Renature

Part of speech: verb

Definitions

1. To bring back the natural characteristics of a landscape To promote the recovery of ecosystems by reinstating native wildlife and plant communities To enhance the ecological balance by reviving habitats and processes
2. To return a landscape or area to its original natural condition by undoing human alterations
3. To assist in the ecological restoration of an environment by reintroducing native species and natural features

Etymology: Renature is a plain formation: the prefix "re-" ("again, back") attached to "nature." Its most useful feature is the word it was built to oppose. "Denature" already existed, meaning to make something unfit for its ordinary use or to strip it of its natural qualities, and "renature" was coined as its counterpart, so that undoing a change could be described with the same vocabulary as making it. The pairing gives the verb its sense. Denature covers the alteration, whether a landscape reshaped by roads and drainage or a substance changed from its usual state. Renature covers the reversal, restoring the land to something close to how it stood before human intervention. The verb is most often used for rivers, wetlands and streambeds, where engineers straighten channels or concrete banks and later remove the concrete and let the water meander again.

Synonyms: restore, rehabilitate, revive, reclaim, regenerate

Antonyms: degrade, destroy, pollute, damage, deteriorate