Rewilding is being promoted as an ambitious alternative to current approaches to nature conservation. Interest is growing in popular and scientific literatures, and rewilding is the subject of significant comment and debate, outstripping scientific research and conservation practice. Projects and research are found the world over, with concentrations in Europe, North America, and on tropical islands. A common aim is to maintain, or increase, biodiversity, while reducing the impact of present and past human interventions through the restoration of species and ecological processes. The term rewilding has been applied to diverse concepts and practices. We review the historical emergence of the term and its various overlapping meanings, aims, and approaches, and illustrate this through a description of four flagship rewilding case studies. The science of rewilding has centered on three different historical baselines: the Pleistocene, the Holocene, and novel contemporary ecosystems. The choice of baseline has differing implications for conservation in a variety of contexts. Rewilding projects involve a range of practical components—such as passive management, reintroduction, and taxon substitution—some of which have attracted criticism. They also raise a series of political, social, and ethical concerns where they conflict with more established forms of environmental management. In conclusion, we summarize the different goals, approaches, tools, and contexts that account for the variations in rewilding and identify priorities for future research and practice.

Bird-keeping is an extremely popular pastime in Indonesia, where there is a thriving internal market in both wild-caught and captive-bred birds. However, little is known about whether the scale of bird-keeping represents a genuine conservation threat to native populations. Here we present the results of the largest ever survey of bird-keeping among households in Indonesia's five major cities. Birds were found to be urban Indonesia's most popular pet (kept by 21.8% of survey households) and we conservatively estimate that as many as 2.6 million birds are kept in the five cities sampled. Of bird-keeping households, 78.5% kept domestic species and/or commercially bred species and 60.2% kept wild-caught birds that we classified into three conservation categories: native songbirds, native parrots and imported songbirds. Compared to non-bird owners, households keeping wild-caught birds in all three conservation categories were richer and better educated, whereas households owning commercially-bred species were richer but not better educated and households keeping domestic species did not differ in educational or socio-economic status. We conclude that bird-keeping in Indonesia is at a scale that warrants a conservation intervention and that promoting commercially-bred alternatives may be an effective and popular solution.

The flagship species approach is an enduring strategy in conservation. Academic discussion on flagship species has focussed on two dimensions: on what basis should they be selected and how have they been put to use. Here we consider a third dimension, namely the manner in which flagship species act and have the capacity to galvanise and influence conservation outcomes. Drawing on concepts from the social sciences, viz. affordance, framing, and actor-networks; we discuss examples of flagship species to propose a theory of flagship species action. In brief, our theory posits that a flagship species is one with traits that afford the assembly of relatively coherent networks of associations with ideational elements located in pre-existing cultural framings. These associations give rise to opportunities to align with deep cultural frames, contemporary cultural phenomena and political economy such that when a conservation action is introduced, forms of agency cause the species and human publics to change. The species becomes re-framed (or reinvigorated) as a cultural asset speaking for a wider nature, publics and political agendas. Further our theory posits that species with traits that enrol in idea networks incorporating human fears, will have limited flagship capacity. This is because the ability of the representations produced to align with frames incorporating collective aspirations is constrained. In terms of applied conservation practice, our theory suggests that: a key criteria for selecting potential flagship species is presence in existing cultural frames, that effective deployment of flagship species requires an understanding of the species′ cultural associations, and a species ability to galvanise action may be limited to certain times and places. Furthermore, once deployed conservation interests will never have full control over the flagship species: it may act in uncertain and unexpected ways