We are on a new frontier for the Wildlands Project. Since we were founded in 1991, we have been on the leading edge of conservation thinking. We led the way in North America to change how conservationists do their work. Instead of creating isolated parks, the focus now is on connecting ecosystems to save species over the long term. The Wildlands Project has led that shift from parks to inter-connected systems of protected places across a broader landscape.

This is a remarkable achievement.

The Wildlands Project also has provided science and financial support to regional groups to create large-scale wildlands networks in many parts of North America and around the globe. These reserve designs are based on the best science available and show where the habitat cores and connections should be in a given region over the long term. They are like giant jigsaw puzzles that show conservationists where the next pieces in the puzzle need to go in order to really protect nature.

This is another great achievement.

So, as we look ahead, what is our challenge now? It is to bring these reserve designs to the ground. As the leading conservation group on connectivity in North America, we have helped inspire a number of large-scale connections campaigns: Yellowstone to Yukon in the northern Rockies, the Southern Rockies Ecosystem Project in Colorado, and the South Coast Wildlands Project in California, just to name a few.

We also have significant experience in-house on how to apply what we've learned from our science work to the important job of implementation. Our challenge now is to maximize and build on this expertise--in cooperation with our many partners--to make change on the ground happen more quickly, in more places, and in a coordinated way.

In order to feed and accelerate success, we are focusing our efforts on two "mega linkages" on opposite sides of the continent. In the Rocky Mountains, we are working with dozens of partners to connect habitat along the "spine of the continent" from Mexico to Canada. In the East, our goal is to reconnect habitat along the greater Appalachian chain, starting in Canada and northern New England, and eventually moving as far south as Florida and Alabama. These two "living labs" offer the best hope for large-scale conservation in North America. They form the building blocks for the continental system of connected wildlands that the Wildlands Project believes is necessary to protect and restore biodiversity.

This is a great challenge, but it is by no means insurmountable. Calling on our fifteen years of experience, our continental network of friends and supporters, and our science-driven vision, we can create a better world for all generations yet to come--both human and wild.

Mary Granskou
President