Rewilding Rejects the We're-So-Special Exceptionalism

Personal Perspective: We can get over ourselves and rewild before it’s too late.

Updated February 6, 2026 | Reviewed by Lybi Ma

"Rewilding is largely a matter of humans getting out of the way and letting nature take charge."— Graham Lawton "

It’s common knowledge that we are losing species and habitats at an unprecedented rate in a geological epoch known as the Anthropocene—the age of humanity. It’s essential to rewild the world before it’s too late. What does this mean: Before it’s too late ? Generally speaking, as a species, humans don’t do well with points of no return . Our active brains allow us to convince ourselves that even if things don’t work out today, we always have tomorrow. What happens when the promise of tomorrow is undone by today's inaction? Is our intelligence a gift or a burden?

Removing ourselves from this tapestry is less an emancipation from nature and more a manipulation of variables—a complex puzzle—too numerous and too complex for us to successfully take apart and put back together. I call this the Humpty-Dumpty phenomenon. Nature is the greatest architect, and to pretend otherwise is hubris, pure and simple. Rather than view the natural world as a problem to be solved, we should view it as the lifeboat keeping us afloat.

Yet, on we press, in a seemingly never-ending quest to extricate ourselves from the wild, animated by the misguided belief that we must dominate or be dominated. And this quest—this so-called age of humanity —is anything but humane. It’s extremely violent and would be better termed the rage of inhumanity .

Indeed, as wild animals enter urban areas—places that were once their homes—there is more to celebrate than fear . With hope, these individuals will help people bridge the empathy gap and learn to apply the same caring and compassion they feel for their companion animals (aka pets ) to their new wild neighbors (aka wildlife), who are as rightfully deserving of being here as any of us. The growing interdisciplinary and international field of compassionate conservation mandates that all individuals are stakeholders, and is based on the principles of:

A rewilding mindset of empathy, feelings, thoughts, and compassionate action

In Rewilding Our Hearts , I asked people to become re-enchanted with the natural world, to act from the inside out, and to allow their hearts to guide them in dissolving false boundaries so they could truly connect with both nature and themselves. By personally rewilding, undoing the unwilding brought about by our obsessive need to dominate, and reconnecting, people will become re-enchanted with nature, overcome negativity, and see the world in more positive ways.

Personal rewilding means rehabilitating our hearts and tapping into our biophilic inclinations. Reawakening these long-dormant parts of ourselves can lead to an emotional affinity for and reconnection to nature.

Rewilding our hearts is a dynamic, intimate process that fosters corridors of coexistence and compassion for animals and their homes while facilitating corridors in ourselves that connect our hearts and minds, our caring and awareness. In turn, these connections, or reconnections, can help us make wiser choices and pursue heartfelt actions that improve the lives of all beings.

Rewilding demands humility in how we interact with other animals and the places they call home. We need to be humble in the face of what the Romantic poets of the late eighteenth century referred to as nature’s sublimity —its awesomeness. We should treat nature as we would a dear friend whose welfare matters for its own sake and even more so because it matters for our sake, too.

Personal rewilding is also about nurturing joy, awe , and wonder and tapping into our biophilic tendencies. It's about being nice, kind, compassionate, empathic , and harnessing our inborn goodness and optimism . It's also a guide for action, using our hearts (feelings), heads (thoughts), and hands and bodies to do something greater than ourselves. As a social movement, it tells us to be proactive, positive, persistent, patient, peaceful, practical, powerful, passionate, playful, present, principled, proud, and polite , what I call the 13 Ps of rewilding.

One of my favorite bumper stickers is “Nature Bats Last.” We can try to outrun and outsmart nature, but in the end, nature always wins. Will we go to bat for nature or allow ourselves to become a casualty of our hubris? Worse yet, will we continue to be the one species whose all-consuming and self-centered ways of life doom all other species and individuals to perish? I certainly hope not.

As much as we do to safeguard and preserve our homes and their dazzling inhabitants, now is no time for self-congratulation and patting ourselves on the back for a job well done. We need to take compassionate action to right our many wrongs before it is too late for other animals and ourselves. How we choose to live our lives decides how all other species get to live theirs.

Rewilding is a mindset. It reflects the desire to (re)connect intimately with all animals and landscapes in ways that dissolve borders. Rewilding means appreciating, respecting, and accepting other beings and landscapes for who or what they are, not for who or what we want them to be. It means rejoicing in the personal connections we establish and so desperately need. It's the inarguable realization that if we are going to make the world a better place now and for future generations, personal rewilding is the way to get there.

If we allow it to be so, these shared feelings can serve as a “social super glue” that will keep us together, move us forward, and allow us to increase our compassion footprint. This broader view of rewilding brings us all together.

I thank Marlon H. Reis, First Gentleman of Colorado, for help with this piece.

Creative Commons .
Currently, while many people talk about how all individuals matter, and how all individuals must work together, in the end, human interests often take precedence over those of our nonhuman fellow travelers. The severity of this imbalance increases day by day. Personal rewilding and compassionate conservation can change how we go about ‘business as usual’, reversing these destructive trends and coming to the rescue of one and all.

Bekoff, Marc. The Animal Manifesto, Six Reasons For Expanding Our Compassion Foot print . New World Library, 2010; Rewilding Our Hearts: Building Pathways of Compassion and Coexistence, New World Library, 2014; The Emotional Lives of Animals: A Leading Scientist Explores Animal Joy, Sorrow, and Empathy ― and Why They Matter . New World Library, 2024.

Hawkins, Sally, et al. (editors) Routledge Handbook of Rewilding . Routledge, 2022. (A comprehensive, cross-disciplinary, and transformational encyclopedia of rewilding from a strong global perspective.)

Nelson, Felicity. Empathetic People Seem to Have A Special Ability When It Comes to Animals. ScienceAlert, December 26, 2022.

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Marc Bekoff, Ph.D., is professor emeritus of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

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This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.