UK rewilding efforts could fuel extinctions in other countries, study warns

Rewilding projects across the UK have helped to protect ancient woodlands, reintroduce beavers and restore vital habitats.

But experts have warned that such well-meaning endeavours could have detrimental knock-on effects by shifting harmful land use to other parts of the world, particularly Australia and Italy.

Scientists and economists from more than a dozen global institutions, led by the University of Cambridge, have sounded the alarm over the “biodiversity leak”, or the displacement of damaging human activities caused by ring-fencing certain areas for protection or restoration.

They warned that rewilding productive or forests in wealthy nations may do more harm than good to the planet.

Study leader Professor Andrew Balmford, from Cambridge’s department of zoology, said: “As nations in temperate regions such as Europe conserve more land, the resulting shortfalls in food and wood production will have to be made up somewhere.

“Much of this is likely to happen in more biodiverse but often less well-regulated parts of the world, such as and .

“Areas of much greater importance for nature are likely to pay the price for conservation efforts in wealthy nations unless we work to fix this leak.”

The study applied real-world food and biodiversity data to hypothetical conservation projects, including one in the UK. It found that if 1,000km2 of arable farmland in the UK producing wheat, barley and oilseed rape was reclaimed for nature, production of these products would be displaced to Australia, Germany, Italy and .

As the UK has fewer species than these other countries, damage from “leakage” could be five times greater than the local benefit to British diversity. The UK is home to over 70,000 species of animal, plants, fungi and microorganisms, but Australia supports nearly 600,000 native species.

Protecting wooded areas could slow deforestation within their borders, but in some cases this merely shifts the activity to neighbouring areas, the experts said. For example, efforts to protect the Pacific Northwest’s old-growth forests resulted in increased logging in other North American regions.

The balance depends on how important the protected land is for biodiversity, in comparison to the biodiversity loss caused by displacement.

Researchers called on governments and the conservation sector to take “leakage” more seriously and target areas of high biodiversity but low food or timber production.

Dr Fiona Sanderson, from the Royal Society for Protection of Birds and who works on reducing the impacts of cocoa production in Sierra Leone, said: “Without attention and action, there is a real risk that the biodiversity leak will undermine hard-won conservation victories.”

Prof Bamford added: “At its worst, we could see some conservation actions cause net global harm by displacing production to regions which are much more significant for biodiversity.”

The findings were published in Science – one of the journals that will feature at the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s annual conference in Boston this week.

Richard Bunting, spokesperson for Rewilding Britain, said rewilding could go hand-in-hand with sustainable food production.

He added: “There is no need for Britain to lose farmland used for growing food as we tackle the nature and climate emergencies and benefit people through rewilding.

“It’s important to stress that just 1% of Britain is rewilding today, while around 70% of our land is used for agriculture.

“We could be rewilding 30% of Britain by restoring wild habitats including peatlands, native woodlands, wetlands, rivers and seas – all while maintaining and benefiting productive farmland.”