Financing partners
Dutch Postcode Lottery
The National Postcode Lottery was founded in 1989 to support charities that work towards a just, healthy and green world. The lottery raises funds for its charities and publicizes their work. Since the establishment of the Postcode Lottery, more than 7.6 billion euros have been donated to people and nature.
Rewilding Europe and many other organisations receive support every year. On 9 February 2011, The Dutch Postcode Lottery grant enabled us to start Rewilding Europe for a period of 3 years. In 2013, Rewilding Europe became a beneficiary of the Dutch Postcode Lottery, enabling us to consolidate achievements so far and build the initiative for the years to come. In October 2021, after a formal evaluation, the Board of Directors of the Dutch Postcode Lottery decided to continue cooperation and provide support to Rewilding Europe for the period 2022-2026.
The National Postcode Lottery and deVriendenLoterij, together with the Postcode Lotteries in Great Britain, Sweden, Germany and Norway, form the Postcode Lottery Group. With annual donations of € 854 million, the Postcode Lottery Group is one of the largest private donors to charities in the world. As a Dutch tradition, charity lotteries are included in the Inventory Intangible Heritage (UNESCO) list.
European Commission
The European Commission approved multiple Life-Nature proposals that Rewilding Europe and partners submitted. This provides a strong boost to our work in several rewilding landscapes. For more information see the LIFE project pages:
More information about the LIFE programme.
European Investment Bank
The European Investment Bank has provided Rewilding Europe Capital with a 6 million euro loan finance contract as a first project under the “Bank on Nature Initiative”, set up by the European Commission.
The loan was effected through the Natural Capital Financing Facility (NCFF), of which Rewilding Europe Capital (REC), Europe’s first conservation and rewilding enterprise financing facility, is the first beneficiary. REC will use the loan to support around 30 nature-focused businesses across Europe. Read more here.
WWF Netherlands
WWF Netherlands is one of the founding partners of Rewilding Europe, and started to support the initiative financially in 2011.
Building a future in which humans live in harmony with nature is what WWF tries to do. In the interest of nature and man alike. The policy of the World Wide Fund for Nature aims to protect biodiversity on Earth.
WWF Netherlands does this by:
- Protecting and when needed restoring the worlds’ main habitats. Special attention is paid to tropical and other forests, wetlands and oceans.
- To address the main threats to these areas, such as deforestation, water depletion, overfishing, climate change and illegal trade in animals and plants.
- To convince the Dutch society that they can actively contribute to the protection of nature by providing financial action perspectives and non-financial action perspective (participation activities, volunteering, buying FSC-timber, using green energy etc.).
Endangered Landscapes & Seascapes Programme
The Endangered Landscapes & Seascapes Programme (ELSP) aims to restore natural ecological processes, populations and habitats for a better and more sustainable future. It signals a shift away from ‘slowing declines’ and ‘no net loss’ to a positive and creative conservation agenda in which the potential of our land and seas is recognised.
ELSP supports three of our rewilding landscapes in making their rewilding vision a reality: Danube Delta, Greater Côa Valley and Iberian Highlands.
Arcadia Fund
Arcadia is a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin. It supports charities and scholarly institutions that preserve cultural heritage and the environment. Arcadia also supports projects that promote open access and all of its awards are granted on the condition that any materials produced are made available for free online. Since 2002, Arcadia has awarded more than $598 million to projects around the world.
1% for the Planet
One Percent for the Planet is an international organization whose members contribute at least one percent of their annual sales to environmental causes. Their mission is to “build, support and activate an alliance of businesses financially committed to creating a healthy planet.”
Augmentum
Supporting rewilding efforts in the Velebit Mountains of Croatia, allowing the Rewilding Velebit team to scale up rewilding in three key areas – the ongoing creation of a wildlife corridor, the restoration of natural grazing, and the support of local entrepreneurship.
ForestPeace Foundation
ForestPeace Foundation was founded by Fred Matser in 2019 because of his concern about the disintegration of the natural-dynamic harmonies. ForestPeace wants to contribute to the conservation and restoration of nature and agriculture soil in order to preserve our own home – the earth – as a liveable environment for all living beings. Besides the development of their own nature area ‘Natuurplaats Binnenbos’ in the Netherlands, ForestPeace supports projects of other parties that are working on nature or ecologically oriented agriculture.
Hogan Lovells
Thanks to the partnership with global law firm Hogan Lovells, a new series of short films showcasing the work of Rewilding Europe began production in Spring 2022. In addition, the law firm already supports Rewilding Europe and its member organisations with pro bono (free of charge) legal advice and other forms of non-financial support.
The partnership between Hogan Lovells and Rewilding Europe is intended to serve the scaling and further development of rewilding across Europe. As part of their Responsible Business programme Hogan Lovells has been supporting rewilding efforts in Finland through the work of Snowchange– a Finnish NGO engaged in peatland and forest restoration – since 2019. Snowchange is a long-term member of Rewilding Europe’s European Rewilding Network, and has received several loans from Rewilding Europe Capital.
