As she begins her professorship at Wageningen University, Dr. Liesbeth Bakker will work to progress rewilding’s scientific agenda and enhance rewilding outcomes.

A new academic paper outlines how principles for European rewilding can be put into practice. Based on practical experience and pilot projects, some dating back over 25 years, the authors ask applied scientists to view rewilding as an unfolding conservation approach to optimise its transformative potential.

Co-authored by several representatives of Rewilding Europe, the article outlines a new approach to monitoring rewilding progress based on levels of anthropogenic intervention and ecological integrity. This widely applicable monitoring technique can help the practical implementation of rewilding and boost conservation and restoration outcomes.

A successful workshop in Leipzig lays the groundwork for promoting and using rewilding principles to strengthen the European Union’s ecological restoration agenda.

The rise of rewilding has led to much dialogue and debate. With rewilding initiatives now bearing fruit in over 25 European countries, Rewilding Europe’s new and progressive language can engender essential support and passion for wild nature across the continent.

On 23 March 2017, a coalition of five organisations kicked off a new initiative to promote and strengthen the EU ecological restoration agenda. By signing a Memorandum of Understanding, Rewilding Europe, BirdLife Europe and Central Asia, WWF European Policy Office, the European Environmental Bureau and the German Institute for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv), launched this 3-year initiative, funded by WWF Netherlands.

On the face of it Scotland is fertile rewilding ground. From a human population of around 5.3 million, around one third of people live in just a handful of major cities, leaving the rest of Scotland’s 80,000 sq.km. sparsely populated by European standards.

We are excited to announce that on 15 April, Rewilding Europe was accepted to become a member of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources – IUCN. Rewilding Europe was one of the 22 new members approved by the IUCN Council meeting last week.

Today, Wouter Helmer, co-founder and Rewilding Director of Rewilding Europe, received a prestigious Dutch conservation award, the ‘Groeneveld Award’ (Groeneveldprijs) at the Groeneveld Castle in Baarn, the Netherlands. The award council report describes Wouter Helmer as ‘an instigator of modern ecology, a brilliant and connecting thinker and a great communicator.

The term ‘rewilding’ is being recognised and acknowledged more widely and more frequently in Europe, while many initiatives and organisations have started to use this term. But what is ‘rewilding’ and how do we like to use it in the European context? It is for this reason that we have developed a working definition of ‘rewilding’ and first published this in our Annual Review 2014.