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.
Recently, PAN Parks and Rewilding Europe agreed to work more closely together on protecting existing wilderness as well as increasing wilderness, wild areas and wildlife numbers in Europe. Both organizations offer new solutions to improve the conservation value and cost efficiency of the EU’s flagship nature protection scheme, Natura 2000, through rewilding large areas of land, promoting wilderness and increasingly using non-intervention management approaches in many Natura 2000 areas. Letting nature be itself.
On 22 October 2012, the European Environment Agency published an in-depth overview of protected areas in Europe, highlighting the status of protected regions across 39 countries. The report marks the 20th Anniversary of Natura 2000 and the EU Habitats Directive.
Site visits in the company of ecologists tend to be fun. If these ecologists come with a long-term vision on the landscape, the trip becomes wild. I had the pleasure of the company of Frans Schepers and Wouter Helmer in the Velebit mountains of Croatia, when we visited one of Rewilding Europe’s pilot sites, together with staff from the implementing office of WWF’s Mediterranean Programme.