Rewilding North America: A Vision for Conservation in the 21st Century

by Dave Foreman

Dave Foreman is one of North America's most creative and effective conservation leaders, an outspoken proponent of protecting and restoring the earth's wildness, and a visionary thinker. Over the past 30 years, he has helped set direction for some of our most influential conservation organizations, served as editor and publisher of key conservation journals, and shared with readers his unique style and outlook in widely acclaimed books including The Big Outside and Confessions of an Eco-Warrior.
In Rewilding North America, Dave Foreman takes on arguably the biggest ecological threat of our time: the global extinction crisis. He not only explains the problem in clear and powerful terms, but also offers a bold, hopeful, scientifically credible, and practically achievable solution.
Foreman begins by setting out the specific evidence that a mass extinction is happening and analyzes how humans are causing it. Adapting Aldo Leopold's idea of ecological wounds, he details human impacts on species survival in seven categories, including direct killing, habitat loss and fragmentation, exotic species, and climate change. Foreman describes recent discoveries in conservation biology that call for wildlands networks instead of isolated protected areas, and, reviewing the history of protected areas, shows how wildlands networks are a logical next step for the conservation movement. The final section describes specific approaches for designing such networks (based on the work of the Wildlands Project, an organization Foreman helped to found) and offers concrete and workable reforms for establishing them. The author closes with an inspiring and empowering call to action for scientists andactivists alike.
Rewilding North America offers both a vision and a strategy for reconnecting, restoring, and rewilding the North American continent, and is an essential guidebook for anyone concerned with the future of life on earth.

Genres: Conservation, Environment, Nonfiction, Ecology, Science, Biology

312 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2004

Reviews

[Martin Rowe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Foreman's vision of a rewilded North America is compelling, well-researched, evocatively written, and passionately and occasionally wittily framed. Foreman's love of and long engagement with the wild places of North America shines through, and I found his understanding of the history of conservation biology and its sometimes contested relationship with the broader (amateur) conservation movement interesting and instructive. As someone who's been engaged with environmentalism and animal advocacy for more than two decades, I found his vision of introducing top-chain predators, removing vehicles and livestock and roads, and encouraging a holistic and ecosystemic rewilding rather than piecemeal corridors very persuasive. This book is now over a decade old, and I would encourage Island Press to reissue a revised version, which examines how rewilding might serve as a means of mitigating the worst effects of climate change.

[Dylan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good summary of arguments for conserving biological diversity through wildlife and proposed methods of doing it. Particularly useful for me was a good explanation of the often unintuitive ways that healthy populations of large carnivores can promote diversity. My one criticism is that Foreman sometimes uses incendiary language that would be counterproductive for persuading skeptical readers.

[Kelsey Ketch · Rating 3 out of 5]

Review to come.