Perspectives on Rewilding, from the Northeast to the Great Plains

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Herds of mammoth. Saber-tooth tigers lurking in the tall grasses. American cheetahs—yes, you read that correctly—speeding after pronghorns.

Thousands of years ago, this was the scene on the Great Plains—current day Colorado and surrounding states. Tall- and shortgrass prairie predominated across a wide swathe of the lower 48 states, maintained by grazing bison and natural fires that kept woody encroachment by shrubs and trees at bay. This was a rich, biodiverse expanse that, in its labyrinthian root systems in the soil, sequestered vast quantities of carbon. In the words of Henry Pollock, the executive director of Southern Plains Land Trust (SPLT) and the kickoff speaker in Northeast Wilderness Trust’s (NEWT) 2025 Speaker Series, the prairie was “a veritable American Serengeti.” Pollock and NEWT President and CEO Jon Leibowitz discussed the differing challenges and opportunities in rewilding the Great Plains and NEWT’s service region, the Northeast. Check out the full recording of the webinar below.

At the same point in geological time that mammoths, tigers, and cheetahs prowled the Plains, old forests sprawled across what is now New England a thousand or more miles east. Hurricanes, ice storms, and other forms of natural disturbance blew through every so often, felling trees, opening up canopy gaps, and creating structural complexity. In these great forested wildlands, wolves and cougars hunted deer and other ungulates. Streams and rivers shaded by hemlocks teemed with brook trout and Atlantic salmon. Massive flocks of passenger pigeons darkened the skies. Caribou walked across parts of the landscape and harbor seals called Lake Champlain home.

Today, both regions are dramatically changed. More than 50 percent of America’s grasslands have been destroyed, a process set in motion by westward expansion, the persecution of the Native peoples who lived in greater harmony with the prairie, and the industrialization of agriculture. Cattle, imported from the tropics by white settlers, have decimated the region’s riparian ecosystems, and a regional network of fences has carved up the Southern Plains at the expensive of migratory species. In some ways, the modern picture is less grim in the Northeast, but a closer look reveals a stark imbalance. Though more than 80 percent of New England is covered in forest, just over three percent of this land mass is protected as wildlands, where Nature directs the ebb and flow of life as it had for eons. And the Northeast’s high forest cover has not spared its flora and fauna from the biodiversity declines imperiling life around the globe.

The ecological degradation in both regions underscores the urgency of rewilding as a conservation method. By protecting land and allowing Nature to take its course, the biological scales in both the Great Plains and the Northeast might begin to tilt back towards equilibrium, with positive knock-on effects for human wellbeing and the stability of the earth’s climate. In the words of NEWT President and CEO Jon Leibowitz, “Nature has an innate ability to heal itself over time.”

NEWT and SPLT both embrace rewilding as one of the most promising means of forging a more reciprocal and durable human-Nature relationship. But does the act of rewilding look the same in both places? Not quite. Centuries of overgrazing by cattle have taken their toll on SPLT’s service area of southeastern Colorado. To correct the yawning deficit on the Southern Plains between degraded and restored states, SPLT takes an active role in the rewilding process. It undertakes “trophic rewilding” by reintroducing three keystone species that play particularly impactful roles in the wider ecosystem: bison, prairie dogs, and beavers. All three, according to Pollock, are ecosystem engineers that create biological heterogeneity and ecosystem resilience. They also seek to reintroduce regular fire on the prairie, long stamped out in the name of “land management,” to beat back woody encroachment. The removal of fencing to restore migratory pathways for wide-ranging species is another priority.

North American Beaver by Brendan Wiltse for NEWT.

Bison by SPLT.

Northeast forest at NEWT's Little River Wilderness Preserve.

Prairie dog by SPLT

NEWT’s approach to rewilding, meanwhile, is more passive. Unlike the Plains, where the continued suppression of natural fire and the elimination of bison mean that grassy ecosystems decline without intensive management, the Northeast’s forests can rewild just by being left alone. One need only look to the Adirondack Park—once a degraded industrial landscape—for powerful evidence of this. As Leibowitz said, “Every forest NEWT protects, no matter its condition today, is a future old-growth forest.”

Though NEWT’s and SPLT’s approach to rewilding may differ, there is notable overlap in the conservation challenges each organization faces. Pollock and Leibowitz both identified population growth, energy development, and further fragmentation of highly “parcelized” landscapes as mounting obstacles to a healthy, sustainable future for both the Southern Plains and the Northeast. But these challenges, Pollock and Leibowitz agreed, are also opportunities to boost public awareness in both regions of rewilding’s ability to mend the fractures that have precipitated the climate and biodiversity crises.

The next installment of NEWT’s 2025 Speaker Series will feature a conversation between Dr. Mark Elbroch of Panthera, the global wild cat conservation organization, and NEWT’s Wildlands Ecology Director Shelby Perry. Elbroch and Perry will discuss the role of large carnivores in rewilding ecosystems, as well as the most pressing challenges to these species’ conservation. For more information and to register, click here.

Photography by Jerry Monkman, Brendan Wiltse, and SPLT.