Episode 168: American Prairie’s Sean Gerrity on the Art of Thinking Bigger to Rewild the Planet

Summary

Rewilding Earth Podcast – Episode 168 American Prairie’s Sean Gerrity on the Art of Thinking Bigger to Rewild the Planet

Date: February 20, 2026 | Host: Jack Humphrey | Guest: Sean Gerrity (Founding CEO, American Prairie)

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Episode Overview

In this inspiring conversation, host Jack Humphrey speaks with Sean Gerrity, former CEO of American Prairie and author of Wild on Purpose: The American Prairie Story and the Art of Thinking Bigger. They discuss the evolution of American Prairie, the crucial role of wildlands philanthropy, the mindset required for rewilding at scale, and why thinking boldly and innovatively is essential for planetary restoration. The episode is rich with practical wisdom, personal anecdotes, and encouragement for aspiring conservationists.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Origins and Big Ideas Behind American Prairie

• Sean’s Entry into American Prairie ([02:30]-[06:28])

  • The concept of a massive prairie reserve in Montana dates back to artist George Catlin in the 1830s, later carried forward by conservationists such as Bob Scott in the 1980s.
  • The project gained traction after scientific studies identified the Northern Great Plains as prime for ecosystem restoration.
  • Sean was recruited for his business acumen, initially as an interim CEO, but quickly became committed to the project.

• Building an Independent Organization

  • Chose to operate as a freestanding entity, not tied to major conservation NGOs, ensuring continuity beyond shifting organizational priorities.
  • Focus on institutional resilience: “How do you set things up so it keeps cooking for decades, long after my working lifetime?” ([06:30])

2. Mindsets for Success: Business Acumen, Persistence, and Social Change

• Business vs. Social Change Skills ([06:30]-[10:18])

  • Emphasizes building a resilient culture: shared vision, core values, innovation, and planning for leadership transition.
  • Importance not just of business skills, but understanding social psychology—“moving people to a new idea…to consider the possibility of a different kind of relationship with nature.” ([07:30])
  • Handling relentless criticism: “We’re just, we’re experts at stopping things, not so great at starting things. So how do you be persistent and stick with it…?” ([09:30])

• The 20-60-20 Rule of Societal Change ([10:18]-[16:50])

  • Adapted from Michael Hammer’s work:
    • 20% of people support bold ideas right away.
    • 20% strongly oppose them.
    • 60% are open-minded but cautious, moved by demonstrated trustworthiness and delivered promises.
  • Focus efforts on winning the trust of that 60% through consistent delivery: “It’s not through salesmanship, it’s through doing what you say you’re going to do.” ([15:55])

• Community Engagement & Wild Sky Rancher Program

  • Developed programs to benefit local ranchers and communities, inspired by similar efforts in Botswana, Namibia, and Mexico.
  • Now, 21 ranching families participate, being paid to adopt wildlife- and biodiversity-friendly practices.

3. Putting Conservation Costs in Perspective

• Reframing Budget Anxiety ([16:50]-[22:04])

  • Fundraising for large land projects is daunting, but compared to societal expenditures (e.g., $2B for a football stadium or $650M for a hospital wing), costs are reasonable.
  • Key quote: “We’re going to build the largest wildlife…refuge ever assembled in the north 48 states…for far less than the price of one new football stadium…” ([19:10])
  • Main challenge: convincing stakeholders of the project’s importance, not the availability of money.

• Building Lasting Fundraising Capacity

  • Organizational resilience requires developing strong internal fundraising capabilities to survive leadership transitions.

• Innovation vs. Creativity in Conservation

  • “Creativity is thinking of the original idea...Innovation is taking an idea and making it work. That’s mostly what this whole nature saving thing is.” ([24:40])

4. Staying Inspired and Processing News

• Curating a Positive Perspective ([26:29]-[29:59])
  • Sean emphasizes the importance of intentionally seeking positive stories and role models, using tools like curated social media and AI.
  • “You can quickly become overwhelmed with good news...” ([28:50])

5. Personal and Profound Moments in Rewilding

• Reconnecting with the Land ([30:07]-[33:55])
  • Sean’s most profound moments come from simply sitting on the land after each property acquisition, visualizing its future and its restoration for generations to come.
  • “What an amazing thing to do that in preparation for leaving it for future generations. So they can sit in this spot...and enjoy wildlife abundance and what it used to be like for thousands of years.” ([31:30])
  • The joy of witnessing progress, seeing wildlife return, and future Indigenous partners witnessing ecosystem recovery.

6. A Roadmap for Future Generations

• Big Movements: From Half-Earth to 30x30 and Beyond ([34:50]-[39:10])

  • Sean references E.O. Wilson’s Half-Earth and the global commitment to 30% protected areas by 2030.
  • Four key strategies for planetary health:
    1. Accelerate rewilding (terrestrial & marine)
    2. Stabilize human population
    3. Transition rapidly to green energy
    4. Adopt ultra-high yield, low-land-use agriculture

• The Montana Triangle: A Model of Connectivity

  • “If you imagine this, if you get my book, you’ll see this visually…Like pictures you saw in science in 8th grade of the human brain. This whole beautiful network is connected because information needs to flow…” ([41:00])
  • Corridors are critical: grizzly bears returning on their own after 130 years.

