Rewilding the World: Dispatches from the Conservation Revolution » (First Edition)

Caroline Fraser’s first book, God’s Perfect Child: Living and Dying in the Christian Science Church, was selected as a New York Times Book Review Notable Book and a Los Angeles Times Book Review Best Book. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, and Outside magazine, among others. She lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

A gripping account of the environmental crusade to save the world’s most endangered species and landscapes—the last best hope for preserving our natural home

Scientists worldwide are warning of the looming extinction of thousands of species, from tigers and polar bears to rare flowers, birds, and insects. If the destruction continues, a third of all plants and animals could disappear by 2050—and with them earth’s life-support ecosystems that provide our food, water, medicine, and natural defenses against climate change.

Now Caroline Fraser offers the first definitive account of a visionary campaign to confront this crisis: rewilding. Breathtaking in scope and ambition, rewilding aims to save species by restoring habitats, reviving migration corridors, and brokering peace between people and predators. Traveling with wildlife biologists and conservationists, Fraser reports on the vast projects that are turning Europe’s former Iron Curtain into a greenbelt, creating trans-frontier Peace Parks to renew elephant routes throughout Africa, and linking protected areas from the Yukon to Mexico and beyond.

An inspiring story of scientific discovery and grassroots action, Rewilding the World offers hope for a richer, wilder future.

Publishers Weekly

Though the poisons of pollution and the encroachment of climate change are continuing environmental threats, it's the acceleration of biodiversity loss that most alarms Fraser (God's Perfect Child) in this well-sourced study of worldwide attempts to knit together enough ecosystems to keep life alive. The problem: the disappearance of nature itself—the mass extinction of species, from lumbering polar bears to fragile flowers—that could see half of all nonhuman life extinct by the end of this century. The solution: rewilding—a nascent “resurrection ecology” that designs wildlife refuges (“cores”) and, more importantly, creates corridors connecting one refuge to another so that species such as elephants, tigers and wolves can range more wildly, a key to survival. Successful rewilding in North America, the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative, has led to a rebound in mountain lion and bear populations; more unexpectedly, the demilitarized zone between South and North Korea, a narrow 155-mile-long corridor uninhabited by humans for 55 years, has seen an ecological rebirth and is now home to 67 endangered species. Though Fraser's fact-heavy prose is slow reading, her story of grassroots activism paired with the scientific is environmentally inspirational. (Dec.)

Introduction: The Predicta Moth I

Part I Cores, Corridors, and Carnivores

1 Rewilding North America

Pluie

The Trouble with Islands

Rewilding in the Real World

"A Corridor in People's Minds" 17

2 The Problem with Predators

The Green Fire

The Problem with Predators

"Buy More Cats" 43

3 Corridors in Central and South America

Categories of Concern

The Path of the Panther

Fragments of Brazil 62

4 Reconnecting the Old World

The European Green Belt

A Problem Bear

The Rebirth of the Neusiedler See

Reclaiming Romania

The Accidental Corridor 79

Part II An Africa without Fences

5 Peace Parks and Paper Parks

Corridors with Leverage

From Penitent Butchers to Paper Parks

"An Africa without Fences" 103

6 The Great Limpopo

The Elephant Problem

The People Problem

The Giriyondo Gate

The View from Cape Town 129

7 The Lubombo Transfrontier

Tembe

Breakthrough at Ndumo 156

8 Looking for KAZA

"It Looks Great on Paper"

Night Shift to Namibia

The Demon Croc

"The Elephants Are Going Home" 174

Part III Community Conservation: "Very Tricky"

9 The Conservancy Movement

Namibia's Experiment

Kenya and "the Governments Cattle"

The Cattle Ranch That Became a Conservancy

In the Northern Rangelands

Drought 203

10 The Tiger Moving Game

Royal Rhinos and Community Forests

The People's War

Goats, Guns, People

Looking for Tigers at Tiger Tops

The Cautionary Tale of Corcovado 241

Part IV "Sustainable Conservation"

11 Resurrection Ecology

From Curtis Prairie to Fresh Kills

Trade-Offs

Shifting Baselines and Pleistocene Rewilding 281

12 Costa Rica's Thousand-Year Vision

Large-Scale and Long-Term

TheParataxonomists 300

13 Regrowing Australia

Extreme Extinction

A Million Acres a Year

The Puzzle

Living in the Link 321

Conclusion: Only Connect 342

Notes 355

Acknowledgments 378

Index 383