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COMMUNITY CASE STUDY article

Front. Conserv. Sci.
Sec. Human-Wildlife Interactions
Volume 5 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fcosc.2024.1441980
This article is part of the Research Topic Rewilding in Practice View all 8 articles

Building alliances and consensus around socio-ecological rewilding in Chile

Provisionally accepted
Meredith Root-Bernstein Meredith Root-Bernstein 1,2*Matias Guerrero-Gatica Matias Guerrero-Gatica 3
  • 1 CNRS UMR 7204, Paris, France
  • 2 Délégation Ile-de-France Sud (CNRS), Gif-sur-Yvette, ÃŽle-de-France, France
  • 3 University of Chile, Santiago, Santiago Metropolitan Region (RM), Chile

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    We provide a case study of how we position our rewilding project in central Chile in order to find scientific and social support and build alliances, collaborations, and consensus. Our core vision focuses on reintroducing guanacos (Lama guanicoe) to central Chile in order to provide natural restoration and ecosystem processes in espinal woodlands dominated by the native tree Vachellia [Acacia] caven. We envision a scenario of "socio-ecological rewilding" with widespread guanaco browsing in woodlands and guanaco migration across the region, coexisting with multiple human uses of the landscape. Guanacos would ideally be managed by regional collectives who could benefit from guanaco tourism, sustainable harvest of their fiber (wool), and regulated hunting. Our wider vision for reintroductions and integrated conservation management extends to a set of other species that may have coexisted with guanacos and V. caven at various points in the past, but more research is necessary to establish and gain support for evidence-based baselines. Our strategy is to inspire actors with greater resources (land, money, influence) to share our vision and implement it, in collaboration with the NGO that we have formed to support our projects. Over ten years, circulating alternate interpretations and a novel imaginary of how central Chile was in the past and could be in the future, along with developing and testing scientific hypotheses, has moved our vision from an idea shared by two people to one that a wide variety of actors publicly embrace.

    Keywords: Guanaco (Lama guanicoe), rewilding, Chile, Vachellia caven, Socio-ecological system

    Received: 31 May 2024; Accepted: 06 Sep 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Root-Bernstein and Guerrero-Gatica. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Meredith Root-Bernstein, CNRS UMR 7204, Paris, France

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.