Dominick DellaSalla

Dominick is Chief Scientist at Wild Heritage, and former President of the Society for Conservation Biology, North America Section and internationally renowned author of over 200 science papers on forest and fire ecology, conservation biology, endangered species management, and landscape ecology. .

Dr. Dominick A. DellaSala is Chief Scientist at Wild Heritage, and former President of the Society for Conservation Biology, North America Section. He is an internationally renowned author of over 200 science papers on forest and fire ecology, conservation biology, endangered species management, and landscape ecology. Dominick has given plenary and keynote talks ranging from academic conferences to the United Nations Earth Summit.

Dominick has appeared in National Geographic, Science Digest, Science Magazine, Scientific American, Time Magazine, Audubon Magazine, National Wildlife Magazine, High Country News, Terrain Magazine, NY Times, LA Times, USA Today, Jim Lehrer News Hour, CNN, MSNBC, “Living on Earth (NPR),” several PBS documentaries and even Fox News!

Dominick has served on numerous committees, including White House Council task forces on forests and the Oregon’s Global Warming Commission carbon task force reporting to the governor. He is editor of scientific journals and publications. His book “Temperate and Boreal Rainforests of the World: Ecology and Conservation” received an academic excellence award from Choice magazine, one of the nation’s top book review journals. His recent co-authored book– The Ecological Importance of Mixed-Severity Fires: Nature’s Phoenix – presents groundbreaking science on the ecological importance of wildfires. Dominick is motivated by his work to leave a living planet for his daughters, grandkids and all those that follow.

Wild Heritage's mission is to protect and restore ecosystem integrity and safeguard biocultural diversity around the world and its focus in on primary forest protection, protected areas and ecological restoration. More about Wild Heritage.
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Dominick's project publications

Kayapo women carrying items

Large-scale forest conservation with an Indigenous People in the Amazon

This book chapter examines the struggle of the Kayapó to protect their constitutional territorial rights in the highly-threatened southeastern Amazon of Brazil. 21st century alliances of the Kayapò with conservation organisations have enabled protection of over 9 million hectares of their contiguous ratified territories.

Primary forests are being undervalued in the climate emergency

The world's contain irreplaceable biodiversity and are critical to the regulation of the global climate and maintaining stable carbon pools. Carbon-dense primary forests are found in every major forest biome and they typically support higher levels of biodiversity than logged forests, especially imperiled and endemic species, yet their value is not fully recognised in climate policy.

Recognising the importance of unmanaged forests to mitigate climate change

The carbon stock in Europe's forests is decreasing and the importance of protecting ‘unmanaged’ forests must be recognised in reversing this process. Scientific evidence suggests that ‘unmanaged’ forests have higher total biomass carbon stock than secondary forests being actively managed for commodity production or recently abandoned.