Photo provided courtesy of WildCountryMichael Soulé (right) and TWS Australia's National Campaign Director Alec Marr, flanked by WildCountry promotional materials.

The Wilderness Society Australia was formed after a bitter struggle for, and tragic loss of, a rare wilderness jewel, "Lake Pedder," in the heart of Tasmania's South West Wilderness. Our founders decided an organization dedicated to the protection of wild places was needed if nature was to have any chance of surviving relentless development and population pressures.

In the years that followed, TWS evolved into a powerful mobilizing force and catalyst for change. But despite the many successes of "name it and save it" campaigns, a deep sense of foreboding about the long-term survival of wild nature gnawed at us all. A new way of thinking about nature conservation was needed and so a global search began for a new long-term vision and practical framework.

Serendipity can take many forms. In 1997 half a dozen people turned up to an annual TWS meeting with copies of Wild Earth under their arms. These Wildlands Project publications described a U.S. vision to "re-wild" the continent. The sheer audacity and scale of the vision, the scientific boldness of the conceptual framework, and the leadership of conservation icons Dave Foreman and Michael Soulé inspired TWS to begin a dialogue with leading Australian scientists and the Wildlands Project to help develop a similar initiative in Australia.

I can still see the bemused look on the face of Wildlands Project founder David Johns as he sat patiently in Sydney listening to the ambitions of a campaign organization wishing to tackle scientific analysis and long-term, multi-scaled conservation planning and to then catalyze on-the-ground delivery of conservation outcomes.

This first conversation lead to many more meetings: two visits to Wildlands Project headquarters, an enthusiastic exchange with Dave Foreman and discussions with Michael Soulé at the World Wilderness Congress in Port Elizabeth which paved the way for an memorandum of understanding between TWS and the Wildlands Project and for Michael to join the WildCountry Science Council as co-chair.

A peer-reviewed paper, "The Role of Connectivity in Nature Conservation in Australia" (Soulé et. al., Pacific Conservation Biology, Vol. 10, pp. 266–279, 2004) quickly followed, which initiated a nature conservation revolution in Australia.

Four years ago, anyone who suggested our sole large predator, a wild dog known as the dingo, had a role to play in nature conservation would have been met with derision. Today, the mood is rapidly shifting as Michael leads a research initiative which we hope will support this theory. A team of Australian scientists is now designing experiments to test the theory that dingoes—by controlling introduced red foxes and feral house cats—are protecting many species of small marsupials from extinction.

Thanks to Michael, the two Daves, and the Wildlands team, TWS has expanded its conservation approach and vision across the entire Australian continent. Several large-scale landscape conservation projects incorporating WildCountry scientific thinking and analysis are underway. In turn, they are already helping to protect and restore millions of acres of some of the most beautiful wild places left on Earth.

— Virginia Young, TWS Strategic Campaign Coordinator