rewild

Verb

rewild (third-person singular simple present rewilds, present participle rewilding, simple past and past participle rewilded)

1. To return an area to a more wild state, especially to repopulate it with wild animals that have become extirpated.
   • Told in the form of a personal journey, Paul Martin's book covers his own boyhood bird-watching, graduate work in evolutionary biology, and a distinguished academic career; it culminates in a daring plan to truly rewild North America.2005, Paul Schultz Martin, Twilight of the Mammoths: Ice Age Extinctions and the Rewilding of America, University of California Press, →ISBN, page XIII
   • Some scientists and others now argue that we should be bringing some of those ghosts back, part of a controversial movement to “rewild” parts of Europe and North America, whether by reintroducing extant species, reviving extinct ones, or attempting to reconstruct ecosystems.2016 January 26, John Carey, “Core Concept: Rewilding”, in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, →DOI, pages 806–808