3. Ecosystem Services: The Opportunities of Rewilding in Europe

Wilderness areas have been defined as large natural areas, unmodified or slightly modified, governed by natural processes, with no human intervention, infrastructure or permanent habitation present (Wild Europe 2012). Nordic mountains represent the highest proportion (28 %) of wildest areas, followed by the Pyrenees (12 %) the eastern Mediterranean islands and Alps (9 %), and British Isles (8 %) (Carver 2010). However, remnants can also be found throughout much of the continent, where anthropogenic interference has slightly altered the natural ecological conditions (Carver 2010). The definition of wilderness will depend on the metrics chosen (see Chap. 2) and, as a result, its spatial distribution can vary from one study to another. Currently, there are several maps on potential wilderness in Europe. Here we chose to use Carver’s (2010) quality wilderness index.

Wild ecosystems provide a wide range of ecosystem services. They are stable and self-sustainable, able to maintain their structure, function and resilience over time (Costanza and Mageau 1999). They play an important role in protecting services such as, air quality, freshwater provision, and supporting wildlife, including charismatic species, such as bisons and bears, that are reliant on wilderness areas (Russo 2006; see Chap. 9). Wild ecosystems also have the capacity to supply higher quality services than other types of systems. For example, there is higher carbon storage capacity in undisturbed forest, peatland and wetland (Schils et al. 2008), subsequently providing additional environmental benefits (e.g. biodiversity, water storage and water quality). Moreover, wilderness areas provide a range of social and economic benefits. Several programs have integrated the use of wild areas to address urban issues such as youth at risk, youth development and rehabilitation (Hill 2007), and recognized it as a cost-effective form of healthcare. In addition, wilderness inspires educational programs (e.g. Chap. 10). Wilderness areas also provide spiritual benefits, such as, solitude, places of inspiration, a calm environment, and recreation/tourism (Ewert et al. 2011; Heintzman 2013). These cultural services can give birth to employment opportunities and thus generate income. For example, the Oulanka National Park in Finland brings 14 million € per year to the local economy and employs 183 individuals (Huhtala et al. 2010).

We used Carver’s (2010) wilderness quality map and the same quantile approach described earlier in Sect. 3.2, to produce a gradient of wilderness quality with qualitative values ranging between 1 and 4 (4 meaning the highest wilderness quantile and high supply of ecosystem services). We then grouped the ecosystem services into provisioning, regulating, and cultural services and followed the same splitting approach for each group of services. The ecosystem services maps were then overlaid with the wilderness map. To determine the relationship between gradients of both ecosystem services supply and wilderness quality, we display the overlay of high and low wilderness with high and low supply of ecosystem services (Fig. 3.2a, b, c and d). Furthermore, we used the projections of the CLUE model (Verburg and Overmars 2009) to assess the potential change in the provision of ecosystem services with scenarios of land abandonment and rewilding in Europe for 2030. We considered as potential land abandonment and rewilding the cells classified as arable land, pasture, irrigated arable land, permanent crops in 2000 and classified in 2030 in all four EURURALIS scenarios as (semi)-natural vegetation, forest, recently abandoned arable land and recently abandoned pasture land. For quantitative comparisons, we calculated the mean provision of ecosystem service (per km²) in agricultural areas (based on the 2000 land use map, in Verburg and Overmars 2009), in the top 5 % high quality wilderness, and in the areas currently under agricultural use but projected to become abandoned by 2030, in the Iberian Peninsula (Table 3.2). Differences between the distributions of the mean ecosystem service values for each type of land-use were assessed using a Kruskal-Wallis test. Finally, we calculated the ratio between the average supply of each indicator in either the top 5 % wilderness areas and in agricultural areas relative to the areas projected to be abandoned. All mapping and data extraction were done using ArcGIS version 10.3, while the statistical analysis was done using R version 2.15.3.

Some high wilderness areas are associated to regions supplying high ecosystem services, particularly in mountain regions (Fig. 3.2a). As expected, the overlay of provisioning services and wilderness (Fig. 3.2b) exhibits relatively large areas of high supply of services and low wilderness (e.g. in France, Benelux and Germany), along with areas of low service supply and high wilderness (e.g. Northern Scandinavia). This is not surprising since wilderness areas are typically associated with low to no extraction of natural resources. There are nonetheless high provisioning services in some areas of high wilderness quality, mainly associated to mountain regions (e.g. some areas of the Alps and Apennines). This can be due to the occurrence of large quantities of resources for some provisioning services (i.e. timber and freshwater) in mountain regions, which still happen to be wilder than the rest of Europe.

The spatial distribution of wilderness coincides more with regulating services than with provisioning services (Fig. 3.2c). Areas of Europe containing both high supply of services and high degrees of wilderness include mountainous areas in Northern Iberia, Austria, and Italy. Most of the continent is still represented by areas of both low regulating services and low wilderness (e.g. Eastern UK, Poland), which also coincides with agricultural areas (Fig. 3.1b). Interestingly, several areas of high supply of regulating services and low wilderness also exist (Western France and Ireland).

