The vision of how Europe can be rewilded showing some of the latest insights, experiences and successful working examples is presented in the brochure “Making Europe a Wilder Place, a series of presentations of the forefront of rewilding in Europe”. This 34-page brochure is now available. The proceedings are the result of a full-day seminar organised by Rewilding Europe on October 9, 2013 at WILD10, the World Wilderness Congress in Salamanca, Spain.
Thirteen speakers from a range of different backgrounds presented their views and experiences during this seminar, working on ambitious rewilding visions, plans and actions to an audience of about 200 people. Many new facts about rewilding, wildlife and related enterprise development were presented during four specific sessions: ‘Wilder Landscapes and Ecosystems’, ‘Resurrection of three European Icons’, ‘How could Europe move up the wildness scale?’ and ‘The Wild Business Case’.
During the seminar, a number of new initiatives in support of rewilding were launched: the European Wildlife Bank, the European Rewilding Network (with already 28 rewilding initiatives participating), the Rewilding Bison Action Plan, the Wild Horse Action Plan and the Tauros Programme.
The proceedings of “Making Europe a Wilder Place” communicate the key messages from this inspirational day and aim to encourage rewilding throughout Europe. The proceedings also address a broad range of factors of success that must be considered when working on rewilding, from restoring natural processes to developing rewilding-related enterprises.
The leading author of the proceedings is Chris Sandom, who was also the convener and the facilitator of the symposium. In his concluding remarks, he states “Making Europe a wilder place can only be achieved by the collective effort of functioning communities of species, businesses and societies throughout Europe. We hope these proceedings will inspire you to be an active part of the European rewilding community”.
You can download the Proceedings here and watch the video of the symposium here.