The cultivated landscape as myth

The idea that European cultural landscapes are a “natural heritage” that must be preserved is scientifically untenable. They are the result of clearing, drainage, river straightening, agriculture and settlement – in other words, of permanent and often massive human intervention over centuries. This dossier systematically questions the cultural landscape narrative. The focus is not on moral judgements but on verifiable facts: origin and history, ecological impact and scientific alternatives.

What awaits you here

Cultural Landscape: Not Natural Heritage, but Human Creation: Why no Central European cultural landscape arose naturally, what the concept of “grown landscape” obscures, and what research says about the ecological origin of these landscape types.
Ecologically Impoverished Stabilisation Systems: Why cultural landscapes only exist through constant human intervention, how they systematically suppress natural ecosystem services, and what the Krefeld study reveals about the state of these landscapes.
Rewilding as a Scientific Answer: What process-oriented conservation means, how the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) studies rewilding projects in Germany, and why natural dynamics produce more resilient ecosystems than labour-intensive conservation.
European Practice and Swiss Examples: Where large rewilding areas are emerging in Europe, what the reintroduction of European bison in the Jura demonstrates, and what the European Environment Agency recommends on ecosystem restoration.
Critical Counter-Positions: What objections classical conservation raises, what the Dutch Oostvaardersplassen project teaches about the limits of rewilding, and where the ethical and political tensions lie.
What needs to change: Concrete political demands: process protection instead of maintenance conservation, greater recognition of natural dynamics, room for wilderness in landscape policy.
Talking points: Answers to the most common objections to rewilding and natural processes.
Quick links: All relevant articles, studies and dossiers at a glance.

Cultural Landscape: Not Natural Heritage, but Human Creation

When conservation associations, agricultural lobbyists or hunting associations speak of “organically evolved cultural landscapes”, it sounds like tradition, depth and ecological legitimacy. What the concept actually describes is a state of the landscape that was never natural at any point. Central European cultural landscapes (flower meadows, heathland, floodplain forests in straightened river plains, vineyards, alpine pastures) are the product of clearing, drainage, river straightening, fertilisation, grazing and settlement. None of these forms arose spontaneously.

The term “organically evolved” suggests biological origin and historical depth. In reality it means only this: old enough to be taken for granted. A straightened Töss is not “evolved”. A drained fen is not “natural”. A mountain meadow that is replaced by forest within a few years without annual mowing is not an independent ecosystem, but a state dependent on human labour. The concept of the cultural landscape as natural heritage serves a political function: it legitimises maintaining a man-made status quo by pointing to supposed naturalness.

The consequences for the nature conservation debate are far-reaching. Anyone who treats cultural landscapes as "ancient" and "natural" concludes that changing them amounts to destruction, whether through beavers, floodplain restoration, forest succession or rewilding projects. This logic turns ecological reality on its head: it is not the restoration of natural processes that is destructive. What is destructive is the suppression of natural dynamics over centuries, which has caused a 76 per cent decline in insect biomass, the disappearance of floodplain landscapes and the collapse of waterbird populations.

More on this: Hunting and biodiversity: does recreational hunting really protect nature? and Climate change, genetic diversity and recreational hunting

Ecologically Impoverished Stabilisation Systems

Cultural landscapes are not stable ecosystems. They are artificially stabilised states that depend on constant human intervention: mowing, straightening, fertilising, draining, felling. As soon as these interventions stop, ecological succession begins, the natural process of recolonisation by pioneer woody plants, shrubs and, eventually, forest. What conservationists then lament as "rewilding" is in reality the ecosystem repairing itself.

The Institute for Social-Ecological Research (ISOE) notes that in many regions landscapes have been adapted to human needs over centuries to such an extent that natural ecosystem services (the self-purification of water bodies, natural flood protection, soil formation, pollination) have been systematically pushed into the background. This comes back to haunt us: landscapes optimised for a single purpose of use are highly vulnerable to climate fluctuations, pest pressure and social change.