• Opportunities for Young People

  • Whether interested in core ecosystem restoration, surrounding communities, or wildlife corridors, there’s groundbreaking work globally.
  • Encourages global thinking, mobility, and engagement: “It’s just layers and layers and layers of opportunity…to say, where do I want to play?” ([43:18])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Taking the Long View in Change:

  “The key thing…is a lot about moving people to a new idea. In this case, to consider…the possibility of a different kind of relationship with nature than we have now.” — Sean Gerrity ([07:30])

• On Costs and Perspective:

  “To me, man, that’s cheap. We just got to find the right people who get enthused about this kind of vision and create a path of least resistance from their financial resources to our need, and we should be good.” — Sean Gerrity ([19:38])

• On Staying Resilient:

  “Your challenge doesn’t matter what you’re doing in this arena…is up to you. Stop complaining and figure out how do you help people understand how incredibly important your thing is.” — Sean Gerrity ([23:20])

• On Innovation vs. Creativity:

  “Creativity is thinking of the original idea in the first place…Innovation is taking an idea and making it work. That’s mostly what this whole nature saving thing is.” — Sean Gerrity ([24:30])

• On Profound Rewilding Moments:

  “Sit there with the maps in my lap…and just listen to the breeze, watch…a fringe hawk fly by…And realize, now we get to start to move this property in the direction of what it looks like in our vision...” — Sean Gerrity ([31:25])

• On the Big Picture and Opportunity:

  “It’s just layers and layers and layers of opportunity for young people to go, say, where do I want to play? Where would I like to fit? That would be most satisfying and rewarding to me. It’s a hell of a time.” — Sean Gerrity ([43:18])

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [02:30] – Origins of the American Prairie concept; early visionaries
• [05:54] – The value of business skills and organizational culture
• [10:45] – The 20-60-20 rule and community trust-building
• [16:50] – Fundraising challenges and putting costs in perspective
• [22:04] – Importance of strong fundraising infrastructure
• [24:30] – Distinguishing innovation from creativity
• [28:50] – The value of seeking out positive inspiration
• [31:25] – Most profound moments: field reflections and future vision
• [34:50] – Rewilding as part of a global framework (Half-Earth, 30x30)
• [41:00] – The Montana Triangle and wildlife corridors as a living network
• [43:18] – Opportunities and encouragement for the next generation

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Tone & Style

The episode is candid, optimistic, and practical, woven through with Sean Gerrity’s matter-of-fact storytelling, grounded hope, and a call to bold action. Both Jack and Sean are focused on empowering listeners—especially rising conservationists—to think at scale, see themselves as part of a global movement, and persist in the face of daunting challenges.

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Closing Thoughts

Sean Gerrity’s journey with American Prairie epitomizes the power of thinking big, staying persistent, and combining vision with innovation. For anyone passionate about rewilding or searching for ways to make a meaningful impact on the planet, this episode provides a roadmap—both philosophical and practical—toward a wilder, more resilient future.

Transcript

[A]

Foreign. Work in the rewilding space is there's a lot of other places where you can't walk out into the middle of your work and just stop for a second, sit down on the grass and either close your eyes or pick up your balocators and get rejuvenated by just stopping. And you can in rewilding. So I have the great privilege to be able to go out and visit the work and get out of the truck and walk around and go up on a ridge and sit somewhere and look. And I think that's a really, really important thing, is stop and go. Look what we've done so far, and I honestly had so many hundreds of those moments, I can't even begin to count them all. Sam,

[B]

You're listening to the Rewilding Earth podcast. I'm your host, Jack Humphrey. If we're serious about hitting global goals like 30 by 30 or 50 by 50, we have to realize that public lands are only part of the solution. Reaching that scale requires a massive lift from wildlands philanthropy and a radical approach to private lands. We can all agree we need to move faster and we need to look beyond the park boundaries. My guest today, Sean Garrity, has been at the center of this shift for two decades. As the former CEO of American Prairie, Shawn helped lead one of the most ambitious private lands projects in history. They didn't wait for a mandate. They built the engine to do it themselves. Sean's new book, Wild on Purpose the American Prairie Story and the Art of Thinking Bigger, is a blueprint for hitting rewilding targets at scale. If you want to understand how private philanthropy is a key factor in reaching our global goals, this conversation is definitely for you. I start by asking Sean to give us the starting point for American Prairie, the massive 3.2 million acre reserve complex in Montana.

[A]

