# Rewilding: Letting Nature Take Back the Land IELTS Academic Reading - 14 questions - 20 minutes - Matching features, Note completion, Multiple choice, Choosing a title Source: Written by Testmigo. ## The passage You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40, which are based on the passage below. Few ideas in conservation have spread as quickly as rewilding. Rather than managing a site for particular species, rewilders try to restore the natural processes that once shaped the land, such as grazing, predation and flooding, and then largely step back. The appeal is obvious: instead of defending small reserves against slow decline, conservationists might watch entire landscapes repair themselves. Yet the movement's most celebrated stories are frequently told with more confidence than the evidence can support. The best known comes from Yellowstone National Park in the United States. Wolves had vanished from most of the country by the early 1900s, and in 1995-97, 41 wild wolves from Canada and north-west Montana were released in the park. What followed is often described as a classic trophic cascade, in which the influence of a predator passes down through a food web: wolves reduced the number of elk, so willows and aspen, long suppressed by browsing, could at last grow. The ecologists Ripple and Beschta have been prominent in documenting this recovery. In a 2025 paper, Ripple and four co-authors reported that the average crown volume of willows in the north of the park had increased by roughly 1,500 per cent between 2001 and 2020, a response stronger than 82 per cent of those included in a global analysis of trophic cascades. Other researchers are less certain. In 2010 Kauffman, Brodie and Jules observed that the idea of wolves frightening elk away from aspen, though generally accepted and widely popularised, had never been adequately tested. Their fieldwork found that elk browsing did no less damage where the risk from wolves was higher, and that young aspen were not recovering, even with a large wolf population present. In 2022 Brice, Larsen and MacNulty identified a problem of method: because earlier surveys had measured only the tallest young aspen, they had overestimated regeneration by a factor of four to seven. Random sampling still revealed a cascade, but a weaker one. Painter, Beschta and Ripple replied that these findings actually supported the earlier work, and the dispute continues. Perhaps the most revealing evidence comes from a twenty-year experiment led by N. Thompson Hobbs, which combined artificial beaver dams with fences that kept browsing animals out. Willows grew to the heights expected of a restored landscape only where both were in place, suggesting that beavers' engineering of streams is vital to willow habitat. Hobbs and his colleagues concluded that bringing back large carnivores had failed to restore the plant communities along streams in the north of the park. Wolves clearly matter. The real question is whether returning one missing species can reverse changes that accumulated during its long absence, and the honest answer seems to be: only partly, and slowly. European projects raise different questions. At the Knepp Estate in West Sussex, England, Sir Charles Burrell decided in 2000 to sell the dairy herd and give up trying to farm 1,400 hectares of heavy clay at a profit. Influenced partly by the Dutch ecologist Frans Vera, he turned the former arable and dairy farmland over to free-roaming cattle, ponies, pigs and deer. The results are striking: the estate supports turtle doves, is a major nesting site for nightingales and has become a breeding hotspot for purple emperor butterflies, and in 2020 white storks raised chicks at Knepp, the first in the UK for 600 years. Yet Knepp is not left to itself. Its herds are kept within limits, and the estate sells around 75 tonnes of meat a year, by live weight. This is no weakness, but Knepp's wildness plainly depends on human judgement. The Oostvaardersplassen in the Netherlands shows what can happen when that judgement is withdrawn. It occupies part of a polder reclaimed from the sea in 1968 and originally intended for industrial development. Cattle, horses and red deer were brought in to keep the land open and left without winter feeding. After a run of mild winters the three species numbered 5,230; after a harsher one, in 2017-18, only 1,850 remained. Around 90 per cent of the dead animals had been shot by the state forestry service before they could starve, but images of thin horses provoked fierce public protests. In open country, migration and predators would normally help to limit such herds. The reserve had neither: it was fenced, and work on a planned corridor to a nearby forest had been stopped in 2012. In 2018 the provincial government approved a committee's advice to manage the animals' numbers. Scotland's beavers show that the social side of rewilding matters as much as the ecology. Extinct in Britain since the sixteenth century, beavers were released in Knapdale Forest, Argyll, from 2009, the first successful reintroduction of a wild mammal in the UK, while a separate population, apparently descended from escaped or illegally released animals, spread along the River Tay. Beavers create wetlands and slow the flow of water, but on productive farmland their activities can have a significant impact. When the beaver became a protected species in May 2019, shooting was permitted only under licence, and in 2021 the Scottish Government announced active support for moving beavers to suitable new areas. None of this means that rewilding is misguided. It means that its projects are experiments and ought to be presented as such. Wolves have changed Yellowstone without restoring it on their own, Knepp remains a working estate, and the Dutch reserve showed that leaving fenced animals to nature can cause suffering the public will not tolerate. The most valuable schemes will be those that state modestly what they expect, measure carefully what actually happens, and accept that people, from farmers to rangers, remain part of the systems they hope to set free. ## Questions ### Questions 27-31: Matching features Look at the following statements (Questions 27-31) and the list of researchers below. Match each statement with the correct researcher or researchers, A-E. NB You may use any letter more than once. - **A** Ripple and colleagues - **B** Kauffman, Brodie and Jules - **C** Brice, Larsen and MacNulty - **D** Hobbs and colleagues - **E** Painter, Beschta and Ripple 27. Earlier surveys made a recovery look greater than it was because of the plants they chose to measure. 28. Young trees showed no sign of recovering although many wolves were present. 29. One type of plant responded more strongly to the return of predators than in most comparable cases around the world. 30. Plants reached their expected size only when two conditions were present at the same time. 31. A widely held explanation had not previously been properly examined. ### Questions 32-36: Note completion Complete the notes below. Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer. Three rewilding projects in Europe **Knepp Estate, West Sussex** the estate had previously kept cattle for **(32)** _____ animals taken off the land each year produce about 75 tonnes of **(33)** _____ **Oostvaardersplassen, the Netherlands** site was first planned for **(34)** _____ development most of the animals that died in 2017-18 had been **(35)** _____ by foresters **Beavers in Scotland** since May 2019, beavers may be shot only with a **(36)** _____ ### Questions 37-39: Multiple choice Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D. 37. In the first paragraph, the writer suggests that rewilding - A. works best when it is applied to small reserves. - B. depends on managers intervening frequently on a site. - C. is often promoted with claims that go beyond what has been proved. - D. has now taken the place of conventional conservation. 38. What is the writer's view of the effect of wolves on Yellowstone? - A. Wolves have had little real influence on the park's plants. - B. Wolves have restored the vegetation along the park's streams. - C. The return of wolves can only partly undo the results of their long absence. - D. The experiment by Hobbs is too small to show what wolves have achieved. 39. What does the writer recommend in the final paragraph? - A. Animals in rewilding schemes should be left to nature as far as possible. - B. Schemes should make cautious predictions and record their results carefully. - C. Farmers should have less influence over rewilding projects. - D. Rewilding should be abandoned in favour of conventional methods. ### Question 40: Choosing a title Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D. 40. Choose the most suitable title for the passage. - A. How Wolves Brought Yellowstone Back to Life - B. Wild Experiments: What Rewilding Can and Cannot Promise - C. The Return of the Beaver to Britain - D. Why Europe Should Abandon Rewilding [Practice online with a timer and instant marking](https://testmigo.com/ielts/reading/rewilding-letting-nature-take-back-the-land) - [Answers and explanations](https://testmigo.com/ielts/reading/rewilding-letting-nature-take-back-the-land/answers)