Dive into the best scientific studies, poetic essays, and historic treatises supporting wilderness and protection of wildlands. This canon showcases the reasons we do what we do. From hard evidence of wilderness’s tangible benefits, to reflective and spiritual writings on the intrinsic value of nature, the reasons to rewild just keep growing the closer we look.
Research and Studies
- Determining the Size of Eastern Forest Reserves by Mark Anderson, with Susan Bernstein and Frank Lowenstein of The Nature Conservancy, and Nancy Smith and Sigrid Pickering of Sweet Water Trust.
- Adaptation and mitigation capacity of wildlands forests in the northeastern United States by Edward K. Faison, Danelle Laflower, Luca L. Morreale, David R. Foster, Brian Hall, Emily Johnson, Jonathan R. Thompson
- Multi-Decadal Carbon Cycle Measurements Indicate Resistance to External Drivers of Change at the Howland Forest AmeriFlux Site by David Y. Hollinger, Eric A. Davidson, Shawn Fraver, Holly Hughes, John T. Lee, Andrew D. Richardson, Kathleen Savage, Debjani Sihi, Aaron Teets
- Older Eastern White Pine Trees and Stands Accumulate Carbon for Many Decades and Maximize Cumulative Carbon by Robert T. Leverett, Susan A. Masino and William R. Moomaw
- A "Global Safety Net" to reverse biodiversity loss and stabilize the climate by E. Dinerstein, A. R. Joshi, C. Vynne, A. T. L. Lee, F. Pharand-Deschenes, M. Franca, S. Fernando, T. Birch, K. Burkart, G. P. Asner, D. Olson
- Global priority areas for ecosystem restoration by Strassburg, B.B.N., Iribarrem, A., Beyer, H.L. et al.
- Protected areas are now the last strongholds for many imperiled mammal species by Michela Pacifici, Moreno Di Marco, and James E. M. Watson
- Forest-clearing to create early-successional habitats: Questionable benefits, significant costs by Michael J. Kellett, Joan E. Maloof, Susan A. Masino, Lee E. Frelich, Edward K. Faison, Sunshine L. Brosi and David R. Foster
- High rates of primary production in structurally complex forests by Christopher M. Gough, Jeff W. Atkins, Robert T. Fahey, and Brady S. Hardiman
- Forest Carbon: An essential natural solution for climate change by Paul Catanzaro and Anthony D'Amato
- Source or Sink? Carbon Dynamics in Eastern Old-Growth Forests and Their Role in Climate Change Mitigation by William S. Keeton
- Wilderness areas halve extinction risk for terrestrial biodiversity by Moreno Di Marco, Simon Ferrier, Tom D. Harwood, Andrew J. Hoskins, and James E. M. Watson
- Will-of-the-Land: Wilderness Among Primal Indo-Europeans by Jay Hansford C. Vest
- The climate sensitivity of carbon, timber, and species richness covaries with forest age in boreal–temperate North America by Dominik Thom, Marina Golivets, Laura Edling, Garrett W. Meigs, Jesse D. Gourevitch, Laura J. Sonter, Gillian L. Galford, and William S. Keeton
- Vertebrates on the brink as indicators of biological annihilation and the sixth mass extinction by Gerardo Ceballos, Paul R. Ehrlich, and Peter H. Raven
- Intact Forests in the United States: Proforestation Mitigates Climate Change and Serves the Greatest Good by William R. Moomaw, Susan A. Masino, and Edward K. Faison
- Avian Communities of managed and wilderness hemiboreal forests by Edmund J. Zlonis and Gerald J. Niemi
- Exposure of Protected and Unprotected Forest to Plant Invasions in the Eastern United States by Kurt Riitters, Kevin M. Potter, Basil V. Iannone III, Christopher Oswalt, Qinfeng Guo, and Songlin Fei
- Environmental Consequences of Forest Fragmentation in the Western Maine Mountains by Janet McMahon
- Eastern national parks protect greater tree species diversity than unprotected matrix forests by Kathryn M. Miller, Brian J. McGill, Brian R. Mitchell, Jim Comiskey, Fred W. Dieffenbach, Elizabeth R. Matthews, Stephanie J. Perles, John Paul Schmit, and Aaron S. Weed
- Old-Growth Forests: A Literature Review of the Characteristics of Eastern North American Forests by Vermont Natural Resources Council
- Watershed Health in Wilderness, Roadless, and Roaded Areas of the National Forest System by Mike Anderson, Collene Gaolach, Janice Thomson, and Greg Aplet
- Rate of tree carbon accumulation increases continually with tree size by N.L. Stephenson et al.
