Last week, a five day long “Natural Grazing” course took place in the Netherlands. Rewilding Europe and ARK Nature organized the course to support Rewilding Europe’s local teams and European Rewilding Network (ERN) members involved in natural grazing. Participants from six European countries attended various workshops, expert discussions sessions and study tours together gaining better knowledge and insight about the topic of natural grazing.

This June, the eleventh web-based seminar of the European Rewilding Network took place through our online platform. Members from various European countries gathered to discuss and exchange knowledge about the conversion of former agricultural lands into a more natural setting that allows natural processes to shape the landscape once again, and support species to live here.

Today, the official start of the third bison reintroduction project in the Netherlands was attended by Princess Laurentien of the Netherlands, on behalf of Rewilding Europe. Together with pupils from local schools, Princess Laurentien officially opened the project in the Veluwe area by unveiling a bison board on which the children had put personal messages for the bison encouraging them to thrive well.

This Saturday, after 3000 km of travelling, ten more European bison originating from Belgian and German zoos and wildlife centres arrived at the Țarcu Mountains in the southern part of Romania. This group joined the herds Rewilding Europe and WWF Romania released here in 2014 and 2015, making one more step towards creating a viable wild bison population to roam freely in this area after 200 years of absence.

This Wednesday, 20 Tauros safely arrived at the spectacular Lika Plains, Velebit rewilding area in Croatia, where they will join the existing herd in the largest Tauros breeding site of Rewilding Europe. Here, through natural grazing, wild-living herds of Tauros and horses restore natural processes. The impact of bovines on the landscape is already visible, while large predators in turn influence the behaviour of the large herbivores.

On May 26, Swedish Marie-Claire Cronstedts Foundation announced its support for rewilding of Lapland’s rivers by presenting a grant to Rewilding Lapland Foundation. The funding will complement already approved funding by the Swedish Postcode Foundation for the restoration of fish spawning areas at Trollforsen, Pite River, and boost field activities in Lapland.

Last week, Rewilding Europe and WWF Romania took the first steps towards establishing a bison breeding centre in Romanian Hunedoara Zoo. In the framework of the LIFE Bison project, translocation of two bison marked the start of a new important stage in bringing back this iconic species. Newborn calves will be released from the breeding centre into the wild across the Carpathian Mountains.

At Rewilding Europe, we love to share our accomplishments with you. In the latest Annual Review for the year 2015, you will read about the encouraging progress we made to make Europe a wilder place. A year in which a lot of action happened in moving forward with our exciting initiative.

Today, Rewilding Europe published a ‘Policy Brief’ written and researched by Frans Schepers of Rewilding Europe and Paul Jepson of the University of Oxford, calling for an enabling policy space for rewilding as a new and complementary conservation approach in Europe. Rewilding has caught the scientific and public imagination but needs a more supportive policy environment to achieve its conservation impact. Rewilding is a logical next step in an on-going process of EU nature policy development and the ‘Policy Brief’ identifies areas where rewilding principles can extend and reinvigorate European nature policy.

This Monday, Rewilding Europe and WWF Romania agreed to join forces in the Danube Delta. The organisations signed a new agreement based on a joint vision for the delta, and agreed on key areas of cooperation. The common goal is to help develop the Danube Delta as one of the finest, best-protected and most famous nature destinations of the whole continent. To achieve this, wetland restoration, boosting local nature based economics, support enabling policy developments and conservation legislation, and combining communication efforts are the main elements of the cooperation.