Well, it started long before I came along. This was not our idea, really key. And I think that in some ways makes it easy to take somebody else's idea that for some reason has not been able to get traction. Trying to figure out the idea is fabulous. How do we make it get traction? How can we get this thing going? Because obviously a lot of people have tried, but it just haven't succeeded yet. And really good, meaning people put in a lot of time. So you probably heard before, probably first persons ever mentioned the idea of this was a artist named George Catlin painted out here in the 1830s in this particular region. Went back to Congress and said, you wouldn't believe what's out there, particularly the landscape, the wildlife, Phenomenon is like nothing else he's ever seen. He traveled all over the United States. He said, we ought to make it a nation's park before it's all gone. People were starting to trap beavers and things. He could see the Mayans coming. This is in 1836. Didn't happen, obviously, but that idea was passed down like a rugby ball through the generations. And different people tried, even up into the 1980s. A guy named Robert Scott, Bob Scott, and what he called the Big Open. He was shooting for a 5 million acre reserve, very similar to what American Prairie hoped to do later, even though there was no American break to tell him. And that got too much pushback. It was a little bit too early. Timings, everything, you know, huge pushback from the livestock industry. Even though he had a lot of supporters in other places around the country, he let that go in the 90s. But eventually people kept scientists saying, you know, if you're to do something like this. We passed over this possibility when we made the national parks. To do something like this on the grasslands, this is probably one of the best places in the lower 48 states to do it. And Nature Conservancy proved that with a very thorough study in the mid-1990s saying, Here's 10 places it could happen. This one floats to the top all the time. So that confirmed it was a good idea, but they didn't move on it. Where Wildlife Fund said, let's try to figure out how to do it and particularly what kind of structure we need, because this entity, whatever it is, it's going to have to tuck in for a long, long time, like decades, many decades to get the thing done. So that was the idea. An organization needed to be started. I happened totally by accident to run into some of the people who are trying to figure this out. We got cooking together on it, and it's turned out to be a separate entity would be the smartest thing to do. Not a part of the big. Some of the big dogs in conservation, like CI and, you know, TNC and WCS and or Wildlife and et cetera, make it a freestanding entity that could live no matter what happened to the strategic planning processes are the priorities of those big organizations which change and morph all the times. So that got started and they needed someone to run it.

[B]

And

[A]

they said, Shani helped start a lot of businesses and help businesses get unstuck all around the world. In your previous job, how about you be interim CEO and then just for a little while. And you could then from having sat in the chair and run it for six months or whatever. You know, what we need in terms of an ED or a CEO or president or whatever, we can do a national search. And then I started liking it once I was in there doing that. And then I couldn't imagine giving it up. And then things just got out of hand from there.

[B]

I love going to a business guy. Like, that's not the typical play. But somebody recognized that that would probably be a really important thing to do. And they were right. I think, because you talk a lot about over the years how you look at things and problems and solutions differently. I recognized working in organizations that didn't have that skill set at the top level, the difference and it's. It's difficult. So bravo to the person who invited you in as interim. I think that was funny too. That's always how they get you, Sean.

[A]

Yeah, you're just an emberhood.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

That was the clever ploy of my very good friend, Dr. Kurt Frazee. Yeah, he's. He's smart in lots of ways and he knows how to suck people in like that too. He's the most difficult thing is Kurt's the kind of guy because of care, his character, his integrity, his knowledge, you just want to work, have a chance to work around him. And he's got that. He's not this big charismatic type person. He's just the kind of person you'd like to have in your life. And so you get sucked into that and then it's really hard to extract yourself from that gravitational force anyway. Then you realize, okay, just one step at a time and pretty soon you're in kind of deal. But the key thing, I would say I want to agree with you about some bringing some business acumen to the situation. I'm not going to deny that that is key, setting things up so making sure everybody understands a shared vision. Everybody understands the core values of the organization. If you don't like our values, you know, go work someplace else kind of thing. What our purpose and our mission is. And then, you know, attitude of constant innovation. We don't always have the right idea, but we look around the world for other places where people are ahead of us. We bring those ideas home and implement them here, you know, believing that the answers we need are somewhere and search relentlessly for those to solve our particular problems. Go get them and bring them back. That's still a part of the. You're building a culture and you do that. A way of operating and also setting things up such that the founder, when the Founder leaves doesn't mean the organization implodes. How do you set things up? So it keeps cooking for decades, long after my working lifetime, six years I'm out from that role. After 18 years of doing it, it's proving it's stronger every single year. It's so much better than when I was running it. It just keeps getting better because that continuous improvement idea. But in addition to all the I would like to talk to speak to some young folks out there and you don't have to have like, you know, 18 years of for profit business experience working around the world in organization development consulting like me. What is as important, I think I'm really honestly, what is as important is, is a lot about moving people to a new idea. In this case, to consider the possibility of a different kind of relationship with nature. That Homo sapiens us, the people having a different kind of relationship with nature than we have now. And how to get that across slowly is allowed to be discussed and thought about and pondered and turned over in the different lights until you can start to see a new way of looking at our relationship to nature that's all about psychology and sociology. That's not a business. So I think my comment and I've also traveled a lot around the world and got perspective getting out of the United States and turning around from 10,000 miles and somewhere in Southeast Asia or wherever else I was and looking back at this country and how it operates as a culture and how are we going to do this here in this country? Because it is tough, it's contentious. Everybody's got an idea about why you shouldn't be doing what you're doing. We're just, we're experts at stopping things, not so great at starting things. So how do you be persistent and stick with it or all the rocks you're going to take from people throwing rocks at you from the sidelines in terms of criticism, trying to stop you, trying to say how you're doing. It's wrong. It never goes away. It's still happening today, 25 years later, nonstop people pitching rocks at you. So how do you, how do you just keep smiling, moving forward, calmly taking the long view? That's not necessarily business attitude. That's. That's more a liberal arts education, helping to think about people and how society moves over the long term. So you don't need as much business background as you might think.

[B]

So, well, you pointed to it here, so I might as well ask you about the 206020 rule. And because I think that points directly to how do you stay on track. How do you stay when people are throwing rocks at you on track and not get bummed out and not let them take over a discussion that's being had by a larger group of people that 60%. How. How does all that work?

