The work of the Wild Land - Wild Spirit Foundation deals with questions of the coexistence of people, wild animals and ecosystems. While humans have shared habitat with wildlife from the dawn of history, this seems to be becoming increasingly difficult in modern times. The answer of classic nature conservation policy is therefore often the establishment of deserted protected areas in order to separate wild animals and the local population from each other. To this end, more than 100 million people have been forcibly resettled worldwide.

We deal with questions and the development of solutions as to how living together can be possible under today's conditions. Because many wild animals live outside the protected areas or have to migrate between the protected areas to maintain their genetic stability and often come into conflict with local people. With our work we are looking for answers on how a peaceful or at least sustainable coexistence can also be implemented outside of protected areas. Only this would make it possible to create extensive networks of protected areas and corridors connecting them, from which wildlife and humans benefit and in which sustainable coexistence can be implemented to the benefit of both.

The focus is on global forest regions and in particular on rainforests in both the tropics and temperate zones. We rely very heavily on the local population and their skills in sustainable land use. Protecting the land rights and cultural identity of these often indigenous peoples and local village communities is important to us. We therefore prefer to support community-based nature conservation projects of the local communities, so-called community-based conservation, and encourage the emergence of such projects. In addition, we support the work of local NGOs active in the forest regions on nature and species protection and humanitarian aid.

Today, global nature conservation is largely in the hands of a few internationally active organizations. Many small, locally active NGOs (non-governmental organizations) and especially indigenous nature conservation projects hardly find the support they deserve for their often very good work. With our work we would like to create a platform to present such projects, to make them better known, to support them and to introduce them to each other. Some of these small projects do not have their own website and just finding them requires a lot of research. Others have websites and can be contacted directly. With our work we hope to create a network to strengthen the work of these local NGOs and projects and, above all, to introduce them to possible sponsors.

Sustainable coexistence of people and ecosystems as a prerequisite for global climate protection

The worldwide destruction of ecosystems and above all of forests and the associated enormous loss of species is probably the greatest catastrophe of our time and represents a major factor in the global climate catastrophe. While indigenous communities mostly live in and with their environment in a way that has worked for millennia and could continue for millennia to come, we humans in industrialized nations have usually forgotten how to do this, leading to the destruction of ecosystems, species extinction and climate catastrophe.

Forests and People Network is our most important project and represents the core of our foundation's work to actively support the local population in wilderness and especially forest regions in protecting their habitat. The focus of our work here are the people, mostly indigenous peoples or local village communities, but also often small NGOs working locally, in the global jungle regions. Around 80% of global biodiversity is found on the land of indigenous peoples, showing how effective their lifestyles are in maintaining ecosystems and biodiversity. The work of Forests and People advocates for the land rights and the right to self-determination of these people, for community forest use models and the promotion of nature and species protection projects developed by them.

The website is under construction. More is coming soon ....