From climate change mitigation to enhanced health and wellbeing, nature has the answers to many of society’s most pressing challenges. On International Biodiversity Day, Rewilding Europe’s latest annual review shows how investing in wild nature can make the world more livable for everyone.

The European Union’s multi-annual financial framework is currently being reviewed for the post-2020 period. Rewilding Europe, together with a number of other leading European conservation NGOs in the European Habitats Forum, is calling for the budget of the LIFE programme to be significantly increased, along with a range of other amendments.

Rewilding Europe’s European Wildife Bank is a pioneering way to restore natural numbers of large herbivores across Europe.

We are delighted to announce that the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Netherlands will continue supporting Rewilding Europe for another three-year period. This generic support will help us to deliver on our objectives, both at a central level, and in individual rewilding areas.

To regain ground and confidence nature conservation needs policies that support rewilding. Rewilding is the biggest, most exciting idea to emerge in conservation since the 1970s. The challenge now is to create the spaces within conservation policy and politics where rewilding ideas can find expression, gain traction and be tested.

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.

We are excited to announce that on 15 April, Rewilding Europe was accepted to become a member of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources – IUCN. Rewilding Europe was one of the 22 new members approved by the IUCN Council meeting last week.

Last week, an overwhelming majority of MEPs from all political groups sent a strong message to the European Commission and Council by adopting a key report which calls for more action to protect nature. Rewilding Europe welcomes the outcome of the European Parliament’s vote to protect EU Nature laws, the Birds and Habitats Directives.

Today, 20 European conservation organisations including Rewilding Europe,  present a joint paper called ‘Action for Biodiversity in the EU and the Fitness Check of the Birds and Habitat Directives’. The joint paper, which was developed under the umbrella of the European Habitats Forum states that the Fitness Check evidence is crystal clear – the Birds and Habitat Directives are fit for purpose and there is no case for “merging and modernising” them.

In the early autumn of 2015, Rewilding Europe carried out a major attitude and knowledge assessment about rewilding, biodiversity and Natura 2000 network in eight rewilding areas. The assessment covered seven European countries: Portugal, Croatia, Italy, Romania, Poland, Germany and Bulgaria. The results are encouraging; people living in and around these eight rewilding areas understand and support the concept of rewilding, are aware about the problems of biodiversity loss and endorse the comeback of wildlife species.