasts’: contradictions in the
natural patrimonialization of the Pyrenees. Geographical Review 99 (4): 499–516.
Valière, Nathaniel, Luca Fumagalli, Ludovic Gielly, Christian Miquel, Benoît Lequette, Marie-
Lazarine Poulle, Jean-Marc Weber, Raphaël Arlettaz, and Pierre Taberlet. 2003. Long-distance
wolf recolonization of France and Switzerland inferred from non-invasive genetic sampling over
a period of 10 years. Animal Conservation 6 (1): 83–92.
Van den Francis, Noortgaete, and Johan Tavernier. 2014. Affected by nature: A hermeneutical
transformation of environmental ethics. Zygon 49 (3): 572–592.
Van Heel, B.F., A.M. Boerboom, J.M. Fliervoet, H.J.R. Lenders, and R.J.G. van den Born. (2017).
Analysing stakeholders’ perceptions of wolf, lynx and fox in a Dutch riverine area. Biodiversity
and Conservation 1–21.
Vera, Frans. 2009. Large-scale nature development – The Oostvaardersplassen. British Wildlife 20
(5): 28–36.
Vila, Carles, Anna-Karin Sundqvist, Øystein Flagstad, Jennifer Seddon, Ilpo Kojola, Adriano
Casulli, Håkan Sand, Petter Wabakken, and Hans Ellegren. 2003. Rescue of a severely bot-
tlenecked wolf (Canis lupus) population by a single immigrant. Proceedings of the Royal Society
of London B: Biological Sciences 270 (1510): 91–97.
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
ASTOLPH.
Will you leave

The Monastery?
CARLOMAN.
At once.
ASTOLPH.
You have no terror?

You will not creep back, conscience in your nerves?
CARLOMAN.
Let me but pass the door.
ASTOLPH.
[laughing] You see it swings.

I left it open.
CARLOMAN.
Then we start at once.
ASTOLPH.
[checking him]
No, stay a little. Are you still the friend
Of Zacharias?
CARLOMAN.
He is great.
ASTOLPH.
No doubt—
And most sagacious, for he seeks your brother
To win him with the bribe of sacred oil
As vassal and ally against myself.
I started here from Rome the hour I heard
That Zacharias had crept out by night
To travel northward and defeat my hopes.
You must arrive before him! I am come
Sure, from report, that you will help my cause,
You, who have been a ruler. I contend
No supernatural power should have control
Of lands and cities, troops and civil rights,
Matters distinct from God, as from the world
The service he requires. Life is so easy
If we will keep it human—quarrel, murder,
And then make friends: we have so short a time
To sin together ... but this hate deferred,
These pestilential menaces!—
CARLOMAN.
The Pope
Shall never injure France!
ASTOLPH.
It lies with you

To break the threatened treaty. You have owned
Power over Pepin?
CARLOMAN.
Yes; tho’ tardily,
He followed all my counsels.
ASTOLPH.
Ride, and stop

This treaty. If you ride you will forestall
The Pontiff’s slower march; and I meantime
Will press the siege of Rome ... you must not mind
The ache of stiffened muscles.
CARLOMAN.
Hills and plains

And trees—the olives, cypresses and vines;
Then France with nuts and poplars! But you keep me
In one great palpitation.
ASTOLPH.
Zacharias,
Besetting me from north and southward, crushes
My strongest forces. What a splendid thing
For the old man to travel in the heat
So far to work my ruin!
CARLOMAN.
But the world

Is for the young, my Astolph.
ASTOLPH.
Carloman,
I love you. Why, I feel a lad, eighteen,
When looking on you. Come, we two must kiss;
We may not burn together, flame in flame,
Again—so we must kiss.
CARLOMAN.
My blessed one,
Would I could cleave to you! You give me freedom,
A gift so rarely thought of.
ASTOLPH.
[calling a monk] Fetch the Prior,

The brethren, now—this instant. We must start.
CARLOMAN.
Grant me beside the freedom for myself

Salvation for another.
ASTOLPH.
What, a monk
Still half of you! Such trouble for men’s souls—
But have your wish. Once on the battlefield,
Men will become your prey. This solid jaw
Means grip you will not loose. O Carloman,
If I can circumvent the Pope, and then
Stretch him a bleeding quarry at my feet—
CARLOMAN.
What, Zacharias!
But I plead for France;
Popes must not meddle with her.
ASTOLPH.
[as the Prior and Monks re-enter] I require

The services of Carloman: another
Whom he will choose attends him.
DAMIANI.
Impious wretch,
You steal from God His servants!
[Astolph laughs and moves up the courtyard to summon his men: Damiani
and Rachis talk to each other; the monks listen in a scared group.]
CARLOMAN.
[drawing Marcomir to the front] Marcomir,

