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"Nobody gets a
roomful of people more inspired to take on the serious conservation
challenges we face in this country than Dave Foreman does."
-Mike Matz,
Executive Director of
the Campaign for America’s Wilderness
For
Continental-Scale Conservation
Every year there are dozens of
events, conferences, workshops, and other gatherings of interest to
continental-scale conservation. It’s hard to learn about many
of these events and even harder to find information about them.
On this page, The Rewilding Institute will maintain an up-to-date
list of such conferences with click-on links for more information.
Some events are of such high importance to rewilders and other
conservationists that we will highlight them with more information;
others we will just give the name, date, location, and link.
The events listed on this page are different from public
presentations by Rewilding Institute Fellows, which are listed on
another page.
Please help us make this list
comprehensive! Send us information on conferences and other
events including web address that you think will be of interest to
our visitors.
Click here
to send such information. This list will be regularly
updated, so check it often.
 Lectures
and Appearances for Dave Foreman
"Nobody gets a roomful of people more inspired to
take on the serious conservation challenges we face in this country
than Dave Foreman does. He’s got a magnetic pull that points
everyone in the right direction, and a knowledge of wild places and
the big mammals dependent on those places that provides a crowd with
the motivation to act and act now, before it’s too late."
-Mike Matz,
Executive Director of
the
Campaign for America’s Wilderness
Schedule a Talk
by a Rewilding Institute Fellow
To schedule a talk by a Rewilding Institute
Fellow,
Click Here.
Your request will be sent to the
Fellow that you want to schedule. He or she will then make
arrangements directly with you. Currently, besides Dave
Foreman, three Rewilding Fellows are available for speaking
arrangements. Others will be added. Their biographical
sketches are on the Fellows page
(Click Here).
Below are brief summaries of
their talks suitable for publicity posters.
Background:
Humans appropriate many of the
world’s habitats and much of its biological productivity, leaving
wild nature with shrinking and increasingly fragmented habitats.
Historically, humans slaughtered large predators and ungulates for
food and protection, resulting in massive Pleistocene extinctions
particularly in North America. Today, habitat loss is the #1
cause of extinction in the U.S. and around the world.
Conservation biologists have learned a lot about how dwindling
habitats, isolated populations, the loss of top predators, and
shifts in disturbance regimes threaten native species while favoring
the spread of already abundant and widespread species. These
processes act to simplify and homogenize biotic communities,
resulting in an impoverished ‘world of wounds’ (A. Leopold) or
‘planet of weeds’ (D. Quammen).
Can humans learn to share the
Earth? We are now in a position to use our deeper
understanding of ecology to begin the vital job of restoring and
re-populating wild landscapes. These efforts range from small,
local and often intense efforts to restore particular plant and
animal populations to ‘rewilding’ – the effort to restore whole
ecosystems. Rewilding emphasizes Cores, Connectivity, and
Carnivores. Core habitats provide the larger areas needed to
protect self-sustaining populations of all native species and the
natural disturbance regimes they depend on. Connecting these
cores together via corridors and permeable landscapes allows plant
and animal species to disperse, allowing the ‘rescue effect’ to
function and protecting against downward spirals due to demographic
and/or genetic effects. Carnivores play an essential role in
checking the growth of herbivore and meso-predator populations.
Thus, Rewilding seeks to re-establish the full set of ecological
actors and interactions and embed these within habitats that are
large and robust enough to sustain biological diversity indefinitely
-- an efficient path to long-term conservation. We envision
several ‘MegaLinkages’ to expand and inter-connect existing
conservation areas. Learning to share the globe with wild
plants and animals represents the utlimate challenge for our
generation and species.
DAVID R. PARSONS
“The Importance of
Carnivores”
Dave's interests include the ecology and conservation of large
carnivores at meaningful scales. His presentations include
information on the ecological role and importance of large
carnivores (using the gray wolf and mountain lion as focal species).
Within this broad context he reviews current thinking and theories
on species interactions, ecological effectiveness, population
viability, top-down ecosystem regulation, trophic cascades, and
other current topics. Dave can tailor presentations to address
such conservation priorities as the role of wilderness in conserving
ecological and evolutionary integrity, spatial scales required for
meaningful conservation results, the importance of landscape
permeability and connectivity, and the application of these concepts
to the restoration and recovery of large carnivores. In
January 2004, Dave was invited to give the keynote address to
initiate the Rocky Mountain National Park's “Lyceum” lecture series.
Dave was the team leader for the US Fish and Wildlife Service’s
successful program to reintroduce the Mexican wolf in Arizona and
New Mexico.
Dr. DON WALLER
“From Conservation through Restoration to
Rewilding”
The Earth is hemmoraging species
in the 6th
great extinction episode of all time. If we are to understand and
heal human-caused wounds to the land we must develop both our
science and our commitment to conserve nature. Conservation
science has helped us to understand the importance of large areas,
connections among habitats, and functional populations of top
carnivores like wolves and cougar. While it remains important
to restore individual habitats and species, we must also re-connect
and rewild much larger areas if we are to sustain nature over
evolutionary time.
Dr. Waller will explore these
ideas and why our efforts to conserve habitats and species make
impressive gains in some areas while failing conspicuously in
others. He began his career in conservation biology with a
narrow focus on rare species demography and genetics but felt
compelled to expand the scope of his studies as he became aware of
the importance of landscape dynamics and ‘top-down’ predator
effects. His efforts to reform forest management policies on
biodiversity led him to co-author “Wild Forests: Conservation
biology and public policy” (Island Press).
DR. ROBERT E. “BOB” HOWARD
“Reconnecting, Restoring,
Rewilding”
The earth is in a sixth major species extinction episode, which is a
human-caused crisis. Understanding and healing the human-caused
wounds to the land requires bold vision, applied science, and a
changed land ethic. It also requires large, landscape-level
networks of wildlands.
To build such complex systems, and get them to function properly,
takes detailed blueprints or maps, and scientifically sound,
well-engineered plans. Reconnecting, restoring, and rewilding
are approaches to conserving wild nature, and suggest possibilities
for both interpretation and action.
Watch this site for more
appearances!
To inquire about
arranging a lecture by Dave Foreman or other Fellows, please
contact us.
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