Why We Do It

We need to approach local and global problems in a new way, to create solutions that are more holistic and focused on generating abundance and prosperity for the environment and for all living things.

As stewards of the earth we are dedicated to helping to protect and rejuvenate the last of our earth’s remaining wilderness areas and the communities who live in them, to a healthier, more vibrant state—and perhaps help to create a few new wild places along the way. At Wild Earth Stewardship Center, we strive to work, play, and live in harmony with our natural environment, as our ancestors did, and to openly and freely share information and techniques to empower others who yearn for the same. We believe the best way to address environmentally destructive practices is to inspire and empower communities through example and to provide sufficient information, techniques, and opportunities for alternative practices to take root.

To return to earth stewardship we must make choices that go beyond simply preserving the land towards a more active, collaborative participation in the revitalization of our planet. We have lost vast amounts of traditional knowledge about how to work with the land in a way that is regenerative, abundant, and productive. Because we are working to repair a damaged system, we must model our designs off the systems that are best matched to the environment. Nature has had 3.8 billion years to evolve elegant solutions to the world’s most difficult challenges, and as such, we can learn from and model after these natural systems so as to minimize the need to invent novel technological solutions.[1]

To help others make the transition to living more sustainably, we are dedicated to educating, supporting, and inspiring people to create a healthier, more vibrant world, while recognizing and deepening our connection to the outside environment in the process. The more freely and expansively we share and disseminate the information and techniques to those who currently lack the knowledge and skills, create networks for innovative projects, and support local microenterprises, the greater our chances to connect with one another to contribute to positive change on a grander scale.

The strategies that guide us foster an approach to teaching and practicing that is rooted in social, cultural, spiritual, economic, and ecological well-being supporting opportunities for social transformation and ecological regeneration to address global and local threats affecting the environment. The true wealth of a place should be determined not by the magnitude of its army, infrastructure, or wealth, but by a healthy ecology—the relationship between people and their environment, the surrounding forests, meadows, soil, and all the biodiversity that lives there. Mismanagement of the earth means that vast areas of the planet are not hospitable to humans due largely to previous generations over-harvesting the land, and other unsustainable development practices. This cycle of mismanagement built on mismanagement has created scarcity, depletion, and erosion throughout the world. We evolved from the earth, we belong to the earth, and we need to work together to restore the elements that make the environment comfortable and enjoyable for all living things. Every living thing needs good quality food to eat, clean air, clean water, shelter, and a caring and loving community.

It isn’t enough anymore to be less bad, or to taut sustainability and then merely “sustain” the current state of things. Increasing the efficiency of a fundamentally destructive system will not produce the same benefits as a system that is built upon fundamental principles of regenerative ecological design. The less bad approach has become a widespread movement of increasingly empty claims and tags such as “sustainability,” “green,” and “eco-friendly.” For example, businesses continue to focus on using recycled materials, rather than switching to non-toxic, biodegradeable products. Another simple example would be to switch to composting toilets, which are benign by design, as opposed to choosing low-flow flush toilets, which are merely less wasteful than regular toilets and rely on fundamentally destructive, chemical and energy intensive, municipal waste systems.

For us, moving to a rainforest to serve as stewards was the easiest decision we ever made; of all the places in the world we have lived or visited, there is no other place that we would rather live than in a rainforest. These forests harbor the vast majority of the world’s biodiversity, housing half of the animal species and two-thirds of the plant species in the world, and contain the highest concentration of the earth’s last remaining rare or endemic species of flora and fauna. Approximately 16,119[2] species of animals and plants are threatened with extinction and still the earth’s ecosystems continue to be degraded and destroyed. In the past 50 years we have destroyed more than half of the world’s rainforests, which originally covered around 15% of the earth’s surface – now only 6% remain.[3] We believe widespread change is possible through earth stewardship.

We need more stewards of the earth.  We need more people to move back to and reclaim degraded natural environments and restore the biological diversity that once flourished there, rather than assuming that governments or corporations will assume this responsibility for us. Not everyone needs to be a farmer, but we need more people in the world gardening and working on rejuvenating our natural environment. Many experts make the case that if you are alive, you should be growing food, or at the very least supporting a neighbor, local community garden, or small local farm where you get most of your food from.  Instead of fighting for space in overpopulated cities and suburbs, we can work with land that has been deserted and use our creativity and determination to reclaim these devastated lands by reforesting and replanting them to become lush, productive, parcels of paradise.