The 2017 Krefeld study (Hallmann et al., PLOS ONE) made headlines in this context: within 27 years, the biomass of flying insects in Germany fell by 76 per cent, and this in designated nature reserves surrounded by intensively used cultural landscapes. The finding is clear: it is not enough to preserve isolated protected islands within an ecologically impoverished matrix. The matrix itself, that is, the cultural landscape, is the problem.

More on this: Wildlife corridors and habitat connectivity and Wildlife corridors: migrating animals have a hard time

Rewilding as a Scientific Answer

Rewilding is not a romantic back-to-nature concept, but a scientifically grounded approach of modern restoration ecology. The core idea: humans create the conditions for natural processes (by removing barriers, reintroducing keystone species or abandoning intensive use) and then withdraw. The ecosystem develops on its own. Instead of the labour-intensive conservation of a historical state, a self-regulating system with its own dynamics emerges.

In its REWILD_DE research project, the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) is investigating how river restoration, natural grazing by large herbivores and coexistence with wild animals contribute to restoring biodiversity. Restoration research has shown that renaturalised river stretches often develop, within a few years, a diversity of species that managed banks fail to reach in decades. Deadwood, bank collapses, fluctuating water levels: everything that cultural landscape management combats as disorder is the foundation of productive ecosystems.

Rewilding is not the end of human responsibility, but its reformulation. Instead of asking "What state do we preserve?", the question becomes: "Which processes do we allow?" In practice, this means letting beavers perform their ecological engineering work, leaving floodplains to their natural flood cycles, tolerating deadwood in forests, and accepting wolves and lynx as regulators rather than replacing them with kill quotas.

More on this: Alternatives to recreational hunting: what really helps, without killing animals and The wolf in Switzerland: facts, politics and the limits of hunting

European Practice and Swiss Examples

Large rewilding areas are increasingly emerging across Europe. In the Polish and Belarusian parts of the Białowieża Forest, Europe's last lowland primeval forest, the achievements of natural dynamics are plain to see: a diversity of species that managed forests come nowhere near matching. In Romania, extensive wilderness areas with bison, wolf, bear and lynx are developing in the Carpathians. In the Netherlands, the Kraansvlak project is experimenting with free-living bison in dune landscapes. In Portugal, new wilderness zones are being created in the Côa region, transforming former arable land into near-natural habitats.

In Switzerland, the European bison project in the Solothurn Jura (Thal, canton of Solothurn) is the most prominent practical example. These animals perform natural landscape management functions: they open up forests by stripping bark and thrashing vegetation, creating clearings and structural diversity that benefit numerous other species. What conservationists may regard as «browsing damage» is, from an ecological perspective, a service: the creation of transition zones, clearings and deadwood. In its recommendations on the Biodiversity Strategy 2030, the European Environment Agency (EEA) states that restoring functioning ecosystems is a central response to global biodiversity loss, and that this restoration must include natural processes, not just species lists.

More on this: Geneva and the hunting ban and Wildlife management in Geneva: contraception instead of killing

Critical Counter-Positions

The rewilding concept is not without opposition, and this opposition deserves serious engagement. Classical nature conservation, particularly organisations specialising in the care of species-rich cultural landscapes, fears that natural succession will displace the open-land species that depend on extensive management. Butterfly species of nutrient-poor meadows, ground-nesting birds of farmland or certain orchid communities evolved in co-evolution with human land use. Simply leaving them to succession would destroy their habitat.

The Dutch Oostvaardersplassen project has shown how difficult it is to consistently implement the principle of «letting nature take its course». When large herbivores starved in large numbers in the fenced-in area, the project came under massive public pressure. The question of when visible animal suffering requires human intervention is ethically far from trivial. Rewilding presupposes functioning ecosystems with sufficient space and complete food webs. Small fenced-in projects without large predators and without escape routes for overpopulated herbivores are not rewilding, but a semi-open zoo.

These tensions cannot be resolved by principle alone, but only through context. In large-scale wilderness areas, floodplains, watercourses and mountain regions with sufficient space, rewilding is scientifically well founded. In small-scale, fragmented cultural landscapes under high settlement pressure, more differentiated approaches are needed: targeted management for highly specialised open-land species, combined with maximum space for natural processes wherever possible. The flaw lies not in rewilding as a concept, but in its application without regard to context.