[A]

Well, I'd suggest to people to get themselves ready to be involved in something like this and not feel beaten down by that phenomenon you're describing. Take a look at other really bold yet very important things that have happened in history, and it'll make you feel like your problems are pretty small, like American Prairie. In the book I mentioned, a great one is the women's suffrage movement in the United States. This big conference in Seneca, New York, it was about 1850 or 1849, we gathered together talking about women's rights. One of those things was the ability to vote. Should be able to vote, shouldn't we? And for the next 30 years, there was a lot of people very much against that. The people who started it, three or four women who started this whole idea on the voting track trying to get women to vote. They never saw it in the end of their lifetimes, but they made a lot of progress and they turned a lot of hearts and minds, even though they're taking huge amounts of hits, that women should not absolutely life as we know it, if we let women vote. And starting in 1850, it wasn't until the early 1960s, with the Voting Rights act in the U.S. where all women of all races in all states had the right to vote. That's indigenous people, black women, everything. You know, white women got it in, like, the 1920s, but for all women everywhere, well over a hundred years. And now I think there's probably me included. The two of us, for sure, were glad that happened. Someone stuck it out and they took. They had death threats. It was bad, right? So if you look in history, this has happened time and time again with really important things that we're all glad did happen, and someone stuck through it, although we don't remember a lot of their names. So you gotta look at it like that. So then you get down into the technicality of change on large human scales. And the model you're talking about came from a guy named Michael Hammer, who was a societal change specialist. And he said, anytime you're going to recommend something like, you know, women's right to vote or the American Prairie concept. It's funny how quickly recipients of that message sift into three kind of distinguishable categories. Of course, it's never this black and white, but about 20% of the people, even before you finish your pitch, of what it is you want to do and why already with you. They just been waiting for someone like you to come along and say this is important. And this happened with American Prairie. It really did. They didn't make it to the news much, but right away we start talking about it in Lewistown, other places. And there are some people that just love the idea. Finally, someone wants to bring back this wild one that we all knew used to be there. And on the other hand, there's often 20% of people on the other end of the spectrum that before you finish talking about it, they hate it already. There's a. Here's a hundred reasons why I don't like what you're doing, and I hope you will just fail and go away. And then there's 60%, though, in the middle who are going interesting. Some parts are intriguing. I don't know if you have the ability to execute on this idea you're promoting. And I'm not sure what it's going to do to our community is going to tear us apart and create divisiveness. There's aspects I like, but I'm going to wait and see that 60% at the middle. So 20%, you're preaching to the choir on the right. And on the other hand, there's people who are really hoping they're just ruining the day when you will stop and give up on this idea. So when you're trying to change things, you have to settle in for the long haul and work on that 60% in the middle, not continuing to hammer them with a message and sell them and sell them and sell them, just simply with our situation, just do what we said we were going to do over and over and over, year after year after year. So that is, allow people onto our private land. You won't see a keep out sign on our hundreds of miles of remaining fence that's there, but soon it'll be coming down. You'll see an open, welcome invitation to visit our private lands. You'll never see us use our private lands to block access to public lands. We allow all these different kinds of recreation, whether it's birding or mountain biking or camping or, you know, catching pollinators and butterflies or whatever you want to do. Hunting in some areas, we did. We've done what we said we were going to do year after year after year, and nothing has changed in 25 years. That 50%. Part of what moves them is just trust that you do what you say and it's you're trusted to stick with your mission. So they can go to your website and go, this is, this is really them. You go on their website. That's it. I've seen it. That's really helpful. But then also doing things that they pointing out here are some of the benefits here. People who started businesses in the region because we now exist. Bird watching tours, all kinds of things that we're not going to leave anybody behind we don't want. It's not going to be a win, lose. We're battling against some evil entity and we're going to, we're going to pin them to the mat kind of thing. It's where we want everyone to win. Who's here now. So our Wild Sky Rancher program, which we started 10 years ago, I was all excited. Only at six ranchers signed up. It seemed like proof of concept. They go, man, this could work. And we got that idea from Botswana, Namibia by the way. We didn't think of it ourselves. And the Northern Jaguar project in Mexico, a part of it is from there. But now there's 21 fairly large scale ranching families are involved in our Wild Scout ranching program. Basically associating with us in business with us, getting paid to be more biodiversity in nature and wildlife friendly in the way that they do their ranking operations. So even out in the ecosystem surrounding the eventual core reserve, there's people that are already benefiting from it and we're decades away from being totally finished. We did that trying to help people, kids with our school programs, our education programs, et cetera. So that's how that thing works is understanding. Don't try to talk to that. The 20% that are really against it. Spend your time in the 60 that are open to influence over time. And it's not through salesmanship, it's through doing what you say you're going to do.

[B]

I think that I'm getting a picture here looking at talks you've done in the past and the book and other things that you have always done a good job making sure that people are really grounded and have perspective. And I remember a Google talk that I saw you do 10 years ago or so where you also put into great perspective the expense that we were talking about because people don't understand the numbers right off the bat. When you're talking about large land acquisitions and, and you talked about back then like 2016 or so, there were like three football stadiums that were being built.

[A]

Yeah, I actually thought of this analogy on a plane flight home from Dallas, Texas one time of course, I was out on the road trying to find some money to keep the enterprise going, and the numbers were daunting to me. I just tried not to think about it too much, how much the whole thing is going to cost.

