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"To be effective, conservation must be guided by a vision that is bold, scientifically credible, practically achievable, and hopeful."
-Dave Foreman

A Welcome Message from Dave Foreman...

There is no way to sugarcoat it…

Earth is in the throes of a mass extinction event that is caused solely by the population explosion of six-and-a-half billion human beings.

If Nature lovers hope to minimize or stop The Big Killing, we must be bold and think big: Big in terms of space, time, and vision.

The Rewilding Institute is committed to doing whatever we can to stop The Big Killing. Our work is grounded in traditional conservation values—that Nature and species have inherent worth—and in recognition that strictly protected areas are the best tool to defend and restore wild Nature.

We stress the vital role of large carnivores in maintaining and restoring ecological health and the need for a continental-scale approach to conservation in North America.

The Rewilding Website is a service provided to Nature lovers and the conservation community by The Rewilding Institute. It is designed to educate, connect, and activate conservationists by explaining key conservation concepts and giving access to essential resources: groups, books, websites, papers, and so on.

The Rewilding Institute Mission
To develop and promote the ideas and strategies to advance continental-scale conservation in North America, particularly the need for large carnivores and a permeable landscape for their movement, and to offer a bold, scientifically-credible, practically achievable, and hopeful vision for the future of wild Nature and human civilization in North America.

Rewilding Website Mission
The Rewilding Institute Website is the essential source of information about the integration of traditional wildlife and wildlands conservation with conservation biology to advance landscape-scale conservation.  It provides explanations of key concepts with downloadable documents and links to important papers, essential books, and many groups working on various continental-scale conservation initiatives in North America. Click here for more about the Rewilding Website.

About The Rewilding Institute…

Wild Nature in North America is attacked on two fronts and threatened on a third. The last wild places are being invaded and ravaged by logging, livestock grazing, off-road vehicles, road building, market hunting and fishing, mining, energy exploitation, and a host of other assaults by governments, industry, and thrill-seekers. The greatest remaining wildernesses in North America are imperiled by 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. The same forces thwart effective conservation actions in Canada.

Third, conservationists and conservation groups are being softened by some of our leaders, consultants, and funders who do not share our love for wild Nature or our steadfast support for protected areas.

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 believes that for conservation on all levels to be more effective, it must be guided by a grand conservation vision, which 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 importance of strict protected areas

• 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

• Biocentric values: we strive to protect and restore wild Nature and wild species for their own sake, not just because they are of use to humans

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.

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.

My new book, Rewilding North America: A Vision for 21st Century Conservation, covers these points and is for sale through the website. Get your signed copy of Rewilding North America here.
-Dave Foreman