FedEx
A 400,000 dollar grant from FedEx will fund key activities in the Affric Highlands rewilding landscape in Scotland, and also support the development of a carbon credit standard for rewilding across Europe. By supporting rewilding, FedEx wants to strengthen the connection between carbon capture as a concept and natural solutions on the ground, benefitting biodiversity and community development. Rewilding Credits offer new investment opportunities to organisations that not only want to help address climate breakdown through carbon capture, but want to invest in nature recovery, biodiversity and wellbeing in rural communities as well.
HCBC
A 120.000 Euro grant from HSBC will support our efforts for rewilding to address the climate crisis, whilst also providing biodiversity and community benefits. With around c.12m hectares of degraded peatlands located within the European Union, there is an opportunity to significantly reduce emissions and ultimately change these landscapes back from a carbon emitter to a carbon sink. Rewilding Europe and HSBC have identified Swedish Lapland and the Oder Delta for peatland and forest rewilding. The initiatives will contribute to HSBC’s efforts to remove barriers to the widespread and large-scale adoption of nature-based solutions.
Grantham Foundation
The Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment was established in 1997 by Jeremy and Hannelore Grantham. Their mission is to protect and conserve the natural environment. With their financial support Rewilding Europe is working to fund landscape-scale peatland rewilding through the sale of nature-based carbon credits.
Exodus Travels
Exodus Travels is a UK-based adventure travel company that was founded more than 45 years ago. Exodus Travels recognises that there is an urgent climate emergency and is committed to becoming an advocate within the travel industry for protecting and restoring the planet. In 2020, Exodus Travels was one of the founding signatories of the ‘Tourism Declares a Climate Emergency’ pledge, dedicating time to proactively change how the company measures, reduces and mitigates its carbon footprint. The company further committed to a science-based target of halving its carbon footprint per passenger by 2030.
Starting in 2021, a new partnership between Rewilding Europe and Exodus Travels supports the rewilding of land in five wildlife corridors in the Central Apennines rewilding area. Exodus Travels will launch and fund a “Nature and Carbon Corridors” project, through which a minimum of 100m2 of land will be rewilded for every passenger that books a trip with the company. This will support the ongoing development of the wildlife corridors in the rewilding area, thereby promoting biodiversity, locking up atmospheric carbon and indirectly supporting the growth of a local nature-based economy.
EnviroSustain
EnviroSustain (ES) has been providing flexible and holistic sustainability solutions to European commercial real estate firms since 2001. ES offers a broad range of technical and ESG services (Environmental, Social and Governance) to provide a bespoke solution to suit clients’ individual needs, wherever they are at in their journey.
Since their 20th anniversary, one of the company’s goals has been to have a nature-positive impact through their own operations and the work they do with clients. As part of a positive impact campaign in 2022, ES made two donations to Rewilding Europe, supporting the European Young Rewilders and the comeback of wild horses. This led to further discussions about the importance of biodiversity and rewilding landscapes and the most beneficial ways to provide more long-term impactful support.
Starting in 2023, a new ten-year partnership will see ES donating a percentage of their turnover each year to the European Wildlife Comeback Fund in order to support the work of Rewilding Europe in expanding species reintroductions. In addition, the ES team will provide pro bono architectural and sustainability advice to support Rewilding Europe and the European Rewilding Network organisations with the aim of achieving sustainability improvements at offices and rewilding centres.
Cartier for Nature
Cartier for Nature is an independent philanthropic initiative fully funded by the French jewelry and watchmaking Maison Cartier. Its mission is to help preserve biodiversity and healthy ecosystems for present and future generations. Cartier for Nature provides grants to non-profit organisations to accelerate their nature conservation efforts and help protect, restore and sustainably manage ecosystems for the benefits of human well-being and biodiversity. To date, Cartier for Nature has supported two rewilding landscapes, the Iberian Highlands in Spain and the Southern Carpathians in Romania.
Ecological Restoration Fund
The newly established Ecological Restoration Fund supports work that protects biodiverse hotspots, rejuvenates degraded landscapes and promotes local environmental activism. The focus is on re-establishing nature’s essential interconnections while fostering cultural, social and economic opportunities for the communities inhabiting those landscapes.
Fondation Ensemble
Fondation Ensemble is a private foundation, established in France in 2004. Since then, it has funded over 300 projects throughout the world supporting local communities in order to find a sustainable balance between resources use and nature restoration.
Open Rivers Programme
The Open Rivers Programme supports some of our rewilding actions that lead to the removal of small dams and the restoration of river flow and biodiversity.
Stichting Amfortas
Stichting Amfortas is a Dutch family foundation dedicated to supporting Rewilding Europe’s effort to advance rewilding across the continent.
DeHoorn
Stichting de Hoorn is dedicated to restoring and preserving natural ecosystems. Through a combination of scientific expertise and community involvement, Stichting de Hoorn strives to make a positive impact.