[B]

So was this a self preservation thing in the very, very beginning? Like, how do I put this into perspective? Yes, what I'm trying to do.

[A]

Kind of like when you're remodeling your house and things are getting going haywire and sideways, it's going to cost a lot more than you thought. I'm just going, oh my gosh, you can't back up. You got to finish your remodel. It's one of those things. And so the budget was not being blown out of sight. But, you know, we're talking hundreds of millions of dollars. And when I started, I'd never fundraise in my life. I had to read books and listen to people and try to figure out how to fundraise from scratch. Not a great. I wouldn't recommend that for starting nonprofit. But that's all I had with our, with our group, the team of us, a small team of three or four of us. And so the numbers, yeah, were daunting to me. And I tried to find an analogy for myself that puts it in perspective, like the, like the voting rights ruin thing. That made me feel better about how long it might take us to get our vision done. So I was working with a guy named Bill Lively. He had helped raise money for the new Dallas Cowboys football stadium. And I asked him, bill, how much that thing costs? He said, really all in is going to be about $1.3 billion. I started thinking about that and he. And they raised that in two and a half years and built this thing and started playing games in two and a half years. Unbelievable. So I started looking around and realized, well, the Minnesota Vikings, because their roof collapsed, they're building another one, the Atlanta falcons. Same thing, L.A. just a couple years later. Really amazing situation there. Las Vegas. We build these stadium, football stadiums all the time. Today the average price is getting closer to 2 billion billion all in 4k football stadium. So I said, we're going to build the largest in comparison, we're going to build the largest wildlife complex refuge ever assembled in the north. 48 states bigger than Yellowstone park and Glacier park combined. Restore all as much as we possibly can of the historic wildlife, open it up for public enjoyment and save it for future generations. And it's going to be far less than the price of one new football stadium and football stadiums. Last about 30 years. Then they dynamite them and they build another one. So this thing's going to be built to last for hundreds of years in the future. To me, man, that's cheap. We just got to find the right people who get enthused about this kind of vision and create a path, lease resistance from their financial resources to our need, and we should be good. That's how I put it together in my mind. And as far as the cost, it's nothing. A second. A second example is I visited someone just absolutely delightful. Her name is Susan Packard Hoare. She's from the Packard foundation, lives in Palo Alto, California, on the Stanford campus there. And I went down to visit her, and she said, how things going? And I said, sometimes I stop and when I wake up and I realize how much money we need to raise to do this, it's. It kind of makes me sweat. And she goes, sean, my mom, she's gone now, but we're naming a new wing of her hospital, the Lucille Children's Hospital. It's kind of like St. Jude's it's in. It's in the Bay Area. And she said, we're going to build a new wing on the hospital. Just a wing, just upgrade it. You know how much that wing is going to cost? I said, I don't have any idea. She said, $650 million for one wing of one hospital that you've never heard of. He said, don't worry about the money. Just quit whining and get back after it. Fundraise and build the thing. So I guess people would help me out with, you know, if it's important, you'll find it. So.

[B]

That framing is so freeing. I can feel it just with you talking about it now and being in the nonprofit business for so long. You know, fundraising talks are not usually cheerful experiences. And. And it's mainly because we lose our frame of reference on what's expensive, what costs a lot because of the size of our organization. And we, you know, it's like fish in a fish tank. They get as big as the tank will let them, and if you put them in a bigger tank, they'll grow more, but if you don't, they stay. And a lot of organizations are like fish tanks that never get replaced with a bigger fish tank.

[A]

Yeah, I just wanted anybody who's young and thinking about getting involved and helping to move the world to a better place as far as nature, biodiversity, and wildlife is, you gotta. You'll sweat the money for sure. It's like anything there's Six or seven big, critical success factors to building an organization for resiliency and forward movement and continuous accomplishment and good execution, for sure. And having the funds is a big deal. A lot of organizations just, well, our CEO raised the money. We'll. We'll build a fundraising army later, which I think is a huge mistake. You need your capacity inside your organization because that CEO may go somewhere else, get hired away, get hit by a bus, something. And then now you're very fragile. You have to have that. That transcends anybody who comes and goes in your organization. So most organizations wait too long to do it to build really strong capacity. American Prairies is incredibly impressive. Bigger than. Much bigger and more competent than when I was running the organization. Ali Fox has done a stellar job, and Sam and all the people in that organization there, watching them now from afar is astounding. It's really cool, but they focused on it. They just decided as a priority. But I think the main thing is don't get too wigged out by the cost of what something might be, because the money is out there. Your challenge is not to dig around in a finite pie and battle with other people like a bunch of coyotes and ravens over some dead carcass Melst. You just want to go get a little bite. You know, just. It's out there. Your challenge is they are spending a lot, they are spending lots of money on things that are important to them. All kinds of things. Football stadiums or the roof of Notre Dame Cathedral and Paris burns down. The money appeared millions. It just appeared, like in no time to rebuild that thing. And you realize that's because people think it's important. So your challenge doesn't matter what you're doing in this arena we're talking about. It's up to you. Stop complaining and figure out how do you help people understand how incredibly important your thing is. Once you convince people of importance how important it is, the money begins to move in your direction continuously, year after year after year. Your project becomes one of the biggest, most satisfying, comforting things in their life. They want to go on this ride with you. And it's not just wildlife people. Some of our biggest donors don't really care that much about wildlife. What they care about is people in America realizing that big things can still get done. In all this contention, they just love the idea. Big ideas executed well, taken to completion. That's what some of our biggest donors give to it for. Not because they like prairie dogs or bison. I think that's great. So the better you are making your thing seem Important, the broader your potential donor base becomes. I believe in possibilities. And then we need to look at the same thing that everybody else is looking at and see something different, See the possibilities in that situation or that set of conditions. And then if they're there, it's up to us to click into the mindset of innovation. And innovation, just like this project itself, creativity is thinking of the original idea in the first place, something nobody else would have thought of. That's creativity. Innovation is taking an idea and making it work. That's mostly what this whole nature saving thing is. The ideas are laying around all over the place and what you can do, like American Prairie started in 1836, nobody could figure out how to do it. Our mindset was innovation, which is very different than creativity. I'm an artist too. I paint oils and watercolors, so I hope I get the whole creative process. I'm not against creativity, but innovation is what makes things move. Taking ideas and figuring out how to move the pieces around on the table until you finally get them to fit and just sticking with it. Not getting bored and frustrated, sticking with it until you find some pieces to fit. Get excited, do a high five. Because we got that and now we got to get a few more pieces to fit and just keep problem solving and knowing that if we stick with this long enough, we're going to figure this out. If we can't, we're going to go find somebody else who can. They'll come in and go, yeah, you guys look at it all wrong and they fix it. And you know, we high five with them. You know, who cares who solves it? Just that it gets falls and you can move forward incrementally towards your vision.

