In this blog, Frans Schepers, Executive Director of Rewilding Europe, outlines why rewilding offers transformative solutions than can enable nature and people to thrive together.

Animals play a critical role in the global carbon cycle. Published today, a new paper shows how enabling the recovery of wildlife populations through rewilding would go a long way to mitigating the worst effects of climate change.

The Rewilding Europe initiative received a €500,000 check from the Dutch Postcode Lottery at its “Good Money Gala” on February 4. For 101 charities – and for Rewilding Europe as well – it was a big night at the Koninklijk Theater Carré in Amsterdam. The night’s highlight came when the Lottery announced it would award €14.4 million from its Dream Fund to Peace Parks and WWF to help them in their efforts to save African rhinoceros from extinction.

The Dutch conservation organization Natuurmonumenten (Dutch Society for the Protection of Nature, 1905), with a staggering number of 735,000 members, 150.000 young members (of the OERRR initiative, 2012) and managing some 345 nature reserves covering over 101,000 hectares in The Netherlands, recently published a survey on the attitude of Dutch people towards wildlife in its country. Some 40,000 people participated in the survey showing a clear and positive attitude towards wildlife, wildlife comeback and more space for wild nature and wildlife.

From 26 to 30 March, Rewilding Europe organized a training seminar in The Netherlands for all the five project teams from the different European countries. The main subject was on natural grazing and communication, as these are two very important and challenging subjects in all our rewilding projects. This was the second training seminar that we organized, after the successful one on conservation enterprise development in Finland in October 2011.

We are happy to announce that the ongoing cooperation between Rewilding Europe and the WILD Foundation has now been formalized in a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU).

Frans Schepers, Rewilding Europes managing director, was guest in Dutch television show “Koffietijd” (“Coffee Time”). “Koffietijd” is broadcasted daily. Presenter Quinty Trustful asked Frans about the plans of Rewilding Europe and about the importance of the Dutch Postcode Lottery. Land abandonment and restoring natural processes were also mentioned as important aspects of the plans.