Rewilding Europe is delighted to welcome the LIFE PRIMED project to the European Rewilding Network. With rewilding sites in both Italy and Greece, the project is working to develop and scale up innovative environmental engineering solutions and promote community engagement and nature-based tourism. This addition takes the number of network members to 66 (including Rewilding Europe’s eight operational areas), distributed right across Europe.

Co-authored by several representatives of Rewilding Europe, the article outlines a new approach to monitoring rewilding progress based on levels of anthropogenic intervention and ecological integrity. This widely applicable monitoring technique can help the practical implementation of rewilding and boost conservation and restoration outcomes.

Rewilding Europe is delighted to welcome a new member from Portugal to the European Rewilding Network. Working to promote the nature-based economic development of the Serra da Estrela region, the Rewilding Geopark Estrela project takes the number of network members to 65 (including Rewilding Europe’s eight operational areas), distributed right across Europe.

Inviting widespread public support, the objective of the campaign is to keep the EU’s Water Framework Directive as rigorous as possible. With many EU member states failing to meet the targets of the directive, rewilding can help to improve the health of European water ecosystems and guarantee sustainable supplies of freshwater.

An inaugural grant from the newly established Endangered Landscapes Programme will enable Rewilding Europe and local partners to develop a 120,000-hectare wildlife corridor in the Greater Côa Valley in northern Portugal. By scaling up current rewilding efforts in Western Iberia, this will transform a region with high levels of rural depopulation and species loss into one with new opportunities for both wild nature and people. The 2.6 million euro grant complements another for 2.1 million euros for a record-breaking wetland and steppe restoration project in the Danube Delta.

An inaugural grant from the newly established Endangered Landscapes Programme will enable Rewilding Europe and local partners to scale up rewilding efforts across an expansive area of wetland and steppe in the transboundary Danube Delta area. This will bring huge benefits to wild nature and a wide range of local stakeholders.

The plan, which involved constructing dykes around the Middle Oder wetland in Poland, would have had a catastrophic impact on biodiversity and negatively impacted the work of Rewilding Europe and its partners. The rest of Poland’s inland waterways programme will hopefully now be abandoned.

One of the earliest showcases for rewilding, this pioneering site in the Netherlands has delivered huge ecological, economic and social benefits.

The release of European bison into the wild in both Southern Carpathian rewilding areas represents another milestone in the comeback of this magnificent and ecologically important animal.

By reconnecting isolated areas of wild nature, wildlife corridors are an effective method of enhancing biodiversity and boosting animal populations. Rewilding Europe, which is working to establish wildlife corridors in a number of its operational areas, believes rewilding can help to create an urgently needed, well-connected network of green and blue infrastructure right across Europe.