As rewilding is gaining popularity across Europe, it is important that scientific research follows, to answer at least some of the many questions that arise: how and to what extend can we reintroduce natural processes in larger ecosystems, what animals to reintroduce and where, how will they fit in the existing ecosystems, how do we know what the former wild Europe really looked like, how does rewilding relate to other types of conservation management, just to mention a few.

We continue to make steady progress as we seek to develop businesses which will support our rewilding objectives. We’re working both to identify and support existing businesses which are relevant to our rewilding areas – and also to design some new businesses where we feel there is an opportunity to create something different and complementary.

Rewilding Europe welcomes the publication of one of the first scientific papers on rewilding and land abandonment in Europe, written by Laetitia M. Navarro and Henrique M. Pereira. The article suggests a fourth option of land management policy in addition to agricultural intensification, extensification and afforestation – rewilding.

For many years, people in the Netherlands and surrounding countries were talking about it. Last spring, it finally happened. The Atlantic sturgeon (Acipenser sturio) was reintroduced to his former homeland, the Rhine system! Only a few people know that this prehistoric fish, reaching sizes of even 3,5 meters, once flourished there. Nowadays the sturgeon is just as endangered as the black rhino.

Rewilding Europe aims to rewild at least one million hectares of Europe by 2020, consisting of ten areas, each at least 100,000 ha, which together reflect a wide selection of European regions.

Wild horses have been an intricate part of the wildlife of Europe since hundreds of thousands of years. During historical times, wild horses have been described by contemporaries from the ancient period, untill the 19th century AD. Herodotos, the Greek historian of the fifth century BC talks about wild living horses somewhere in present day Belorussia. Pliny the Elder, a Roman naturalist living in the first century AD, describes that vast herds of wild horses were living north of the Alps.

During December, representatives of the Rewilding Europe enterprise team have visited the Eastern Carpathians, Southern Carpathians and Western Iberia project sites.  Enterprise development within Rewilding Europe remains at a very early planning stage, however some clear conservation business development and financing possibilities are emerging.

„Look at how the bark beetle influences the spruce forests – the affected trees appear as small islands in the larger forest landscape”. Tea Silic, biologist at the Northern Velebit National Park, shows us around in the park in preparation for the start-up of one of Rewilding Europe’s field projects.

At the end of May I was on a short break in the Belgian Ardennes – a huge forested area where tourism flourishes but where nature is not in its best condition. And it’s an area that has undergone huge transformations over the last few centuries. The Ardennes were the starting point of the Industrial Revolution on the European mainland. It’s hard to believe nowadays.

From the very fragmented, small-landowner landscape in northeastern Portugal, we suddenly come into a big, already quite raw and wild-looking area: the 600 hectare Faia Brava private nature reserve, in the dramatic Côa valley. This is Portugal’s first private reserve and it is owned by Associaçâo Transumância e Natureza, who is working to rewild it, taking away all extractive use and bringing back lost wildlife, as well as protecting the already existing precious locally breeding wildlife: the Bonelli’s eagle, the golden eagle, griffon vulture, Egyptian vulture, eagle owl etc. And taking care of the cultural heritage sites in the reserve as well.