- Old-growth Forests as Global Carbon Sinks by Sebastiaan Luyssaert, E-Detlef Schulze, Annett Börner, Alexander Knohl, Dominik Hessenmöller, Beverly E. Law, Philippe Ciais, and John Grace
- Old-Growth Forests Can Accumulate Carbon in Soils by Guoyi Zhou, Shuguang Liu, Zhian Li, Deqiang Zhang, Xuli Tang, Chuanyan Zhou, Junhua Yan, Jiangming Mo
- Timber harvest as the predominant disturbance regime in northeastern U.S. forests: effects of harvest intensification by Michael L. Brown, Charles D. Canham, Lora Murphy, Therese M. Donovan
- Pumas Puma concolor as ecological brokers: a review of their biotic relationships by Laura R. LaBarge, Michael J. Evans, Jennifer R. B. Miller, Gillian Cannataro, Christian Hunt, L. Mark Elbroch
- Protecting Half the Planet and Transforming Human Systems Are Complementary Goals by Eileen Crist, Helen Kopnina, Philip Cafaro, Joe Gray, William J. Ripple, Carl Safina, John Davis, Dominick A. DellaSala, Reed F. Noss, Haydn Washington, Holmes Rolston III, Bron Taylor, Ewa H. Orlikowska, Anja Heister, William S. Lynn and John J. Piccolo
- Guiding principles for Rewilding by Steve Carver, Ian Convery, Sally Hawkins, Rene Beyers, Adam Eagle, Zoltan Kun, Erwin Van Maanen, Yue Cao, Mark Fisher, Stephen R. Edwards, Cara Nelson, George D. Gann, Steve Shurter, Karina Aguilar, Angela Andrade, William J. Ripple, John Davis, Anthony Sinclair, Marc Bekoff, Reed Noss, Dave Foreman, Hanna Pettersson, Meredith Root-Bernstein, Jens-Christian Svenning, Peter Taylor, Sophie Wynne-Jones, Alan Watson Featherstone, Camilla Fløjgaard, Mark Stanley-Price, Laetitia M. Navarro, Toby Aykroyd, Alison Parfitt, Michael Soulé
- Protected areas provide thermal buffer against climate change by Xiyan Xu, Anqi Huang, Elise Bell, Pieter de Frenne, Gensuo Jia
Articles
- The Social Life of Forests (New York Times)
- Keeping trees in the ground is an effective low-tech way to slow climate change (The Conversation)
- Wilderness and Traditional Indigenous Beliefs: Conflicting or Intersecting Perspectives on the Human-Nature Relationship? (Rewilding Earth)
- Rewilding: Allow trees to plant themselves to boost biodiversity and sequester more carbon (The Independent)
- Preserving not just the most beautiful landscapes, but the most resilient (Boston Globe: Globe Ideas)
- Life Goes on in Hollow Trees (Northern Woodlands: The Outside Story)
- Bending the Curve of Biodiversity Loss: Ambitious Conservation and Restoration Efforts Required (SciTechDaily)
- Major UN report shows one million species face extinction (UN News)
- Tall and old or dense and young: Which kind of forest is better for the climate? (Mongabay)
- Birds Are Vanishing from North America (New York Times)
- Almost 80% of threatened species lack sufficient protection (Newswise)
- The World's Wilderness Is Nearly Gone (The Nation)