Professor Ian Convery

Professor Ian Convery

Professor Ian Convery

Professor of Environment & Society, University of Cumbria UK, IUCN CEM Rewilding Thematic Group Co-Chair, IUCN CEM Regional Chair Western Europe

Ian Convery is Professor of Environment & Society at the University of Cumbria, where he leads on the Back on our Map (BOOM) multi-species reintroduction project. Ian has spent the last 25 years working on understanding societal interactions with, connections to, and perceptions of, the natural world. His current interests are focused on public engagement with species reintroductions and rewilding. He established and co-chairs the IUCN CEM Rewilding Thematic Group, chairs IUCN CEM in Western Europe, and has been a member of the IUCN World Commission for Protected Areas since 2016. Ian is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and is a Director of the Lifescapes Project conservation charity, which owns and manages the Natural Capital Laboratory in collaboration with AECOM.

Listen to Country, Listen to Nature

Rewilding has become increasingly popular around the world, with rewilding practiced in a variety of ways to suit local ecological and cultural contexts. This has led to some confusion over the term rewilding, leaving it open to misinterpretation and the risk of diluting its longer-term potential to deliver transformational change. This presentation will focus on rewilding’s long-term aims, integrating ecological and socio-cultural factors, as a means to unify the global, multidisciplinary field of rewilding. The presented framework can assist practitioners in the planning and application of rewilding, offering an iterative, adaptive process that recognises the need to address both social and ecological factors at a landscape scale. This framework is based on data collected through a grounded theory approach, drawing from surveys and secondary data from rewilding practitioners, researchers and authors. Rewilding requires and promotes transformational ecological and social change, the application of rewilding therefore requires innovative and interdisciplinary approaches.