Our friend Mark Bekoff summing rewilding up as we enter this Christmas and holiday season: " Many, perhaps most, human animals, are isolated and fragmented internally concerning their relationships with nonhuman animals, so much that we're alienated from them. We don't connect with other animals, including other humans, because we can't or don't empathize with them. The same goes for our lack of connection with various landscapes. We don't understand they're alive, vibrant, dynamic, magical, and magnificent. Alienation often results in different forms of domination and destruction, but domination is not what it means "to be human." Power does not mean license to do whatever we want to do because we can...Rewilding projects often involve building wildlife bridges and underpasses so that animals can freely move about. These corridors, as they're called, can also be more personalized. I see rewilding our heart as a dynamic process that will not only foster the development of corridors of coexistence and compassion for wild animals but also facilitate the formation of corridors in our bodies that connect our heart and brain. In turn, these connections, or reconnections, will result in feelings that will facilitate heartfelt actions to make the lives of animals better.....In the future will we be able to look back with pride? ... Clearly it is possible to look at all we have created and see only what we have destroyed. But that, in my view, would be our mistake. We most certainly can create a better Anthropocene. We have really only just begun, and our knowledge and power have never been greater. We will need to work together with each other and the planet in novel ways. The first step will be in our own minds. The Holocene is gone. In the Anthropocene we are the creators, engineers and permanent global stewards of a sustainable human nature."

Rewilding Our Hearts: Maintaining Hope and Faith in Trying Times

by Marc Bekoff

A recovered Jasper playing with his red ball

We're running out of world and wildness
Humans are a force in nature. "Tell me something I don't know", I hear you lament. We're all over the place, big-brained, big-footed, arrogant, invasive, menacing, and marauding mammals. No need to look for mythical Bigfoot: we're here! We leave huge footprints all over the place and have been rather unsuccessful at solving urgent problems. Robert Berry fears we're simply "running out of world" (2003. God's book of works. Continuum, London). Perhaps we've already "run out of world" including wildness. Some go as far to argue we've created a world that's so technologically and socially complex we can't control it.

I'm always looking for ways to remain positive and hopeful in challenging times. And I know how difficult it can be when it seems that so many things are going wrong. Mass media constantly begins with horror stories about death and destruction and then at the end of a TV show, for example, we hear about the good people who are working to make the world a better place for all beings. They sometimes get a minute or two after almost 30 minutes of negativity. I've often suggested that TV and radio news shows should begin with a two positive stories, talk about other news, and then end with at least two positive messages.

There's Always Jasper
We can learn a lot about being positive from other animals and there's always Jasper, a recovered Asiatic moon bear, to think about for hope and inspiration. After years of horrific suffering Jasper has become the spokes-bear for forgiveness, peace, trust, and hope.

I can't thank Jasper enough for sharing his journey and his dreams. Jasper, like the dogs, cats, and many other nonhuman animals ("animals") who also need us, make us more humane and thus more human. The true spirit of humans, our inborn nature, is to help rather than to harm.

Rewilding as a personal journey: Reconnecting with (M)other Nature
For a book I'm writing called Rewilding Our Hearts I've been thinking of ways to keep that loving feeling in times when many people are suffering and can't seem to see the light. Because of what I do for a living I look to the animals for guidance. And I found just what I was looking for when I began to read about what are called rewilding projects.

The word "rewilding" became an essential part of talk among conservationists in the late 1990s when two well-known conservation biologists, Michael Soulé and Reed Noss, wrote a now classic paper called "Rewilding and biodiversity: Complimentary goals for continental conservation" that appeared in the magazine Wild Earth (Fall 1998, 18-28. 15).

In her book Rewilding the World conservationist Caroline Fraser noted that rewilding basically could be boiled down to three words: Cores, Corridors, and Carnivores. Dave Foreman, director of the Rewilding Institute in Albuquerque, New Mexico, a true visionary, sees rewilding as a conservation strategy based on three premises: "(1) healthy ecosystems need large carnivores, (2) large carnivores need bug, wild roadless areas, and (3) most roadless areas are small and thus need to be linked." Conservation biologists and others who write about rewilding or work on rewilding projects see it as a large-scale process involving projects of different sizes that go beyond carnivores, such as the ambitious, courageous, and forward-looking Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative, well known as the Y2Y project.

 Of course, rewilding goes beyond carnivores, as it must. The core words associated with large-scale rewilding projects are connection and connectivity, the establishment of links among geographical areas so that animals can roam as freely as possible with few if any disruptions to their movements. For this to happen ecosystems must be connected so that their integrity and wholeness are maintained or reestablished.

Regardless of scale, ranging from huge areas encompassing a wide variety of habitats that need to be reconnected or that need to be protected to personal interactions with animals and habitats, the need to rewild and reconnect and to build or maintain links centers on the fact that there has been extensive isolation and fragmentation "out there" in nature, between ourselves and (M)other nature, and within ourselves.

 Many, perhaps most, human animals, are isolated and fragmented internally concerning their relationships with nonhuman animals, so much that we're alienated from them. We don't connect with other animals, including other humans, because we can't or don't empathize with them. The same goes for our lack of connection with various landscapes. We don't understand they're alive, vibrant, dynamic, magical, and magnificent. Alienation often results in different forms of domination and destruction, but domination is not what it means "to be human." Power does not mean license to do whatever we want to do because we can.

Rewilding projects often involve building wildlife bridges and underpasses so that animals can freely move about. These corridors, as they're called, can also be more personalized. I see rewilding our heart as a dynamic process that will not only foster the development of corridors of coexistence and compassion for wild animals but also facilitate the formation of corridors in our bodies that connect our heart and brain. In turn, these connections, or reconnections, will result in feelings that will facilitate heartfelt actions to make the lives of animals better.

 These are the sorts of processes that will help the new field of compassionate conservation further develop. When I think about what can be done to help others a warm feeling engulfs me and I'm sure it's part of that feeling of being rewilded. To want to help others in need is natural so that glow is to be expected.

Reasons for hope and inspiration: There's no going back to the way things were
Erle Ellis, who works in the Department of Geography and Environmental Systems at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, notes that while it's true that we've transformed Earth beyond recovery, rather than looking back in despair we should look ahead to what we can achieve. He writes, "There will be no returning to our comfortable cradle. The global patterns of the Holocene have receded and their return is no longer possible, sustainable, or even desirable. It is no longer Mother Nature who will care for us, but us who must care for her.

This raises an important but often neglected question: can we create a good Anthropocene? In the future will we be able to look back with pride? ... Clearly it is possible to look at all we have created and see only what we have destroyed. But that, in my view, would be our mistake. We most certainly can create a better Anthropocene. We have really only just begun, and our knowledge and power have never been greater. We will need to work together with each other and the planet in novel ways. The first step will be in our own minds. The Holocene is gone. In the Anthropocene we are the creators, engineers and permanent global stewards of a sustainable human nature."