Ulrich’s journey towards becoming the Team Leader of the Oder Delta German team began in the legal realm. As a lawyer specialized in Environmental Law, he was directly involved in the set-up of the Lower Oder Valley National Park. During his work, he has experienced resistance of local residents to new legislation if they felt excluded from the process; an experience that has strongly shaped his views on conservation and community involvement.

Today, Rewilding Europe and the Artists for Nature Foundation have officially started cooperation by signing a Memorandum of Understanding. Both organizations have identified synergies and complementarities between their vision, mission and activities and have agreed to explore working together. Combining art and rewilding – at a first glance this is maybe an unexpected connection, but if one looks in more detail it is evident and inspiring.

The Oder Delta, straddling the border area of Poland and Germany on the Baltic Sea coast, has today officially become part of the Rewilding Europe initiative. After three years of intensive preparations with many different authorities and stakeholders, four organisations agreed to start working together to put the area on the European map as an inspiring example of rewilding, for the benefit of both people and nature. An event held today in Tanowo on the Polish side, with many local partners and stakeholders present, marked the start of this initiative.

Photographer Solvin Zankl is on a photo mission for Rewilding Europe in the Oder delta, on the border between Germany and Poland. Here is his second blog from the field.

At the end of May, three vans took off from The Netherlands for a study trip for the ARK Nature foundation team to the Oder Delta, an area at the very northern end of the border between Germany and Poland. Here, the Oder River flows out into the Baltic Sea via the Szczecin Lagoon and its surroundings are becoming wilder and wilder by the day.

A big herd of dozens of bison suddenly crosses the forest track ahead of us at full speed. A second or two later the large animals are already gone, impressingly fast and agile as they are. Well, I guess that was it. A bit of a disappointment of course, but at least we did see them. Living completely wild here as they do, I did expect them to be pretty shy and wary. Even though I had hoped to be able to photograph them… Luckily, I was soon to learn a few more things about bison.