The Alaska Future Ecology Institute (AFEI) is a 501(c)(3) research organization building the scientific foundation for Arctic rewilding — the restoration of large herbivore populations to northern ecosystems as a nature-based climate solution. Emerging research suggests that rewilding the Arctic could prevent permafrost thaw, increase landscape reflectivity, and sequester atmospheric carbon at the gigaton scale, while delivering co-benefits for biodiversity, food security, Indigenous economic development and wildfire mitigation. AFEI is designing and will operate the first controlled field trial of this approach in North America, on a planned 3,000-hectare site in Alaska’s Interior.
AFEI was founded by international Arctic scientists and practitioners who had been conducting pioneering rewilding research at Pleistocene Park in Siberia before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine made the site inaccessible. We are now building the next chapter of that work in North America—advancing the science and developing the stakeholder and policy frameworks necessary for implementing Arctic rewilding at a global scale.