More on this: Hunting myths: 12 claims you should scrutinise critically and Hunting in Switzerland: figures, systems and myths

What needs to change

Recognising process protection as equal to managed conservation: Swiss nature conservation policy is geared towards preserving static conditions. Ecological processes must be anchored in federal law as independent conservation objectives. What happens naturally must no longer automatically be regarded as a threat.
Removing beavers, wolves and floodplain dynamics from the «problem» framework: Beavers are Europe’s most effective river restorers. Wolves regulate ungulate populations in a way that hunting quotas structurally cannot. These animals and processes need space rather than displacement. Model motion: Template texts for hunting-critical motions
Public funds out of cultural landscape management where it is not ecologically justified: Millions flow into maintaining landscape forms that exist only because they were historically used. Funding should be guided by ecological objectives, not by the preservation of historical land-use patterns.
Rewilding pilot areas in Switzerland: With the bison project in Thal, the canton of Solothurn has taken a first step. More such projects are needed, with scientific monitoring, transparent communication and clear evaluation criteria.
Societal debate on the concept of «nature»:What counts as “natural” is politically defined in Switzerland, usually in favour of the status quo. An honest examination of how cultural landscapes came into being would put the debate about wilderness, rewilding and ecological recovery on a more objective footing.

Talking points

«Cultural landscapes have grown historically and are ecologically valuable.»
Historic does not mean natural. Cultural landscapes are the result of massive human intervention: clearing, drainage, straightening. Some of them harbour specialised species that co-evolved with extensive land management. That justifies targeted management for highly specialised open-country species. It does not justify treating the entire cultural-landscape status quo as an untouchable natural heritage.

«Rewilding destroys what has developed over centuries.»
What has emerged over the centuries amounts to interventions in natural systems. Succession, flooding and deadwood are not destruction but recovery. What happens in an abandoned mown fen (woody growth, silting up, a wealth of insects) is not an ecological loss but a structural enrichment. The term «destruction» functions here as a rhetorical device, not as an ecological finding.

«Without management interventions, rare species will disappear.»
This is true for certain highly specialised open-land species that genuinely depend on extensive management. These groups deserve targeted conservation programmes. It does not follow that managing cultural landscapes as a whole concept is ecologically necessary. The error lies in the generalisation: not every managed landscape is worth protecting, and not every instance of succession is a loss.

«Rewilding is too expensive and politically unfeasible.»
The costs of the status quo are rarely fully accounted for: subsidies for managing cultural landscapes, the cost of flood protection on channelised rivers, the damage caused by declining pollinator numbers, and the cost of water treatment in pesticide-laden catchment areas. Restored floodplains have been shown to be more cost-effective for flood protection than engineered structures. Rewilding is not an expensive ideal, but often the cheaper solution.

«Beavers and wolves only cause damage.»
Beavers create wetlands, raise the groundwater table, filter nutrients and measurably increase biodiversity along watercourses. Their “damage” is local and compensable. Wolves regulate ungulate populations, reduce browsing pressure on forests and stabilise social structures among deer species. Both species perform ecosystem functions that humans can only replace with considerable effort — and never completely.

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Our Standard

Cultural landscapes are not nature. They are man-made, historically shaped, ecologically impoverished, and can only be kept stable through permanent intervention. Anyone who treats this state as an untouchable natural heritage is not pursuing nature conservation policy but merely preserving a status quo. Modern ecology is unambiguous here: self-regulating ecosystems are more resilient, more species-rich, and in the long run more valuable to humans than landscapes frozen at a historical level of use.

This does not mean the end of cultural landscape management. It means its re-evaluation: targeted management where highly specialised species need it, and maximum space for natural processes wherever space is available. This dossier is continually updated whenever new research findings, political developments or Swiss practical examples make it necessary.

More on this topic: In our hunting dossier we bring together fact checks, analyses and background reports.