[B]

It's difficult in this day and age to keep perspective at the same time. We have all the information in the world at our fingertips, but you have to look for it.

[A]

A lot of people are railing against the phone and how the. It's hard not to look at that car wreck. You know, the doom scrolling. And I think about, you know, if you looked at my Instagram feed, you can't. You're not dooms. You can't doom scroll. I could hand it to you. You can spend two hours on it. What you're going to see is watercolor artists, oil oils. You're going to see positive stories like Chris Tompkins type stories of rewilding or rewilding Europe or James Shooter's podcast or whatever. More stories that I could possibly keep up with or listen to in the rest of my lifetime. I also watch dancers. I follow some authors when they have new books out. The whole thing. When I looked at my Instagram feed, it makes me feel better. It's actually a break from the day. It doesn't bring me down because I. I've. I've canceled out. I don't follow disasters. I know exactly how much ice is melting in the Antarctic and how fast things are going with global warming. I've been to so many conferences, I don't need to go anymore. I don't need to see that to remind myself and saturate myself in that news. So I'm not sticking my head in the sand. You can take that tool and you can curate what you want on Instagram. I can spend two hours and there's nothing depressing on it. It's all about digging out of a funk. If I get in that because something's happened, or like our recent BLM decision, you know, with our crazy alignments, wall and stuff, it's a re. It ends up being a reprieve as opposed to something that stinks me down emotionally. You can control that. You can also go out looking, open up your laptop or whatever and start hitting links and. Or ask AI, give me 20 examples. Or for instance, recently, with the whole idea of, you know, hitting 20 by 30, give me 10 examples of the top 10 countries who are doing the best with that boom. And give me two, two paragraphs on why you're saying they are going to hit that target, or they're already at that target, which is pretty cool because it's only 2026. You hear about Costa Rica, Bhutan, Namibia, Greece, France, Canada, Chile, United Kingdom, New Zealand, Colombia, on and on and on. They're all going to arrive and have done their bit to get to 2030. So are some states, like California. You can download this huge document called pathways to 2030, produced by the state of California. And the projects going on are fascinating. I mean, sit down and read that for an afternoon. You go, you know what? There's people out there. They're just. They're just getting after it. Like the people at American Prairie today. I'm not working there, so I'm talking about them, not me. And see, all of a sudden, you realize you can quickly become overwhelmed with good news. Like, I just read you about all those countries. They're going to show up and say, when you're doing the tally of 2030, do we make it? Here's our stuff. And people are going to cheer because they did a great job. They worked really hard on changing their societies to a better relationship when they. But you have to go out and you can. That's a great way to use AI as opposed to being afraid of AI. Make it do the work for you and then justify its work. Like, where did you get that information? You show me the citations. Of course that's helpful. But you have the tools you have these days as young people as compared to what was around 25 years ago. It's just mind blowing. What a great age to live in. What a great age to start something

[B]

as a result of starting something pretty darn significant. Can you tell me about one of the most profound moments?

[A]

Moments?

[B]

What's an experience you can convey that made it absolutely for certain, worth it? Every bit of it.

