As we enter the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration (2021–2030) and address the urgent need to protect and restore ecosystems and their ecological functions at large scales, rewilding has been brought into the limelight. Interest in this discipline is thus increasing, with a large number of conceptual scientific papers published in recent years. Increasing enthusiasm has led to discussions and debates in the scientific community about the differences between ecological restoration and rewilding. The main goal of this review is to compare and clarify the position of each field. Our results show that despite some differences (e.g. top-down versus bottom-up and functional versus taxonomic approaches) and notably with distinct goals – recovery of a defined historically determined target ecosystem versus recovery of natural processes with often no target endpoint – ecological restoration and rewilding have a common scope: the recovery of ecosystems following anthropogenic degradation. The goals of ecological restoration and rewilding have expanded with the progress of each field. However, it is unclear whether there is a paradigm shift with ecological restoration moving towards rewilding or vice versa. We underline the complementarity in time and in space of ecological restoration and rewilding. To conclude, we argue that reconciliation of these two fields of nature conservation to ensure complementarity could create a synergy to achieve their common scope.

中文翻译：

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生态恢复和野化：两种具有互补目标的方法？

随着我们进入联合国生态系统恢复十年（2021-2030）并解决大规模保护和恢复生态系统及其生态功能的迫切需要，野化已成为人们关注的焦点。因此，人们对这一学科的兴趣与日俱增，近年来发表了大量概念性科学论文。日益高涨的热情引发了科学界关于生态恢复和野化之间差异的讨论和辩论。本次审查的主要目的是比较和明确各个领域的地位。我们的结果表明，尽管存在一些差异（例如自上而下与自下而上以及功能与分类学方法），并且特别是具有不同的目标 - 恢复定义的历史确定的目标生态系统与恢复通常没有目标终点的自然过程 - 生态恢复和野化有一个共同的范围：人为退化后生态系统的恢复。生态恢复和野化的目标随着各个领域的进步而不断扩大。然而，尚不清楚生态恢复是否会向野化方向转变，反之亦然。我们强调生态恢复和野化在时间和空间上的互补性。总之，我们认为，协调这两个自然保护领域以确保互补性可以产生协同作用，以实现其共同范围。