Finally, for recreational services (Fig. 3.2d), we found a predominance of either areas of low service supply and low wilderness, or areas of high wilderness and high service supply, suggesting this is the category of services most strongly associated with wilderness. However there are some areas of low wilderness and high service supply or areas with high wilderness but low recreation potential. Typically, the flow of recreational services is calculated as the product between the capacity of an area to supply recreational services and the accessibility of this area (Maes et al. 2011). As a result, it can occur that an ecosystem would be of extreme beauty or wilderness quality but not accessible, leading to a low flow of recreation and other cultural services, or that an area would be less natural but still be an important cultural landscape that is easily accessible.

Taken as a whole, regulating and cultural services are often associated to high wilderness areas (Fig. 3.2b and c), particularly mountain systems. Mountain ecosystems cover approximately 41 % of Europe’s territory, providing various services due to their multifunctionality. Mountains are “water towers” as they provide water for multiple uses, including irrigation, human consumption, and hydropower (Viviroli et al. 2007). Mountain systems supply cultural services, holding spiritual value to local inhabitants, and are recreation and ecotourism attractions (Price et al. 1997). In mountain systems there is a high proportion of habitat types with favorable conservation status (EEA 2010b), playing a key role in supplying many ecosystem services and maintaining ecological processes (Harrison et al. 2010). Forests make up 41 % of mountain systems (Körner et al. 2005) and can be regulators of natural disasters as the soils of mature forests have high infiltration rate, thus reducing peak flows and floods (Maes et al. 2009). Forests also provide a range of services such as carbon sequestration, air quality regulation, timber for fuelwood and non-timber products (game and medicinal plants), and climate regulation (Harrison et al. 2010; Maes et al. 2012b). Peatlands store large quantities of carbon and have played a fundamental role in climate regulation and are critical for water regulation. Grasslands are the habitat of a large number of species, such as wild pollinators (Kremen et al. 2002), which makes them essential in underpinning biodiversity and ecosystem services. Finally, mountains are also hotspots of endemism. In Europe, the highest number of endemic species can be found in the Alps and the Pyrenees (Väre et al. 2003).

Here we estimate the biophysical potential of rewilding to produce benefits, by comparing ecosystem services in the top 5 % wilderness areas with the current supply of ecosystem services in all agricultural areas and in agricultural areas that are projected to be abandoned. We restrict the analysis to the scale of the Iberian Peninsula to control for the large bioclimatic variability across Europe.

There are significant differences in the supply of most ecosystem services between the different land use categories (Table 3.2). HANPP values are significantly higher in agricultural areas than in both land projected to be abandoned and, as expected, in the top 5 % wilderness areas. We thus hypothesize that food production will decrease with the contraction of the agricultural area, although the decrease will be limited because of the lower agricultural productivity of those areas. Several services present higher values for the average supply of the studied indicators in the top 5 % wilderness areas (Table 3.2). The deposition velocity of NOx, an indicator of air quality, depends on the height of the vegetation and the leaf area index, and tends to be much higher in forested areas (Maes et al. 2011), hence, the higher values in the top 5 % wilderness (Table 3.2). The recreation potential is also higher in wilderness areas than in the other land-uses.

Most ecosystem services exhibit higher values in the areas to be abandoned than in other agricultural areas (Fig. 3.3a). We can thus speculate that intensifying agriculture in the areas projected to be abandoned would lead to an overall decrease in the supply of ecosystem services in these areas. On the other hand, rewilding these areas would bring improvements in some ecosystem services, such as nitrogen retention and recreation, and decreases in others (Fig. 3.3b). These inferences have to be interpreted with care as we are making several simplifying assumptions and ecosystem services depend on other biophysical variables besides land cover and land use. This is for instance the case for freshwater supply, which depends on the aboveground net precipitation water in catchments and on the area and flows of the freshwater areas (Maes et al. 2011).

In Lowland England, studies on different land use management options have shown that the cost and benefits of changes in ecosystem services from rewilding outweigh those from arable and dairy farming (NERC 2012). In the Upland UK estimates show that managing the land for carbon storage and sequestration through the restoration of peatlands may be more profitable than pastoral activities (Reed et al. 2013). Peatlands, in Scotland, have been valued between 49 million € and 196 € per annum for carbon sequestration (McMorran et al. 2006).