Come from this graveyard.
MARCOMIR.
No, I must not come,

I dare not; she is yours.
CARLOMAN.
Is mine? You wrong her—
Not yours nor mine. Earth’s wisdom will begin
When all relationships are put away,
With their dull pack of duties, and we look
Curious, benignant, with a great compassion
Into each other’s lives.
MARCOMIR.
It is not so
I look; I have a lust to gratify,
A lust for very shame I loathe to mix
With Geneviva’s image.
CARLOMAN.
Faugh! because
You think that I possess her! Cursèd bonds,
Cursed law that makes this riot in the heart!
Come forth; all will be gentle out of doors.
Gird up your habit.
MARCOMIR.
She?—
CARLOMAN.
Is but herself,
O Marcomir, we tarry—and the leaves
Are tossing through the air—
[Astolph throws his scarlet riding-cloak over Carloman, who seizes

Marcomir with an impetuous movement and draws him toward the horses
that champ at the gate.]
ACT IV
Scene: The Hall of the Frankish Palace. Early morning; the remains of a
banquet on the table, drinking-cups, wine bottles, faded leaves.
[A Servant is wiping away the stains of wine from the floor.]
SERVANT.
It is a cheerful thing to make all clean

When one is brisk and cool: this early air
Before the sun gets up is fit for men
To breathe when they are working.
Spot on spot!
A stranger to the revel of last night
Would take it there had been a massacre
To daub the floor so thickly.
[Enter another Servant.]

2ND SERVANT.
What a strew
Of glass and muddy wine-drops! Come up close
And listen. There’s a curious monk outside
Who asks to see the King—almost a beggar,
And yet a red embroidered riding-cloak
Flaunts round his ragged sackcloth; while his voice
Has such a wanton ring we need not trouble
Lest he should take the scandal of this room
Too much to heart. The jolly soul can pipe!
[A voice is heard richly humming.]

Wine is for drinking,
Glasses for chinking—
Fellowship, pleasure,
Of the full cup:
Lift it up, lift it up!
And let us be gay and be friends without measure.
1ST SERVANT.
A monk indeed! Why we must drink again!

A minstrel!
2ND SERVANT.
And his comrade took the horses

As he had been a squire.
1ST SERVANT.
Oh, but the song!

I never heard another one like this.
2ND SERVANT.
Man, they are all the same: but then he sings it

As if he had just learnt that grapes have juice,
That makes it sound so well. You’re pouring wine?
1ST SERVANT.
Yes, he must drink for that. Ho, there again!

Have you not caught the line?
[They join in as the voice sings]

These are the treasure
Of the full cup;
Lift it up, lift it up!
And let us be gay and be friends without measure.
Ha, ha!
2ND SERVANT.
Come in!
[Enter Carloman.]
You praise deep drinking—you ...

For shame! A churchman! But ...
How thin!
1ST SERVANT.
What eyes!
CARLOMAN.
Shall I have long to wait? Is Pepin ill,

Or is he grown luxurious? I would say
That I remember how your King is famed
For industry. He does not lie abed?
1ST SERVANT.
No, father.
CARLOMAN.
Call me brother if you will.
Why do you choke with laughter? I am ready
To laugh with you, to laugh to very tears
At what I am and have been. Do not hide
A thing so good and bright as laughter—Eh?
2ND SERVANT.
Mad! It were best to leave him to himself.
[They draw back.]
CARLOMAN.
[Looking round the room]

Throw the door wide open. Here we need
Fresh air even more than water. How the wine
Cries from the ground—shut in with walls, and cast
Below men’s feet, a slough where animals
Might wallow, and so sour! Let in the breeze.
Let in the dawn outside there!
1ST SERVANT.
[propping the door] After all

He is abstemious and sad at sin.
Look how profoundly sad!
2ND SERVANT.
Such twins of temper
Are frequent with the crazy. Now he drops
His mantle, have you ever seen such limbs—
A very scare-crow’s!
1ST SERVANT.
But a kindly smile.
2ND SERVANT.
He touches things and lifts them up and down

Just like an idiot. We must warn the King.
[Exeunt.]
CARLOMAN.
A feast, how nasty! Dabbled vine-leaves, vessels
Broken to shivers, the inspiring juice
Black on the boards—a feast! Can happiness
Leave refuse such as this? It visits slaves,
And then its track is loathsome. Ah, the air
Has entered like a wedge, keen, reaching me
Through all the mustiness ... and now I breathe!
The door is not enough, the windows too ...
[opening one]
There! How it enters!
[turning toward another window]
In this room I lived;
It is not altered? No, the fireplace, east;
My chair in front, and hers ... but they are crowned
At present; and my name upon that bench.
It is more terrible than nightmare—this
Besieging of one’s life by chairs and walls
And memories. Ah yes, the walls, the walls,
They do the mischief; and this reek of age
From every corner sickens worse than stale
Imprisoned fumes of wine. More air!
[He throws wide all the windows: then leans out of the last. While his back
is turned, Geneviva staggers drowsily in, reels to the board, tries to drink,
then flings herself against the throne sleeping.]
O Earth,
How beautiful to think I travelled on
And on, yet rode against no wall, so freely
The outworks of your sky gave up their space.
My brain is tired with interest: what men do
Or speak enthrals me, I who often paced
This room as blind to anything alive
As if a child unborn.
[Impulsively beginning to pace.]
And yet, my God,

