EXPLORE WILD HOPE

Sea otters are back, and their return is a breath of fresh air for the waters of Monterey Bay.

The Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation has been landless ever since they suffered the worst massacre in U.S. history in 1863. Over 150 years later, the Tribe has purchased their ancestral homeland with a vision to return it back to nature.

Building beaver dam analogs is restoring wetlands, slowing water flow, and creating the conditions needed for wildlife to return.

With its growing population and wealth of wildlife, India is at the forefront of creative, community-based solutions to human-wildlife conflict.

About 21.5 million acres of the Western United States are nationally protected, and thousands are being managed or co-managed by Native American tribes reclaiming ancestral relationships with native plants and animals. It’s no surprise, then, that Wild Hope hit a rich vein of conservation stories grounded in the West. 

In the northeastern part of India, the population of greater adjutant stork had declined to just 115 birds — until biologist Purnima Devi Barman launched a grassroots effort to do bring the species back from the brink.

To help protect an endangered stork, biologist Purnima Devi Barman provided looms and training to local women to create textiles and clothes that feature the bird.

The greater adjutant stork is one of the largest — and rarest — storks on earth. But locals in one of their last strongholds in Assam, India considered them to be a bad omen until Purnima Devi Barman revitalized their public image.

Black-footed ferrets nearly went extinct several times in the 20th century. Today, the current largest threat to their survival is a non-native disease called sylvatic plague.

When plowing, poisoning, and non-native plague wiped out nearly 95% of prairie dogs, the ecosystem collapsed around them. Today, conservationists control the disease by providing vaccine-laden treats called “Fip Bits” to help the prairie dogs — and those that depend on them — finally rebound!