Introducing
Suzanne Asha Stone
The most important lesson that Wolves have taught me over a lifetime of working for their restoration is that we need to “rewild” our own understanding of Nature and accordingly, our own behavior. To truly restore biodiversity, we must adapt to Nature’s needs rather than force Nature to adapt to us. Following the wolf’s example, we can thrive in balance with our environment, each fulfilling our own important role in nurturing our Mother Earth. It is the only way to restore our planet’s biodiversity and indeed the survival of our species.
Suzanne Stone is an internationally renowned expert with four decades of experience in the field of species conservation and coexistence. She began her journey as an intern in the 80s for the US Fish and Wildlife Service and Nez Perce tribe’s interagency wolf restoration committee, and she played a key role in the Yellowstone and Idaho wolf reintroduction. Her role was multifaceted as she not only provided hands-on care for the wolves during their capture and reintroduction, but she also secured the critical funding that made the second year of the reintroduction possible.
Suzanne’s work has placed her at epicenter of the cultural and political conflict that infuses predator conservation around the world. Suzanne has long realized that our apex predators will never escape human persecution until people find a way to coexist with them. That belief and commitment drove her to found the International Wildlife Coexistence Network, a nonprofit dedicated to restoring global biodiversity through community-led projects and government programs that allow both humans and wildlife to thrive. Suzanne has been an early innovator in both the philosophy and methodology that created the coexistence movement.
She led the western wolf coexistence work at Defenders of Wildlife for two decades and founded the ongoing River Wolf Project in 2008 to test new nonlethal methods to keep 20-25k sheep safe from predation on national forest land. Her methodology has been critical to the wolf conservation efforts throughout the American West and around the world, including the Middle East, Europe, and parts of Africa.
Suzanne is also a researcher and she is the lead author on a study entitled The Adaptive use of nonlethal strategies for minimizing wolf–sheep conflict in Idaho. She is an internationally sought speaker and has lectured at the Smithsonian Institute, University of Oxford, the United Nations Conference on Biological Diversity, University of Technology Sydney, Australia, the Wildlife Society, and more . She is a current member of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Species Survival Commission (SSC) Canid Specialist Group, the world’s chief body of scientific and practical expertise on the status and conservation of wild canid species and is helping to protect wolves and other imperiled wildlife with communities around the world.