Forest regeneration will also provide major increases in carbon sequestration. It has been estimated that within the Natura 2000 network, commercial and wild forest habitats generate the highest carbon value estimated at 318.3 € and 610.1 billion €, in 2010 followed by grassland systems ranging between 105.6 € and 196.5 billion € (ten Brink et al. 2011). In the Carpathians, the protection of old growth forest is expected to generate 26 million € through carbon offsets (ten Brink et al. 2011). In the Hoge Veluwe Forest, a protected area of the Netherlands, total economic benefit generated by forests is 2000 € ha/year, for the following services: wood production, supply of game, groundwater recharge, carbon sequestration, air filtration, recreation and nature conservation. This value is calculated to be three times higher than adjacent agricultural land (Hein 2011).

Although there is still a lack of available information on the economic value of water purification at the EU level, studies suggest that cities such as Berlin, Vienna, Oslo, and Munich benefit from the natural treatment from ecosystems in protected and non protected areas, with annual economic benefits ranging between 7 € and 16 million € for water purification and 12 € and 91 million € for water provision per city (ten Brink et al. 2011). In the archipelago of the Azores, the restoration of pastures to native forests would result in an economic benefit of 110 € thousand per year from water purification (Cruz and Benedicto 2009). These examples, though limited, demonstrate that protecting and restoring natural vegetation is of economic benefit, and could contribute to achieve the goals of the Water Framework Directive.

Floodplains (wetlands) are also important ecosystems for water cycle regulation, acting as natural sponges, they retain water in river basins, slowly releasing the water down river and into groundwater. Moreover, they play a fundamental role in filtering out pollutants and are home to much wildlife. Restoring the function of floodplains in EU countries could save approximately 1.4 billion € of treatment costs for water purification and reduce annual cost of flood damage, currently at 6.4 billion € and expected to increase (Feyen and Watkiss 2011). Of course, this type of ecosystem restoration has initial costs. The Danube Basin restoration project estimates that the recovery of 100,000 ha, would cost 500,000 €/km², i.e. an investment of 500 million €. However, this value is still estimated to be much lower than the costs associated to damage control and the improvement of dykes (WWF 2010).

Degradation of natural ecosystems has also been linked to the intensification of other natural hazards (Dudley et al. 2010). For example, in the Swiss Alps the protection of old forests contribute to disaster prevention (e.g. avalanches and landslides) and have been analyzed at a value of 1.6–2.8 billion € per year (IPCDR 2010). Additionally, the role of European pristine scrublands and Belgian grasslands against soil erosion was valued at 44.5 €/ha (Kettunen et al. 2012).

Economic benefits from non-extractive activities such as nature tourism and recreation boost local and regional economies, providing income and employment to communities and private landholders who face limited alternative livelihoods, especially in a context of rural depopulation of marginal areas (Brown et al. 2011; McMorran et al. 2006). Furthermore, the aims of eco-tourism are closely associated with biodiversity conservation. Through the promotion of rewilding efforts, there will be an increase in the connectivity of landscapes, creating an opportunity for the expansion of large mammals and other species (Russo 2006), and indirectly increasing tourism while generating economic benefits to local communities.

Presently, eco-tourism is the fastest growing component sector in tourism (Gössling 2000). Overall, tourism is the largest global economic sector accounting for $ 3.6 trillion in economic activity and eco-tourism has constantly increased 20–30 % per year since the early 1990’s (Bishop et al. 2008). Eco-tourism is defined by the International Ecotourism Society as the responsible visiting to natural areas that conserves the environment and improves the well-being of local people. For instance, in Zarnesti, Romania, a small community increased their total local revenue from 140,000 € in 2001 to 260,000 € in 2002 through eco-tourism programmes (CLCP 2000).

In particular, wildlife areas appeal to a large spectrum of tourists given the presence of charismatic species and other rare or attractive species. For example the reintroduction of wolves in the Yellowstone National Park has attracted additional tourists, generating economic and social benefits estimated at US$ 6–9 million per year (Donlan et al. 2006). The reintroduction of ungulates and large carnivores in the Majella and the Retezat National Park in Italy and Romania, respectively, has also contributed to the local economy (Kun and van der Donk 2006). In Scotland, tourism from wild landscapes is one of the most important economic sectors, contributing 1.6 billion € annually, to the country’s economy. In particular, recreation opportunities, such as wildlife watching and hillwalking, generate 65 million € and support 39,000 full time jobs (Brown et al. 2011; Bryden et al. 2010). The reintroduction of the beaver can potentially generate an additional £ 2 million per year into the local Scottish economy through eco-tourism (Campbell et al. 2007). In addition to its potential economic benefits, beaver dams are considered to have a positive impact on river systems by increasing both invertebrate and fish populations (Kemp et al. 2010).

The Natura 2000 network further exemplifies how biodiversity can be protected while generating benefits. Annually, the gross socio-economic and co-benefits (social and environmental) from the Natura 2000 network range between 223 billion € and 314 billion €, representing between 2 and 3 % of EU’s GDP (ten Brink et al. 2011). This figure contrasts with the annual investment in the Natura 2000 network, estimated at 5.8 billion € while providing 8 million (FTE) jobs (Gantolier et al. 2010).