Romania, the name of this country has always had a mythical sound in my ears. I had wanted to visit Romania and the Carpathians for many years, I so didn’t have to think too long about going there when I was asked to.
35 students and 15 lecturers from universities in Bulgaria, Croatia, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the Netherlands took part in the second edition of the ‘European Wilderness Entrepreneurship’ school from 20/3 to 4/4, a part of the Erasmus Intensive Programme. Indulging in a unique learning experience in Western Iberia.
The cowboy profession has changed dramatically. I consider myself as a modern one. I live in the city and I am now travelling by train, plane and car from the Netherlands to Croatia. On the train, the women next to me proudly show their new bags to each other. The brand is called ‘Cowboys bags’. They look nice, but don’t quite look like the saddle bags of Clint Eastwood or Old Shatterhand.
Was Europe once dominated by closed-canopy forests, or instead rather by a mosaic landscape with a mixture of open and wooded areas, shaped by large numbers of wild large herbivores? This has long been debated but a recent study of beetle fossils in Great Britain, indicates that both opinions are probably right.
A subadult Iberian imperial eagle (Aquila adalberti) visited the Campanarios de Azaba Biological Reserve on March 14. This was the first time in many years this happened and a landmark wildlife comeback event for the Western Iberia rewilding area, in which Fundación Naturaleza y Hombre (FNYH) works as partner of Rewilding Europe.
Many people in Velebit are curious about why our family is so passionate about beekeeping and why we want to make our family honey business professional full time jobs. Like for many other entrepreneurs, the answer for us is simple.
Traveling across the USA you can stop to have a hamburger and a coke (or pepsi), then drive 1000 km and stop to eat a hamburger very similar to the above in a town very similar to the previous one. However, if you drive 1000 km across old Europe, you will probably cross 3–4 country borders, pass 4–5 language zones, 7–8 architectural styles, a couple of religions and dozens of distinctively different delicious dishes …
The enterprise component of Rewilding Europe is all about the people we are working with to create rewilding enterprises in our rewilding areas. In order for rewilding to succeed, it has to bring benefits for the people who live in those areas. If local people feel the benefits this pleases politicians – and this means a more favourable political climate for rewilding.
During my pre-mission research I realised that the chance of meeting a sturgeon in the delta was close to zero. Unfortunately. So I took the chance to dive with the sturgeons at the Danube Delta Eco-Tourism Museum Centre in Tulcea before setting out in the delta. They have a special sturgeon aquarium including the largest and most sought-after species of them all, the great beluga.
A big herd of dozens of bison suddenly crosses the forest track ahead of us at full speed. A second or two later the large animals are already gone, impressingly fast and agile as they are. Well, I guess that was it. A bit of a disappointment of course, but at least we did see them. Living completely wild here as they do, I did expect them to be pretty shy and wary. Even though I had hoped to be able to photograph them… Luckily, I was soon to learn a few more things about bison.