How great a Captain thou wilt have in me
If this bond-King, this Pepin can be freed;
If I can do this thing, while Astolph batters
The very gates of Rome.
[pausing at sight of Geneviva.]
But who is this

Strange, beautiful, wild woman?
Oh, how delicious
Her arms, her bosom! Through the sodden hair,
Trailing the ground, what glitter, and how clean
This naked shoulder lies against the floor.
Why, this is Sleep itself!
[He comes close.]
O Geneviva,
So you too have learnt freedom, and are grown
How marvellous in beauty!—Marcomir!—
[Marcomir stands at the door.]
He must not see her drunken and so flushed;

He shall not.
[moving quickly to the door.]
I am looking every moment

For Pepin; do not enter.
[Marcomir turns and goes out.]
Oh, my shame,
If she should open her gray eyes on me,
And find me frocked and tonsured ... for the sun
Strikes sheer across her face.
[He bends over her; she wakes, looks up, laughs in his face, and then
speaks.]
GENEVIVA.
So young a guardian!
Most holy father, but I am not dead;
Do not bring rosemary, or sprinkle me
With holy drops.
[rubbing her eyes] They call this morning sleep
A beauty sleep. You must not stare so hard.
CARLOMAN.
But do not laugh.
GENEVIVA.
I must; you are a monk

Shame-faced and awkward. [rising] Have you travelled far?
CARLOMAN.
I came on embassy: the Lombard King ...
GENEVIVA.
These kings and princes! But whoever rules
Young men must have their pleasure. You and I—
Shall we not drink together?
[She pours wine into a goblet—he drinks]
God, what thirst!

Now you must rest awhile.
CARLOMAN.
Who are you, lady?
GENEVIVA.
So should a novice lisp. I am a woman.
CARLOMAN.
Glorious!
GENEVIVA.
And you? [she laughs.]
CARLOMAN.
Oh, do not jest with me;

You bring a devil to the paradise
It is to gaze on you. I am escaped
From convent-walls, the wrong, the bitterness!
GENEVIVA.
These monks are cruel, cruel, and I shudder
At their embrace; yet if I have a joy
It is to bring their manhood back to them.
Ha, ha! To see them look the murderer’s guilt
After a moment’s pleasure in my arms.
You shall not slip me.
CARLOMAN.
I have left the convent

A novice, as you say. But who are you
So terrible in pity that you touch
My hand and draw me to you, though my habit
And shaven hair insult you worse, more grossly
Than the most wanton bearing you have met
In any other man? I am ashamed
That you should see me thus.
GENEVIVA.
My dearest lovers
Forsook me to be monks. You are as one
That comes to bring me tidings of the dead,
The holy dead who have no evil thoughts
Or trouble from temptation.
[She laughs bitterly] For their sakes
You are beloved.
CARLOMAN.
Then put away all speech:

When love draws on me put it by as scholars
Their task when night falls thick upon the page.
Bend over me and kiss me. Do not laugh—
I love you.
GENEVIVA.
Did you ever love before?
CARLOMAN.
Never.
GENEVIVA.
Then I must tell you who I am:

A harlot ... in my palace—Do not wince!
[she looks at him doubtfully]
I had a husband counted me a temptress

And fled: I laugh now to remember it.
I loved once; he I loved became a monk,
And therefore I make sport of holy men.
I would not scoff at you, not tempt you even.
You have deep, burning eyes.
CARLOMAN.
He was a monk?
His name, who fled you? Would you have your pleasure
With me, his name!
GENEVIVA.
[to herself, shaking her head]

He had oblivious eyes!
[vindictively]
My lover’s name was Marcomir.
CARLOMAN.
The monk
Who journeys with me on this embassy
Is Marcomir. If you are amorous still
Of him ...
GENEVIVA.
Not now—no more. I am afraid ...

Who are you? You are surely of my race,
Have known me in my youth. A flushing shame
Breaks on me—
CARLOMAN.
And to find you are beloved

Moves you?
GENEVIVA.
Not that! I hear it every day.

