Projects

Projects:

The Denali Site

Our flagship project is a proposed 7000 acre fenced ecological experiment on public land leased from the state of Alaska just north of Denali National Park, between the communities of Healy and Nenana. It will contain 100-700 large herbivores, an array of monitoring equipment from soil temperature sensors to eddy flux towers, and labs, housing, and facilities for researchers. The landscape is a lowland black spruce forest, 1000 acres of which burned in 2022. Lowland soils are loass. The upland section is also black spruce, a portion of which burned in 2012 and is now regenerating primarily as birch and aspen. The upper hill slope is white spruce turning to alder interspeced with meadows and birch and thaw lakes at the base of the slope.

Current status: We are currently planning, permitting, leasing land, doing baseline studies, scoping, and fundraising. Our goal is to build a fence and install monitoring equipment in Spring of 2026 and bring our first animals summer of 2026.

The land lease: The lease application is a year long process that will involve an agency review — both federal and state — and a public comment period. If you live near the proposed site or would otherwise be impacted by our land lease, please contact us via email (below) with your ideas, concerns, suggestions, or words of encouragement. This will only be sucessfull if we collaborate with the community. We will host presentations about our proposed project and hear feedback from the public in Healy, Nenena, Fairbanks, Anchorage and Juneau closer to the public comment period -- likely fall of 2024. Again, please contact us if you have anything you would like to discuss about the project.

Map of proposed site:

Deliverables

AFEI’s experiment will provide the scientific foundation for evaluating Arctic rewilding as a scalable solution to climate change and biodiversity loss and then develop the actionable, science based, tools to scale. We will deliver on three fronts: First we will generate large data sets to understand the mechanisms of rewilding driven environmental change. Second we will build and parameterize models that predict rewilding scenario outcomes across northern geographies. Third, we will use these models combined with practical tools, best practices, and local knowledge to create specific actionable plans that will iteratively, responsibly, and quickly as possible, build towards full implementation.

Unlocking Scaling:

The deliverables of the FRO will be the foundation of the next phase: iterative implementation coupled with expanded research.

Implementation: AFEI will work with relevant partners (tribes, native corporations, state of Alaska, federal government and international entities) to develop implementation projects in high priority locations identified by our models and research. This will allow us to iteratively replicate the experiment to build scientific confidence, while also paving the way for the responsible implementation of rewilding solutions for local communities.

Upscaling: Bison and other species have shown the capacity to grow their population exponentially in northern ecosystems -- typically having a 4-6 year population doubling rate. This means that later (and larger) stages of scaling can self-generate with minimal financial and logistical inputs. In Alaska, the state, Native Corporations, and the federal government (who together control 98% of the land in the state) are obvious initial candidates to partner with as we exponentially upscale rewilding in the Arctic.

Co-Benefits: Our solution could provide more rapid and permanent CO2 storage than more technocentric approaches while providing numerous co-benefits. Reintroductions stave off biodiversity loss, while increasing the climate resilience of northern ecosystems and the people who depend on them for survival. Also, keeping permafrost intact is essential to global health; permafrost soils contain mercury and pathogens that could be released upon thaw. Hence, increasing the density and diversity of large herbivores in the Arctic may offer a rare nature-based win-win solution that simultaneously increases the resilience of socio-ecological systems and decelerates global warming. Finally, rewilding large herbivores would improve food security and health outcomes for rural Alaskans.

Other AFEI connected research:

Our team is doing baseline studies, literature review, feild work, and modeling at a variety of sites, in Alaska and beyond, that will improve our understanding of Arctic Rewilding and allow us to make better predictions.

A hub for researchers and stakeholders

We are building connections within the scientific comunity and between scientists and tribes, local communities, government, business, and civil society to exchange knowledge and ideas, share news and resources, and develop a shared strategy for moving forward.

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