We are delighted to share that we have been warmly welcomed as a partner to the Global Rewilding Alliance: an international coalition of 180 organisation with a vision to restore wild lands and seas and provide a secure future for people, nature and the planet.

Through this partnership, we will reinforce and strengthen our shared mission of advancing the global rewilding movement through the creation, dissemination, and exchange of robust science, evidence and ideas, alongside joint policy and advocacy work.

Global Rewilding Alliance partners span 123 countries and have already influenced the restoration of over 200 million hectares of land and sea – contributing significantly to the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework’s 30 x 30 target. Our vision in Kazakhstan is to enable the recovery of saiga antelope populations and their habitat across their former range – spanning a vast, 75-million-hectare area.

Nature needs large, ambitious programmes like these, and coming together gives us a better chance of success.

So far, we have established over 5 million hectares of legally-protected steppe grassland, desert, and wetland habitats, contributing to the Alliance’s figure. We hope that through our partnership with the Government of Kazakhstan and relationships with local communities we can enable the designation of additional Conserved and Protected Areas, including OECMs and Ecological Corridors, thus contributing, as a partner in the Alliance, to the ultimate success of these global goals.

We are especially excited to learn from the Global Rewilding Alliance’s collaboration with Yale University, which is seeking to estimate the carbon drawdown potential of trophic restoration.

Their 2023 Nature paper, ‘Trophic rewilding can expand natural climate solutions‘ indicated the carbon benefits of restored wild animal populations. Most notably (for us), the paper highlighted the fire-suppressing role of wildebeests in Tanzania. When wildebeest populations were recovered from a low of 30,000 individuals to 1.5 million in the 1970s, the Serengeti resumed its role as a carbon sink – storing approximately 5 million more tons of carbon dioxide than when wildebeest populations were at their lowest.

The saiga antelope in Kazakhstan, by comparison, has recovered from less than 40,000 to over 2 million individuals today – exhibiting a similar trajectory to that of the wildebeest with similar (yet so far un-evidenced) implications for the carbon storage potential of the Kazakh Steppe.

This, among many other opportunities, gives us great hope for productive collaboration in the future.

Image: Steppe ecosystem mural at a school in the Alty Sai Ecological Park, Kazakhstan © Michaela Butorova