It is too stale a story. Could I love——
CARLOMAN.
[Observing Marcomir passing and re-passing the windows]
How dare he watch us! But I recollect

You told me he had been your paramour.
GENEVIVA.
You come ... he comes, I mean, from Mount Soracte—

Then ... yes, I will have speech with him.
CARLOMAN.
[bitterly] Oh, gossip,

The convent’s gossip. I can furnish that.
If you desire him carnally, I yield;
But if ...
GENEVIVA.
He knows so much of long ago.
CARLOMAN.
[impulsively]
Then he shall speak.
GENEVIVA.
Not now; you must not call!

Not now; for he remembers—
CARLOMAN.
Ay, the harlot

Was once a girl, the monk was once a man.
If you would speak of life
Before it was apprenticed to these trades—
Of life and youth, virginity and love,
My ear will be as ripe for your confession
As his. We all remember; but our wisdom
Is to forget: our powers of penitence
Must be enfranchised, sin itself set free,
No clog or fetter on us!
GENEVIVA.
Carloman,
My husband!
CARLOMAN.
Your free lover. Oh, I burn,

Burn toward your beauty! How can you forgive
The years I simply owned you!
GENEVIVA.
Am I sweet,
So sweet to you—these lips so many men
Have kissed, this body.... But you bid me speak
Of life and youth, virginity and love,
And by a miracle I can. We two
Can argue of such matters.
[As Marcomir passes she calls] Marcomir!
[She restrains Carloman and goes to the door.]
No, I must summon him.
[Marcomir enters.]
Were we not happy,

Those days we sat together quite alone
Praising and talking of him? We adored,
We each adored him, but we had no part
In that lone heart of his. Now all is changed
He loves me—
MARCOMIR.

PDF Hermeneutics of Human Animal Relations in The Wake of Rewilding The Ethical Guide To Ecological Discomforts Mateusz Tokarski Ebook Full Chapter

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

PDF Hermeneutics of Human Animal Relations in The Wake of Rewilding The Ethical Guide To Ecological Discomforts Mateusz Tokarski Ebook Full Chapter

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Hermeneutics of Human Animal

Relations in the Wake of Rewilding The

Rewilding The Radical New Science of Ecological

The Economy of Salvation: Ethical and Anthropological

Animal Ethos The Morality of Human Animal Encounters in

Ethical Practice in the Human Services From Knowing to

The Event of Meaning in Gadamer's Hermeneutics 1st

The Cambridge Companion To Hermeneutics Michael N.

The Role of the EU in the Promotion of Human Rights and

The Educational Significance of Human and Non-Human

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/6215

ISSN 1570-3010 ISSN 2215-1737 (electronic)

1 Introduction: Silent Spring, Raucous Summer, and the Looming

6.3 Wilderness Experience as Moral Experience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133

8.5.1 Animal Denizenship as a Political Category . . . . . . . . . . . 190

Mateusz Tokarski, Ph.D. is currently an independent researched and writer. He

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 1

3 http://www.ferus.fr/loup/le-loup-biologie-et-presence-en-france, accessed: 30.01.2017.

6 http://wildinthecity.org.uk/, accessed: 13.03.2017. The motto states: “Making nature a meaningful

part of everyday life.”

for-a-Wilder-Europe-Oct-2013.pdf, accessed: 13.03.2017.

10 A Vision for a Wilder Europe http://rewildingeurope.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/A-Vision-

for-a-Wilder-Europe-Oct-2013.pdf, accessed: 13.03.2017.

55998ea073, accessed: 12.10.2016.

use related die-off no birds welcome the coming of spring.

to a drastic diminishing of wildlife populations and extinctions (Hanski 2005; Gordon

19 http://www.environmentalhistories.net/?p=725, accessed: 13.06.2016.

Ambivalence is part of an experience not just among environmentalists and con-

20 https://www.iucn.org/content/boldly-go-where-no-continent-has-gone, accessed: 13.03.2017.

Will you leave

You have no terror?

Let me but pass the door.

[laughing] You see it swings.

Then we start at once.

It lies with you

Ride, and stop

Hills and plains

But the world

[calling a monk] Fetch the Prior,

Grant me beside the freedom for myself

[as the Prior and Monks re-enter] I require

[drawing Marcomir to the front] Marcomir,

No, I must not come,

[Astolph throws his scarlet riding-cloak over Carloman, who seizes

It is a cheerful thing to make all clean

[Enter another Servant.]

[A voice is heard richly humming.]

A monk indeed! Why we must drink again!

And his comrade took the horses

Oh, but the song!

Man, they are all the same: but then he sings it

Yes, he must drink for that. Ho, there again!

[They join in as the voice sings]

You praise deep drinking—you ...

Shall I have long to wait? Is Pepin ill,

Mad! It were best to leave him to himself.

[They draw back.]

[Looking round the room]

[propping the door] After all

But a kindly smile.

He touches things and lifts them up and down

And yet, my God,

[pausing at sight of Geneviva.]