Rewilding vs Food Security
Nature needs space, but humans need calories, and the planet has run out of both
Core Idea
Sir David Attenborough wants to rewild a third of the planet.
It’s a seductive vision of vast landscapes returned to their primordial state, megafauna roaming free, nature healing itself through the magic of ecological restoration. The proposal carries all the moral authority of a man who has spent decades showing us the wonder of the natural world, finally dropping his diplomatic neutrality to tell us that life on Earth is in crisis.
But there’s the inconvenient reality that even Sir David’s considerable charm cannot wish away.
We have 8 billion people on the planet requiring 22 trillion kilocalories of food energy daily. And there are 192,000 more mouths to feed every day. The mathematics of survival don’t care about our romantic notions of returning to Eden.
Counterpoint
The rewilding narrative relies on the fundamental illusion that we can somehow separate conservation from the messy realities of human existence.
It assumes we can carve out enormous chunks of the planet for nature while maintaining our current levels of food security, as if agricultural production operates independently from the laws of thermodynamics and ecology.
This is conservation theatre of the most dangerous kind. It lets us feel virtuous about grand gestures while ignoring the basic arithmetic of survival. When Attenborough shows us drones harvesting nuts from rainforest canopies, he’s peddling fantasy.
Those nuts won’t feed the urban masses of Lagos, Jakarta, or Mumbai. They won’t replace the wheat fields, rice paddies, and pastures that currently support human civilisation.
The rewilding movement commits the classic error of mistaking icons for ecosystems. It focuses on charismatic megafauna like the wolves, bears, and bison that make for compelling documentaries, while ignoring the unglamorous reality that human survival depends on soil microbes, earthworms, and the ten thousand species of invisible organisms that make agriculture possible.
Here’s what the rewilding evangelists won’t tell you… We’ve already committed to feeding the largest human population in history for the next 50 years. That requires not just maintaining current production levels, but increasing them by roughly 2% annually.
This is the second Green Revolution territory and only possible with further intensification, which makes rewilding vast territories not just impractical, but potentially disastrous.
Thought Challenge
Calculate the real trade-offs... Take any proposed rewilding region and ask what this land currently produces. How many people does it feed? What would replace that production if the land were returned to wilderness?
Research the actual energy yields of “wild” food systems versus agricultural ones. Compare the calories per hectare from a rewilded forest to those from a wheat field. Then multiply by the global population and see if your numbers add up to survival.
Visit your local supermarket and trace the origins of your food… How much land area does your weekly shop represent? Now imagine that area returned to wolves and wonder where your dinner would come from instead.
Closing Reflection
The choice between rewilding and food security is not really a choice at all. It’s a luxury debate conducted by people who’ve never gone hungry.
The real challenge is not whether to return a third of the planet to wilderness, but how to feed everyone while maintaining the ecological processes that make agriculture possible in the first place.
This means abandoning the romantic notion of pristine wilderness and embracing the harder task of creating production systems that work with, rather than against, natural processes. It means rewilding our farms, not our continents. It means focusing on soil biodiversity rather than charismatic megafauna. It means accepting that, in a world of 8 billion people, every landscape must be both productive and ecologically sustainable.
The planet doesn’t need our romantic gestures. It needs systems that can sustain human civilisation without destroying the biological foundations on which it depends.
That’s not as cinematically appealing as wolves howling at the moon, but it’s considerably more likely to keep us all alive.
Evidence Support
Bar-On, Yinon M., Phillips, Rob, & Milo, Ron (2018). The biomass distribution on Earth. PNAS, 115(25), 6506–6511.
TL;DR… first comprehensive quantification of the global biomass of different taxa, showing that humans and their livestock now comprise 96% of the biomass of all mammals on Earth. Wild mammals and birds, despite their public appeal, constitute a tiny fraction of the total, starkly highlighting the scale of human impact.
Relevance to Insight… empirical grounding for the claim that the overwhelming majority of mammalian biomass is attributable to humans and livestock, not wild species. It underscores the fundamental ecological distortion caused by human expansion and is a cornerstone for any argument regarding the real, physical drivers of biodiversity loss.
Haberl, Helmut, Erb, Karl-Heinz, & Krausmann, Fridolin. (2014). Human Appropriation of Net Primary Production: Patterns, Trends, and Planetary Boundaries. Annual Review of Environment and Resources, 39, 363–391.
TL;DR… humanity appropriates roughly 25% of the net primary production (NPP) of the biosphere, a figure that has almost doubled over the past century. This appropriation alters ecosystem structure, function, and resilience, pushing planetary limits and threatening biodiversity globally.
Relevance to Insight… human dominance over primary production is the key driver of biodiversity erosion, not simply local habitat destruction. This work is foundational for understanding resource competition between humans and the rest of the biosphere and the inevitability of biodiversity loss when ecological capacity is exceeded.
Bardgett, R. D., & van der Putten, W. H. (2014). Belowground biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. Nature, 515, 505–511.
TL;DR… soil biodiversity, comprising a vast array of microbes and invertebrates, underpins critical ecosystem processes such as nutrient cycling, plant productivity, and resilience against environmental change. It highlights that maintenance of soil diversity is essential for the continued functioning of terrestrial ecosystems.
Relevance to Insight… directly supports the shift from a focus on rare and iconic species to a recognition of the functional significance of abundant, often invisible soil organisms. Demonstrates why losing this underappreciated diversity threatens food security and poses a systemic ecological risk.
Cardinale, Bradley J., Duffy, J. Emmett, Gonzalez, Andrew, et al. (2012). Biodiversity loss and its impact on humanity. Nature, 486, 59–67.
TL;DR… quantifies how biodiversity—especially common species contributing to ecosystem processes—supports ecosystem functions vital to human society, such as productivity, nutrient cycling, and resilience. The loss of biodiversity has measurable and often strongly negative consequences for the delivery of essential ecosystem services.
Relevance to Insight… decisive scientific basis for maintaining biodiversity for its functional value, not just for conserving rare species. Their review supports strategies that prioritise the abundance and health of species that deliver “heavy lifting” rather than symbolic conservation actions.
Gaston, Kevin J., & Fuller, Richard A. (2008). Commonness, population depletion and conservation biology. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 23(1), 14–19.
TL;DR... challenges the traditional conservation focus on rare species by showing that declines in common species can have far-reaching implications for ecosystem function and human well-being. It calls for a broader conservation vision that values the ecological roles of widespread, abundant organisms.
Relevance to Insight… provides both the conceptual reasoning and empirical examples that support prioritising charismatic rare species over common, critical species, risks ignoring where ecological stability is truly at stake. Their argument is central to restructuring conservation priorities in line with real-world ecological functions.
These sources collectively demonstrate that the structural foundation of biodiversity loss and ecosystem services lies in large-scale human appropriation and in the underappreciated yet essential roles of common and soil-dwelling species—not in the preservation of rare species alone.