Perceptions of rewilding in European abandoned agricultural lands

Agricultural abandonment has been a trend in Europe over recent decades. The resultant abandoned land has been faced with multiple land change trajectories, including rewilding processes. Rewilding aims at facilitating ecological recovery, often through the reduction of human influence on the landscape or through restoring trophic complexity. However, rewilding is not always welcomed as it can challenge the place attachment stakeholders have for pre-existing and current landscapes. A total of 80 articles, published within Europe between 2000 and 2024, were analysed and coded using a conceptual framework. We found that the body of literature describing rewilding-related preferences is heterogeneous, with rewilding often being an implicit concept rather than an umbrella term encompassing related processes. Proforestation, the rewilding of forest areas, was rarely addressed in the literature, and while case-studies were found throughout the continent, they were under-represented in Eastern Europe, specifically in agricultural abandonment hotspots of the Carpathians and Baltic regions. Rather than rewilding, traditional management of the landscape was often preferred, specifically by rural, older, and farming communities. Discontent towards rewilding was primarily related to concerns around its potential impacts over the landscape such as landscape homogenisation and on economic activities within the area such as food production. The literature shows agreement on the need for better alignment between actors’ perspectives and rewilding objectives relying on stakeholder engagement, trust building, and financial support. Attention should be given to the evolution of perceptions, specifically given the dynamic nature of rewilding processes and the influence of knowledge and experiences on preferences.