85 Million Acres Protected: How Wills Are Rewilding Two Continents

Imagine leaving behind a legacy that outlasts your name—not in a plaque or a building, but in thriving ecosystems where wildlife roams free and fragile landscapes are shielded from mining and development. That’s exactly what’s happening across Australia and the United States, where private citizens are quietly orchestrating one of the most significant conservation movements in decades, one bequest at a time.

Australia has become a global conservation powerhouse, boasting 24 million acres of privately-protected land—and wealthy individuals bequeathing their estates are the driving force behind it. Bush Heritage Australia, which manages about 3 million acres, reported a staggering 4,600 bequests last year, nearly double the number from 2022. CEO Rachel Lowry explained why this matters:“Some of Australia’s most threatened and fragile ecosystems and wildlife sit outside of the national reserve system. They’re found on private land or pastoral country, and they may have deep cultural and ecological values, but they’re not protected from threats such as land clearing, mining or invasive species.”The momentum is so real that Queensland state law granted Bush Heritage Australia’s Pilungah Reserve protections equivalent to a federal National Park—a vote of confidence from the public sector that these private efforts are reshaping conservation.

Across the Pacific, the United States is witnessing a similar phenomenon through American Prairie, a private-public partnership that’s been assembling what amounts to America’s largest wild prairie assemblage over the past two decades. Operating between the Charles M. Russell National Wildlife Refuge and the Upper Missouri Breaks National Monument in Montana, the organization has accumulated 603,657 acres—comprising 167,070 deeded acres and 436,587 leased public acres—with an audacious goal of protecting and rewilding 2.3 million acres. The group made headlines by purchasing 22,000 acres that had previously blocked public access to Missouri Breaks, and they’ve removed over 100 miles of derelict fencing across the Great Plains. In 2024 alone, American Prairie set a visitation record for the seventh consecutive year with over 6,600 overnight visitors and more than 5,000 at its National Discovery Center in Lewistown, Montana.

But here’s where it gets remarkable: according to the Land Trust Alliance, a U.S. organization advocating for private conservation land, 61 million acres across America are now privately held for conservation purposes—more acreage than all the U.S. national parks combined. That’s about 3% of the 60% of American lands that are privately owned. The alliance has set an ambitious target to double this figure by the end of the decade. What’s driving all this? People genuinely trying to leave the world better than they found it—and putting their money where their values are. Whether through wills, donations, or direct land purchases, private citizens are proving that conservation doesn’t need a government seal to work. It needs vision, resources, and the conviction that the next generation deserves the same wild places we do.