EXPLORE WILD HOPE

Often the first and most effective strategy to healing a landscape is to pay attention to how ancestral wildlife, like native plants and animals, once shaped and strengthened these natural spaces.

In the face of extreme habitat loss, wildlife biologist Dr. Chris Jenkins puts an ambitious plan in motion to save two uniquely American reptiles — the eastern indigo snake and the gopher tortoise — and the longleaf pine forest they call home.

Christopher Jenkins has worked with Wildlife Conservation Society, the U.S. Forest Service, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. His current projects include land protection in longleaf pine ecosystems, ecology and conservation of timber rattlesnakes and the conservation of giant tortoises.

After decades of fighting to regain ownership of their ancestral lands, the Winnemem Wintu Tribe marked this year’s Indigenous People’s Day with the purchase of 1,080 acres of land along the McCloud River in northern California.

Rewilding initiatives are growing in popularity in places with degraded or disturbed landscapes whose ecosystems have lost many of their endemic species.

When beavers were hunted to extinction in England some 400 years ago, the wetlands they maintained largely vanished. Now, as part of Britain’s broader rewilding mission, conservationists are returning beavers to the landscape—and boosting biodiversity in the process.

NASA satellite imagery has recently been able to show that beavers banished to rural Idaho have made significant improvements to waterways in the region.

A century-long campaign to take down the Elwha River dams climaxed in 2011with the largest dam removal project in history. Now, a decade later, Native American scientists and colleagues are chronicling an inspiring story of ecological rebirth.

Salmon are a keystone species in the river-side forests of the Pacific Northwest, critical for cycling nutrients inland that feed predators like eagles or black bears, and in turn fueling an entire ecosystem of wildlife. There are five species native to the region – chinook, coho, chum, sockeye, and pink salmon – all that reach […]

Inspired by the success of the Elwha dam removal model, conservation advocates are building diverse coalitions to pursue additional salmon recovery projects across the Pacific Northwest region.