Authors: Gamborg, Christian; Palmer, Clare ;Jensen, Frank Søndergaard;Sandøe, Peter;

Rewilding is enjoying growing traction in conservation biology and is now receiving considerable public attention. In this paper, we will focus on a specific form of rewilding, ‘translocation rewilding’, in a Danish context. Here, domesticated larger grazing animals such as horses and cattle are settled in new so-called National Nature Parks (NNP), which are fenced areas of 5–30 km2, to facilitate improvements to the ecosystem. Supplementary feeding is not practised, but animals can be taken out. Two questions in relation to the case are explored: how are the animals translocated to the area viewed: as wild, tame or something in between? What aspects of animal welfare are considered important, and how does this influence an overall judgment of NNP and translocation rewilding? Debates between supporters (e.g. conservation biologists) and opponents (e.g. veterinarians) of NNPs have become harsh and rather intractable. We suggest that two underlying causes of disagreement are, first, a stress on different aspects of animal welfare (e.g. absence of suffering vs natural living) and assessing animals at different levels (e.g. individual vs herd level). We inform the discussion by drawing on a study of where the Danish population stands on these issues, using a representative sample, (n=5000).