NEWT and Partners Convene in Boston to Make the Case for Rewilding

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“How do we create a more habitable world for our children, for our grandchildren, and for all the species with whom we share this beautiful planet” at a time of climate change and an accelerating extinction crisis? This was the central question posed by Kelsey Wirth, Founder of Mothers Out Front, at a panel and reception event convened by Northeast Wilderness Trust (NEWT) last month.

There is, of course, no single solution to these multidimensional challenges, but NEWT leaders and key partners shared the power and promise of forever-wild land conservation with a sold-out audience at WBUR CitySpace in Boston, Massachusetts.

NEWT President and CEO Jon Leibowitz argued that to preserve the Northeast’s natural heritage and the wellbeing of future human and nonhuman generations, we should intentionally create room for Nature to do what it did on its own for millions of years before human intervention: evolve freely, with forests growing old, fostering biodiversity, and storing massive amounts of carbon.

This may sound like a straightforward proposal, but in Leibowitz’s words, rewilding is an “incredibly underutilized” conservation tool. Though New England is more than 80-percent forested, just 3.3 percent of these forests are protected in perpetuity as wildlands, where Nature calls the shots. Increasing this number by creating more wilderness preserves means “to work with Nature, rather than against it,” Leibowitz added. Rewilding “restores ecosystems not through control or manipulation, but by trusting in Nature’s innate resilience and proven ability to find stability.”

This idea turns centuries of conventional wisdom about our place atop the web of life on its head. Author and NEWT Senior Fellow Tom Butler explained that the same extractive mindset that characterized the United States’ westward expansion still reigns today. This singular devotion to “progress” informs today’s fantasies of limitless growth and furthers a damaging mentality: “That the Earth is here for us; to provide an endless supply of ‘resources’ and to hoover up an endless stream of our waste, without complaint,” Butler said. Butler shared a rich lineage of wilderness thinking from Henry David Thoreau to Howard Zannheiser and Terry Tempest Williams.

Mark Anderson of The Nature Conservancy, who is also a NEWT Board Member Emeritus, picked up on Zannheiser’s legacy as the key author of the 1964 Wilderness Act. The Act uses the word “untrammeled” when describing the legally mandated condition of future wilderness areas. Contrary to popular belief, this word does not mean “untrampled” or “pristine,” but rather, “not deprived of freedom.” This idea, that Nature has the right to be free and thrive simply for its own sake rather than solely for human ends, provides an ethical imperative for the conservation of wildlands. In these special places, visitors commit to treading lightly and respectfully on the land.

Creating a sustainable society that works with, not against, wild Nature requires a newfound reverence for the dignity of our wild kin and their astonishing, if very different, intelligences. Anderson shared cutting-edge science that has revolutionized our understanding of the interior lives of plants and animals and that casts doubt, as Anderson pointed out, on the misguided conception of man as “the thinking animal.” Anderson’s own research demonstrates that our complex nonhuman counterparts need landscape-scale wilderness areas to facilitate migration and reproduction as the climate changes, and that older, unmanaged forests on these preserves offer superior carbon-storage capacities.

To create that shared, healthy world, conservationists must ensure that rewilding is an inclusive movement. Aaron Mair, Forever Wild Campaign Director at the Adirondack Council, contended that securing a stable climate and a biodiverse world requires that all people have access to wilderness. We must “enlist humanity” in all its forms, Mair stated, including those in “frontline communities who are struggling” and facing the worst impacts of climate change and natural disasters despite their smaller role in precipitating these crises.

Mair emphasized that only with a diverse, mobilized coalition of communities who value Nature, and see themselves as empowered stewards with deep historical ties to the land, can humanity hope to thrive into the future. Northeast Wilderness Trust’s wild mission, in Mair’s words, “is not a luxury; it is a necessity.”

“Rewilding the Northeast” is a key example of the work being done in support of the “Champion” pillar of NEWT’s 2030 Strategic Plan. The plan’s centerpiece is the goal to protect a total of 160,000 acres of wildlands by 2030. Sign up for NEWT’s monthly newsletter to be notified of future iterations of the event at locations around New England and New York.

Photography by Krista Guenin.