Discussion: arguments for rewilding

Your exam question asks you to discuss the arguments for rewilding presented in Adam Ramsay’s article “This should be Scotland’s rewilding election” and in the video “Scotland: What will you choose?”. 

Firstly, both the text and the video offer arguments for the ways in which rewilding can benefit biodiversity and help preserve ecosystems. In the text, Ramsay shares some of the positive effects of rewilding programs in different parts of Scotland: 

allowing ecosystems to flourish often means restoring keystone species which have been killed off. Beavers have been brought back to Scotland despite government resistance, building dams which restore wetlands and temperate rainforests. Apex predators like osprey and white-tailed eagles have been brought back in recent decades, unleashing processes called trophic cascades, which help life flourish. (ll. 73-77)

Ramsay shows that rewilding often has a domino effect and restoring one species...