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.

Rewilding Europe warmly welcomes five new members to the European Rewilding Network. These new members are rewilding initiatives in Austria/Germany, Greece, Belarus, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, and Ukraine. Since its launch at WILD10 Salamanca in October 2013, the network doubled in size and is now counting 48 members from 23 European countries.

This year’s first web-based seminar of the European Rewilding Network took place end of March. Members from 14 European rewilding sites joined in and discussed how to engage students in rewilding related work. The participants addressed the great potential of involving this young generation and shared experiences about how to best start internship programmes.

In January this year Rewilding Lapland, the local partner of Rewilding Europe in Sweden, signed cooperation agreements with two community based river organizations to work together to rewild large parts of the stunning and largely free-roaming Råne and Pite rivers. The first activities will start in early spring this year. A unique initiative to help recover some of the last wild salmon populations of continental Europe.

Today, ARK Nature and Rewilding Europe have renewed their partnership with the signing of another three-year agreement for cooperation. This cooperation includes continuation of existing work like developing the European Wildlife Bank and the European Rewilding Network, but also possible new activities such as promoting the role of carrion and scavengers in Rewilding Europe’s rewilding areas.

The ninth web-based seminar of the European Rewilding Network took place on December 14^th. This time, attendants active in various rewilding sites throughout Europe shared experiences in restoring natural grazing as a key ecological process by bringing back free roaming and wild-living large herbivores. The event focused in particular on horses and bovines, including the Tauros.

Dave and Anna, two environmentalists from the United Kingdom, started their “Biking for Rewilding” tour in April 2015 after leaving their office jobs and taking off on an adventure with a purpose. The 4,000 km cycling tour led them through seven European countries, where they visited seven rewilding areas. The final two destinations were Wisent Welt and the Palatinate Forest Biosphere Reserve in Germany, members of the European Rewilding Network (ERN).

This November, the eighth web-based seminar of the European Rewilding Network took place. Members of the network shared valuable experiences on how to increase the tourism value of wild nature and wildlife. The seminar addressed the benefits that can arise from nature-based tourism for nature, wildlife as well as for local communities. One of the highlights was to learn how local people benefit from wildlife photography in the Iberian Peninsula.

Today, Rewilding Europe warmly welcomes three sites in The Netherlands as new members of the European Rewilding Network (ERN). Natuurmonumenten, the largest nature organisation in the Netherlands, has proposed these three sites where great progress is made with rewilding. The areas are the Deelerwoud/Veluwezoom (province of Gelderland), the Drents-Friese Wold (province of Friesland and Drenthe) and the Dutch part of the Kempen~Broek (province of Limburg and Noord-Brabant), in the border area with Belgium.