NatureRail is a new national, non-profit, urban-area regeneration initiative about both land and people. Our main purpose is to add further richness, wonder, and delight to urban lives by rescuing and celebrating wild and semi-wild landscapes in and around active metropolitan rail corridors throughout the country--and then bringing people to them. Our program links transportation, parks-and-recreation, public access, and environmental concerns in innovative, cost-effective, and often remarkably low-tech ways.

NatureRail's ultimate aim is "fighting sprawl from within," as we call it. We think that an interconnected program that strengthens urban ecosystems and brings people and renewed ecosystems closer to each other--nourishing human minds and hearts while creating a caring constituency committed to further environmental improvement--can help re-anchor urban areas, lessening the "pull" people feel to leave town to "be near the countryside."