[A]

One of the pleasures of being able to work in the rewilding space is there's a lot of other places where you can't walk out into the middle of your work and just stop for a second, sit down on the grass and either close your eyes or pick up your binoculars and get rejuvenated by just stopping and you can in rewilding. So I have the great privilege to be able to go out and visit the work and get out of the truck and walk around and you go up on a ridge and sit somewhere and look. And I think that's a really, really important thing is stop and go. Look what we've done so far, and I honestly had so many hundreds of those moments, I can't even begin to count them all. But I could spend the rest of the, you know, a couple hours, just one after another. But if, as some examples, every time we are able to acquire a Property, we've done 48 of these now. Totally over 600. 600, 6,000 acres, something like that. Over 600,000 acres in combined private and leased land. And every very soon afterwards after we close on the property, getting out and walking around it and finding a high spot and just sitting down with the maps in my lap. Because you usually can't see to the edge of the property because sometimes, like the last one we just closed on the fall, it's 106 square miles, 65,000 acres. So it's oftentimes you can't see to the edge because it's so far out, even on a high spot. So I sit there with maps in my lap and turn them around, the compass on my phone, getting my bearings and looking at it, and just sit there and just listen to the breeze, watch, you know, a frugal hawk fly by, look down and maybe see you know, some prairie dogs or something, if you're really lucky, maybe you see a, you know, a deer or something or, you know, four or five pronghorn in the far distance or whatever, and you sit and realize, now we get to start to move this, this. This property in the direction of what it looks like in our vision, which is extraordinarily rich habitat and have. Has a high carrying capacity for all kinds of wildlife, including microbes in the soil, pollinators, reptiles, other degrees of bears. And what an amazing thing to do that in preparation for leaving it for future generations. So they can sit in this spot that I'm at and enjoy wildlife abundance and what it used to be like for thousands of years. And to realize at some point, some friends of ours from Fort Ben, that bean reservation down Dakota and Ohani tribes, some set of them, maybe even one, will come and see, sit and look at this and realize it's coming back. What we've been lamenting the loss of for more than 150 years is coming back bit by bit. So knowing that at some point I'll be able to stand there with one or more of them, and they just look at it and go, damn, it's. This is. We've been waiting a long time. That's coming back. That's a pretty good feeling. Simple moments like that, I think, is. I've done that so many times, I mean, hundreds of times when I'm feeling down, really tired of fundraising, being able to go out there or and be around somebody else. And they go, gosh, I haven't been here for four years. What. Look what you guys have done after four years. And I go, yeah, it kind of all blurs together. I kind of forget that. And they name this and this and this, whatever it is. And realizing people are watching this, they're going, how do you guys do it year after year? This incremental progress and the fact that somebody else sees it and recognizes that is really gratifying.

[B]

That was a purposeful question for people who are getting ready or deciding to take up the challenge of their lives, at least one of the challenges of their lives, and whether it's all going to be worth it, whether if I make the world in a way that I. I envision it, and I'm. And I'm constantly fighting on a canvas that's not quite there yet. And I have to find a way to sustain myself along the way to get there. And with a lot of things being thrown at me, is it going to be worth it for me to make this choice. I'm thinking about my kid who's in wildlife biology right now at Ball State, and, and his friends and, and, and everybody who are just trying to go, what do, what do I want to do? I mean, this looks almost impossible from the outside if you look at American prairie all by itself. And for the first time, especially, how in the world could I ever be a meaningful part of something like that?

[A]

