Mission

Founded in 1996, the mission of the Wild Utah Project is to maintain and, where needed, restore the health of our natural lands in Utah and adjoining states. We do this by applying the principles of conservation science to land management.

History

In 1992, in the face of an exponential loss of wildlife and its habitat, leading conservation biologists and public lands activists brought the principles of conservation biology into the environmental movement by establishing The Wildlands Project. The founders, who included Michael Soule, Reed Noss, Dave Foreman, and others, believed that the long-term solution to habitat degradation and fragmentation lies with the creation and implementation of landscape-scale wildlands networks.

In 1996, after several years of working on Wildlands networks in other parts of the country, The Wildlands Project approached Jim Catlin to start an affiliate organization in Utah.  With several years of funding in hand, the Wild Utah Project was conceived. The first order of business for Wild Utah Project was to assess what is currently "wild" in the state. Thus began our work with the Utah Wilderness Coalition to develop a method for assessing wilderness, conducting field inventories and creating GIS maps to be used for conservation planning and federal legislation.

Since then, Wild Utah Project's work has expanded to other conservation issues in Utah and surrounding states.  We now provide scientific analysis and GIS services to land managers, conservation organizations and citizen activists working on a variety of issues.  In addition, we focus on our own ongoing, programmatic work related to creating wildlands networks and preparing our natural places for climate change.  In 2007, Wild Utah Project spun off from The Wildlands Project after receiving our 501(c)3 tax status and bringing on our own Board of Directors.