Rewilding Europe is working to accelerate the restoration of nature at landscape scale. Europe’s protected areas could play a pivotal role in the process.

Membership of the network will enhance rewilding efforts along the Grote Nete River in northeast Belgium, with a particular focus on the regeneration of floodplain forest.

This year the EU will take decisions that have far-reaching consequences for Europe’s people and nature. A new set of policy papers, released today, outlines why and how European politicians should prioritise nature restoration in the EU Biodiversity Strategy to 2030.

The rewilding of European ecosystems can help to tackle both the current climate and biodiversity emergencies. In a policy brief published today, a coalition of five organisations call on the European Commission to prioritise nature recovery in the EU Biodiversity Strategy post-2020.

By reconnecting isolated areas of wild nature, wildlife corridors are an effective method of enhancing biodiversity and boosting animal populations. Rewilding Europe, which is working to establish wildlife corridors in a number of its operational areas, believes rewilding can help to create an urgently needed, well-connected network of green and blue infrastructure right across Europe.

The restoration of the River Waal in Nijmegen in the Netherlands is a showcase for contemporary rewilding. In June Rewilding Europe and the Municipality of Nijmegen led an excursion presenting the restoration to representatives of various European green cities.

Last week, two European bison were released in the newly established bison release site at the foothills of Poiana Ruscă Mountains, part of the Southern Carpathians rewilding area. The bison were relocated from the Romanian bison reserve in Brasov county.

Programme’s proposed measures would have a catastrophic impact on biodiversity and negatively impact the work of Rewilding Europe and its partners.

This Wednesday, President Jean-Claude Juncker and the EU Commission have confirmed that the EU’s flagship nature laws – the Birds and Habitats Directives – will be saved and not rewritten and weakened, ending two years of uncertainty over the laws’ future. They have also called for a plan to better implement and enforce these laws. This is a win for the record half a million people who called on the Commission to save and enforce these laws as part of the Europe-wide NatureAlert campaign.

Rewilding Europe places high value on education programmes and activities for kids, students, volunteers, activists and other nature enthusiasts. We believe that an essential part of our work is to communicate and share our passion, knowledge and enthusiasm for the natural world, and the philosophy of rewilding with the generations to come. In May, the ‘Black Vultures Nature Camp’ for children and Earth Day celebration in the Bulgarian Rhodope Mountains successfully empowered a new generation of young Europeans to share this vision further.