Ecological Restoration

Eradication of invasive mammals from islands is one of our most powerful conservation tools, yet it is woefully underutilized.
We have over a decade of experience in the management of invasive species and ecological restoration. We have worked on ecological restoration projects in the United States, Mexico, Australia, Chile, Argentina, and Ecuador, including the world’s largest island restoration project to date in the Galápagos Islands. We have on-the-ground experience in implementing invasive mammal eradications, and we also specialize in melding economics, ecology, and quantitative tools to guide restoration efforts and maximize conservation returns on investment.

Josh Donlan served as the Chief Scientist for Project Isabela run by the Galapagos National Park and the Charles Darwin Foundation. Project Isabela is the world’s largest restoration project to date, a $10 million dollar successful effort to remove invasive mammals from two of the largest islands in the Galapagos. Previously, Josh Donlan played a pivotal role in building the NGO Island Conservation, whose mission is to prevent extinctions by removing invasive species from islands, from a five-person operation to a multi-million dollar organization that now works in over a dozen countries.

We are also working with Wildlife Conservation Society Chile, the Chilean government, and the Argentinean government on developing a restoration plan for the Tierra del Fuego bioregion. Non-native beavers have devastated this important and fragile ecosystem, while also threatening economic revenues and development opportunities from ecotourism. We are developing a science-driven beaver eradication plan for the region, a restoration project of unprecedented scale and complexity.

We are working with Island Conservation to prioritize island restoration projects in British Columbia and southeast Alaska. This work focuses on developing bio-economic models to prioritize the removal of non-native predators from islands for seabird conservation. For more information, see our recent report Maximizing return on investment for islands restoration and seabird conservation in southeast Alaska, USA and British Columbia, Canada.

For more information on our environmental restoration work, see

◆ The Thematic Atlas of Project Isabela in the Galapagos Islands

Partners:
Wildlife Conservation Society, Chile and Argentina; Centro Austral de Investigaciones Científicas, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas, Argentina; Parques Nacionales de Argentina, Argentina; Colorado State University, USA; Island Conservation, USA