Återförvilda Sverige?: En studie av rewilding som strategi för att bevara kulturlandskapet och gynna biologisk mångfald

Abstract

Through millennia, humans have shaped the European landscapes. Agriculture, hunting and forestry have influenced virtually every ecosystem on the continent and formed what we today think of as the cultural landscape; a mosaic pattern of cropland, fields, pasture and forests. The past two centuries, globalization, industrialization and urbanization have come to pose a threat to the existence of these landscapes. European farmlands are now being abandoned at an alarming rate, and the associated loss of landscape preservation, biodiversity and ecosystem services is a concern to the scientific community and public alike. This thesis studies if the implementation of the relatively new conservation strategy rewilding (recreating self-sustaining ecosystems and reintroducing keystone species) can be a part of the solution to preserve cultural landscapes and biodiversity in Sweden. Through interviews supplemented with studies of published works, expertise from different fields has been compiled to provide an overall picture of the capacity of rewildings as conservation method. I argue that although the socio-economic and ecological effects are impossible to determine with certainty beforehand, the probable positive outcomes derived from the strategy outweigh the negative ones. The study reveals that rewilding could cause areas to be more open, varied and diverse; and that this could generate income and job-opportunities for depopulated areas as the demand for nature-based tourism and wildlife-watching is increasing. A new conservation paradigm may be imminent, and Sweden has good reasons and opportunities to try it.