Rewilding the Land

As the world’s nations face the realities of climate change negotiation in Egypt this week at CoP27, the United Nations Climate Change Conference, we take a closer look at what it means to care for wild places. For some indigenous groups, just the concept of “wild” land is foreign, but many of these groups do recognize when land is out of balance. The extreme floods and fires we’ve been seeing around the U.S. and the world are a telltale sign that something is off, and as humans, we need to pay a little more attention to what’s happening on our land. Chuck Sams is the first Native American director of the U.S. National Park Service, and he explains in this talk how his background impacts the way he approaches his job and thinks about managing protected places. Kristine Tompkins spent a lot of time outside and in U.S. national parks growing up, and now runs Tompkins Conservation. The philanthropic organization buys up land in Chile and Argentina to restore and return to the countries as part of their national park systems. NBC Correspondent Gadi Schwartz moderates the conversation and shares some outdoor memories of his upbringing in Albuquerque, New Mexico.