EXPLORE WILD HOPE

Pete Cooper is a wilding ecologist at the Derek Gow Consultancy, where he works on a variety of species reintroduction and rewilding projects. He leads a project trialing the captive breeding and reintroduction of glowworms, as well as working closely on reintroduction projects for other species including the harvest mouse, wildcat and turtle dove.

Derek Gow is a farmer, nature conservationist, and the author of Bringing Back the Beaver. He lives on a 300-acre farm on the Devon/Cornwall border, which he is in the process of rewilding. Derek has played a significant role in the reintroduction of the Eurasian beaver, the water vole and the white stork in England.

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.

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.

Dogs are often thought of as humans’ best friends. But in Australia, they’re partnering with people to save other species from grave threats to the island continent’s unique fauna.

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

Eurasian beavers were driven extinct in Britain centuries ago. But now these preeminent ecosystem engineers are back—charming many Britons, perturbing others, and all the while stimulating a healthy debate about whether the island nation is ready to embrace a wilder future.  

Animals that transform their surroundings — "ecosystem engineers” — build, dig, and even poop new environments into existence, creating homes for themselves and others.

Beavers are a wonder to behold. They are ecosystem engineers–able to modify their habitats and change landscapes in ways that cultivate biodiversity and create wetlands. That ability makes them keystone species–they have an outsize influence on their ecosystems and the species they live with. But as a species, they also need help and protection, as […]