Esther Brooker
Defining marine rewilding can help guide theory and practice in marine conservation
Brooker, Esther; Midgley, Gerald; Burns, Neil; Trotman, Charlotte E; Gregory, Amanda; Hopkins, Charlotte
Authors
Professor Gerald Midgley G.R.Midgley@hull.ac.uk
Emeritus Professor of Systems Thinking
Neil Burns
Charlotte E Trotman
Amanda Gregory
Dr Charlotte Hopkins Charlotte.Hopkins@hull.ac.uk
Senior Lecturer Marine Biology
Abstract
Public concern over global climate change and biodiversity loss has accelerated international efforts to restore natural ecosystems through nature-based solutions. Rewilding is a growing conservation approach encompassing the recovery of ecological and trophic complexity through interventions such as habitat restoration and/or species reintroduction. Here we explore the nascent efforts of marine rewilding using a systems thinking methodology to inform a systematic review and iterative thematic analysis. Marine rewilding involves a diverse range of interventions, showing similarities in ecological principles with terrestrial rewilding, yet it diverges from terrestrial rewilding in the scale of initiatives, predictability of outcomes, and the prominence of social inclusion. To make progress in offering unifying concepts, we propose a definition for marine rewilding: a systemic process requiring deliberate human intervention that involves community participation and ocean stewardship to regenerate degraded marine ecosystems.
Citation
Brooker, E., Midgley, G., Burns, N., Trotman, C. E., Gregory, A., & Hopkins, C. (2025). Defining marine rewilding can help guide theory and practice in marine conservation. Communications Earth & Environment, 6, Article 241. https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-025-02155-x
Journal Article Type | Article |
---|---|
Acceptance Date | Feb 1, 2025 |
Online Publication Date | Mar 28, 2025 |
Publication Date | Mar 28, 2025 |
Deposit Date | Mar 28, 2025 |
Publicly Available Date | Mar 31, 2025 |
Print ISSN | 2662-4435 |
Electronic ISSN | 2662-4435 |
Publisher | Nature Research |
Peer Reviewed | Peer Reviewed |
Volume | 6 |
Article Number | 241 |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-025-02155-x |
Public URL | https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/5090135 |
Files
Published article
(2.9 Mb)
PDF
Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2025.
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
You might also like
Operational Research: Methods and Applications
(2023)
Journal Article
The Four Waves of Systems Thinking
(2023)
Journal Article
The Systemic Intervention Approach
(2023)
Journal Article
Designing interagency responses to wicked problems: A viable system model board game
(2023)
Journal Article
Downloadable Citations
About Repository@Hull
Administrator e-mail: repository@hull.ac.uk
This application uses the following open-source libraries:
SheetJS Community Edition
Apache License Version 2.0 (http://www.apache.org/licenses/)
PDF.js
Apache License Version 2.0 (http://www.apache.org/licenses/)
Font Awesome
SIL OFL 1.1 (http://scripts.sil.org/OFL)
MIT License (http://opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.html)
CC BY 3.0 ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)
Powered by Worktribe © 2025
Advanced Search