I like this question. It's really important to see the bigger context and realize that you're inside a bigger movement is very satisfying and calming to me. For instance, in the around 2015 to 2018, a whole lot of books came out all at once that were about, we really, it's time to change our relationship to nature. We got to do something. And one that punched through all the noise of a lot of those really, a lot of really good books was Ed Wilson's Half Earth. And he said, basically, I'm paraphrasing the heck was trying to save what's left. Let's get back a huge amount and reestablish a ratio of nature areas and wild areas in the Earth to ones that people are living in or exploiting for monetary gain or whatever. About half and half, 50% called half Earth. So simple, thin little book, let's do that. And he gave some ideas on what it would take to move in that direction. Well, people started looking at that and said, you know, that's pretty daunting. But if we broke it down to 30% of theirs by 2030 and 40% of the Earth by 2040, we may get to 50% of their like, like Ed says, by 2050. All right. And then there's this big meeting of the ecological Congress in 2020, and 190 countries signed up to pursue the first step. 20 by 30. That's, that's amazing that in these times, 190 people, 190 different countries could agree on anything. But they agreed on that to give that a try. And not only that, they agreed on four key strategies because it could be you could pursue 20 different strategies all trying to get there. And they said, we got to put 20% of our effort into just these few things to get 80% of our big bang for the buck. So that was. We need to rewild everything we can as fast, much faster are we doing. Now that's wine on the oceans and terrestrial areas. The second thing is we need to stabilize human population. It's a problem how fast we're growing. You know, I'm 67, and the population, human Population of the world has doubled in my lifetime from 3.8 billion when I was born in 1958 to coming up on 9 billion now in one person's lifetime. There's costs to that. The second, the third thing is to accelerate our progress towards green energy. Stop clean to coal and things that ruin our air, our waterways and things like that. We know how to do it. It's just designing to do it like many countries in Europe have, and this. And the fourth thing probably, and the biggest impact of all if we work on one, is changing agriculture and embracing the idea of ultra high yield, ultra low land use, agricultural practices, which there's plenty of examples around the world where people are doing that really, really well. Not so much in North America, but it's starting. So if you realize when you're in rewilding, you're in a bigger picture that 2050 by 2050 frame year one of four top strategies that people are barreling ahead on. And there's good momentum in these. You can do with that yourself and find out there's a lot of inspiring news about that and then work your way down to. If you want to do rewilding, it's going on all over the world. You don't have to work in the States. There's cool stuff everywhere happening. Be out of the country, out of the US for two or three or four years. No big deal. Learn a lot, come back here if you want, whatever. But think more expansively about geographical location for yourself. Could be in the South Pacific or whatever, but you know. So for instance, though, if you find something like I did and our team did with American prairie, and they're continuing to chug along really nicely on the northern Great Plains in northeastern Montana, or a lot of most people in the United States have never been before. Most Montana's not been up there and found a place to tuck in and work on something. So this is a really, really important site if you're working. If you're going to decide on rewilding as opposed to green energy or agriculture, which are really good things too. Super helpful stuff to move us along. Then realize how it's being done is in a quality fashion around the world is you think about three key things. One is a core area does not have to be 3.2 million acres like American Prairie or 5,000 square miles. It's kind of a big, big frame. But there's bigger ones like in Kazakhstan. But you can do much, much smaller core areas and still have a lot of meaningful benefit to you. But then you have to think about the ecosystem around that, around the eventual core area. 3/4 million acres of American prairie. You'll have a. You have an ecosystem that's been there for thousands of years. Seven, eight million acres. It crosses up into Canada and it exists there. Our Wild Sky Rancher program is meant to help with societal change to those ranchers benefit. They are paid money and they like being involved. 21 ranchers now, but check back in a couple years, they will be more than 21 because more people want to get into this program. They're paid to be more wildlife friendly in the way they do their ranching operations. It's working well. So we're trying to work with a social, caring capacity for wildlife surrounding the eventual core reserve. And then there's corridors that connect us to other areas like this. So the Northern Continental Divide, which is anchored mostly by Glacier park, also the Bald Marshall Earth and some other protected areas. It also has a 7 or 8,9 million acre ecosystem that goes on up into Canada. And then the one down below, I'm sitting 45 minutes away from is the Greater Yellow. I'm sitting in the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem. South of me is Yellowstone park, about an hour away. And so that has a core, it has an ecosystem. But there's corridors that connect all three of these things and what we call the Montana Triangle. Right now, grizzly bears are walking or have walked from both the Continental Divide and the Greater Yellowstone and have arrived. They are there in the northern Great Plains ecosystem where Ranakapuri is. They've been gone for 130 years and they're back and we didn't bring them in in trucks. They walked a couple hundred miles and got themselves back to the grassland, their ancestral home. That's pretty cool. And if you imagine this, if you get my book, you'll see this visually, this Montana Triangle. And this is an example of how it's done around the rest of the, the core area ecosystem connected to other corriers and ecosystems. Imagine pictures you saw in science in 8th grade of the human brain. And you have a neuron, a brain cell, right? And there's axions and dendrites in. This whole beautiful network is connected because information needs to flow freely and without hindrances or distortion between brain cells to other brain cells to act and operate effectively. And we're modeling that idea. It's absolutely beautiful. I know a neurosurgeon's name is Amir Voakshaw. He says there's nothing so beautiful as looking at a human brain, which he does brain surgery all the time, he says. Absolutely mystical. How beautiful it is. That's how I think about rewilding. If you stand back and look at the map, like a Montana triangle. But the same thing's happening in India and lots of different places around the world. Getting connected up like this allows information to flow in the form of wildlife back, like those grizzly bears and other critters, back and forth, and everything remains healthy. Information is moving like genetic information to keep things healthy and cooking. From an environmental, ecological standpoint, it's a beautiful, elegant thing to look at. It's a work of art. And now you could connect more of these things by having one in Canada, one over in North Dakota, and lion. Mountain lions have moved back and forth between that one and here, one over in Idaho and the Selkirk or wherever. And you're just building this brain network that can expand indefinitely. And that is a hell of a thing to be a part of. It's really cool. You can also find vocations in working in core areas on wildlife like prairie dogs and bringing back pronghorn and stuff like that. You can work in the ecosystem surrounding the corridors. That's mostly sociology. You can work in the corridors, which is, you know, championing underpasses and overpasses and changes in social attitudes to allow grizzly bears to walk by, that kind of thing. There's all kinds of ways you can find enormously satisfying vocations in this stuff. And what I'm talking about is expanding rapidly all over the world. You can decide what country you work in. It's just layers and layers and layers of opportunity for young people to go, say, where do I want to play? Where would I like to fit? That would be most satisfying and rewarding to me. It's a hell of a time.

[B]

Well, I would recommend Wild on Purpose, the American Prairie Story, and the Art of Thinking Bigger as the next logical link from Dave Foreman's Rewilding North America. It is a contemporary take on what really needs to be done. And you can find out about that on the episode [e-mail] pod and from there, you have the roadmap. You have what Sean has learned all of these years about thinking really big and being a part of something really awesome. And, Sean, I want to thank you so much for taking the time. I hope you had fun today.

[A]

This is the best man. It's my. My own house. I'm sitting at my bare feet, looking out at these mountains around me and talking about these concepts of someone like you. It's a pleasure and a privilege to do it. I really appreciate being asked on here.

[B]

Thanks for listening to the Rewilding Earth podcast. We do what we do because of you. This podcast is supported by listeners like you who long to live in a wilder world. Please consider [e-mail] and subscribe to our weekly News and Article Digest while you're there. To go the extra mile, you can follow and share Rewilding Earth on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. Bonus points for sharing this podcast with your friends. To listen to past episodes, go to rewilding.org pod that's rewilding.org pod.