Nature is not a place to visit. It is home.

Gary Snyder, American poet, essayist, lecturer, and environmental activist 

Have you ever been in awe of a sunset?  How about a dawning sunrise?  What about a full moon, waxing glow across a starry night sky? 

Once considered sacred and meaningful by indigenous cultures around the world, these events give us daily glimpses into the rhythms of our earthly lives. There is an understanding of relationship to land, where both human and non-human life are interdependent in cyclical ways.  

Our earth is home to approximately 1.8 billion indigenous people living in 90 countries. Together, they own, manage or occupy about one-quarter of the world’s land. Indigenous communities have lived in harmony with nature for centuries. In fact, indigenous stewardship practices are inherently connected to sustainable management of natural resources and their harvests all over the world. Maintaining wildness was understood and felt from within. Looking deeper, indigenous peoples care for their lands is seen as a sacred responsibility. 

Today, restoring and rewilding offers a highly effective and mutually beneficial blueprint for preserving, conserving and expanding ecosystems to thrive once more. Re-wilding is a powerful tool that re-connects us to our ancestral capacity as caregivers and cultivators of healthy, resilient ecosystems. 

Stewardship from the Inside Out 

Indigenous stewards often live in rural areas and rely on subsistence agriculture, fishing, and hunting—the very activities that enrich the lives of local people while enabling sustainable tourism. Tuned in to the balance of nature, the engaged presence and wisdom of indigenous communities is critical to the well-being of the ecosystems they oversee and safeguard.  

In fact, their presence on island, coastal and near-coastal ecosystems have proven that such managed lands are healthier, home greater biodiversity, preserve healthier oceans, and sequester more carbon than any fragmented landscape could offer. 

Rewilding restoration activities that occur synergistically between human livelihoods and conservation—rather than through models that separate people from the environment—are far more likely to succeed long-term. 

As we cultivate mutually beneficial partnerships with indigenous communities to restore, rewild, and protect biodiversity, we hold the potential to accelerate global conservation efforts while there is still time to reverse compromised lands and waters. 

TEK: Local Recipes for Rewilding 

As global hotspots of both biodiversity and extinctions, islands are home to over 40% of the planet’s most threatened creatures. By working with indigenous communities, a vast depth and range of traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) can be shared, inspiring hands-on learning for volunteer participants and anyone interested in applying this wisdom. 

Traditional ecological knowledge can be applied in our own communities, neighborhood gardens, and backyards with encouraging results. “TEK at home” further strengthens community-led connections and partnerships, which in turn create a collaborative framework through which local rewilding can take place. 

We’re On It! 

With over 70 restorations completed worldwide, Island Conservation teams apply a scalable 5-step approach to rewilding that is essential to an eco-generative outcome.  

Some examples include Lehua Island, Hawaii; Palmyra Atoll, Line Islands; Hawadax, Alaska; Pinzon Island, Galapagos; and Irooj Island in the Marshall Islands.

Island Conservation’s collaboration with U.C. San Diego’s Scripps Institute of Oceanography and Re:Wild—along with a growing number of related partnerships—represent the first Ridge-to-Reef rewilding campaign aiming to restore and rewild 40 globally significant island-ocean ecosystems by 2030. Want to get involved? Read more here. 

Featured image: Women washing hair in river. Photo: Quang Nguyen Vinh/Pexels 

Our deepest roots are in the natural world 

– Maxime Lagacé