Explore the potential of nature restoration and rewilding in European landscapes with the newly founded Terra Nova project.

This October, a group of volunteers from the Associação Transumância e Natureza (ATN), partner of Rewilding Europe in Western Iberia, participated in a work camp where they recovered a ruined house in Ribeira do Mosteiro nature reserve. The restoration of the property will continue and once finished, ATN will use the house for their various activities.

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.

Rewilding can be the best option for land-use in cases of farmland abandonment in Europe and all over the world when the social structure of farming communities has been eroded and low-intensity farming is no longer socially or economically viable. In some areas maintaining a moderate level of agricultural disturbance can maximize species richness with benefits for biodiversity. But both strategies cannot be successfully implemented without intervention and right management.

It was 25 years ago when  I saw a tortoise for the last time, as a researcher of perhaps the richest area of reptiles in Europe: Thrace. Even Egyptian vulture, imperial eagle and black vulture fed on reptiles there. And it appeared that the majestic golden eagle, elsewhere picking young ibex and chamois off the rocks, was taking almost 100 tortoises a year per eagle chick back to the nest.

From the wide and relatively intact Dehesa forests of the Salamanca district in Castilla y León. After five minutes in the Campanarios de Azába nature reserve, we understand that we must be in the right place with the impressive sight of more than 100 large raptors slowly taking to their wings in the air thermals of the morning sun over the holm and cork oaks of the reserve.

On 15 November 2010 the Institute for European Environmental Policy (IEEP) published a report on farmland abandonment in the EU. In the report is stated that in the last decades substantial areas of the EU have been affected by abandonment. And a mid-range estimate shows abandonment up to an amount of 168,000 km2 of land by 2030.