Authors: Mikolajczak, Katarzyna; Jones, Nikoleta;Sandom, Christopher J.;Wynne-Jones, Sophie ;Beardsall, Antonia;Burgelman, Suzanna ;Ellam, Lucy ;Wheeler, Helen;

As an increasingly common conservation approach, rewilding has the potential to profoundly change landscapes and people-nature relations. Farmers are some of the key stakeholders who stand to be affected by and to influence the trajectory of rewilding initiatives. Using thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews with 36 farmers and farming representatives in England, we show that the diversity of farmers' attitudes towards common rewilding scenarios (beaver release, farm-level rewilding, and landscape-scale rewilding) can be understood through the prism of perceptions on five core issues. These include 1) the perceived need for restoration action, 2) the ecological effectiveness of rewilding, 3) rewilding's compatibility with ensuring food security, 4) rewilding's compatibility with rural lifestyles, livelihoods and economies, and 5) multidimensional justice of rewilding initiatives. Farmers' perceptions on these issues are influenced by individual and collective values, environmental beliefs, and the perceived social and ecological impacts of rewilding initiatives. Diverse perceptions result in a range of attitudes, from enthusiastic to strongly opposed. We argue that where opposition is based on common, value-based preferences, e.g. for 'tidy' landscapes, accommodating for them to increase rewilding's acceptability risks compromising rewilding's own goals, whereas pursuing rewilding ambitions that clash with those values may risk social conflicts.