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Wild Nature in North America is attacked on two fronts. The last
wild places are threatened by logging, livestock grazing, off-road
vehicles, road building, mining, energy exploitation, and a host
of other assaults by governments and industry. The greatest remaining
wildernesses in North America are threatened in this juggernaut,
even in the Arctic.
The
second front attacking wild Nature is the coordinated effort to
tear down over a century of bipartisan conservation law, policy,
and tradition in the United States. This assault is directed by
extractive industry, anticonservation extremists, and politicians
guided by an ideology that exalts corporate profits and anarchistic
business practices above all else.
Conservationists throughout North America, including many working
for government agencies, are as worried as they have ever been.
And with good cause.
The
Rewilding Institute (TRI) is a 501(c)3 conservation think tank dedicated
to the development and promotion of ideas and strategies to advance
continental-scale conservation in North America and to combat the
extinction crisis.
Think-tank though it may be, The Rewilding Institute
is engaged in and dedicated to activist conservation work with real
successes on the ground. Dave Foreman and the Board of Directors
of the Wildlands Project established the Rewilding Institute in
August 2003 as an independent organization. Michael Soulè,
a cofounder of the Wildlands Project, is the Senior Science Fellow
for The Rewilding Institute.
The
Rewilding Institute believes that for conservation at all levels
to be more effective, it must be guided by a grand conservation
vision, that is at once bold, scientifically-credible, practically
achievable, and HOPEFUL. Without a vision, without hope, Nature
lovers become distraught, depressed, and without the spark to fight
effectively.
The
concepts, ideas, and strategies behind continental conservation
and a hopeful vision used by The Rewilding Institute are:
- The need for continental-scale
conservation
- The vital role large carnivores
play in maintaining or restoring ecological health
- Ecologically effective
populations of large carnivores and other highly interactive species
as the goal of species recovery plans and management
- Rewilding (large carnivores,
large wild core habitats, and landscape permeability between cores)
as an overarching conservation strategy
- Landscape permeability
(wildlife movement connectivity) as an underlying principle of
public land management
- Four Continental MegaLinkages
(Pacific, Spine of the Continent, Atlantic, and Arctic-Boreal)
as the foundation for rewilding North America
- Selection and design of
Wilderness Areas and other protected areas based on ecological
principles
- Need to better integrate
continental-scale conservation into day-to-day conservation work
- The importance of a hopeful
vision underlying conservation campaigns
As
we build The Rewilding Institute web site, we will include discussion
of these points with links to key scientific articles explaining
them and links to other conservation groups working on different
aspects of continental-scale conservation.
Rewilding News
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