Rewilding Europe’s first ever gathering sees team members, partners and supporters come together to review progress, look ahead to a wilder future and witness the launch of “Europe’s Five”.

Volen Arkumarev, a conservation officer with the Bulgarian Society for the Protection of Birds (BSPB), is working on the LIFE Vultures project. He recounts a record breaking griffon vulture monitoring session in the Rhodope Mountains.

Representatives of ten European Rewilding Network sites came together in March to discuss how social science and raising awareness can achieve better human-wildlife coexistence and mitigate human-wildlife conflict.

Tom Verhoeve, an intern for Associaçâo Transumância e Natureza, shares his experience in Rewilding Europe’s Western Iberia rewilding area.

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.

As part of an ongoing reintroduction of red and fallow deer in the area, the animals will change habitats through grazing and provide an important prey base for local carnivores and scavengers.

Last week more than 30 participants took part in a second nature and vulture-related tourism development training session in the Eastern Rhodopes, organised by Rewilding Rhodopes and the Bulgarian Society for the Protection of Birds.

We are delighted to announce that the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Netherlands will continue supporting Rewilding Europe for another three-year period. This generic support will help us to deliver on our objectives, both at a central level, and in individual rewilding areas.

Would you like to spend your spring and summer surrounded by stunning Portuguese landscapes? For those passionate about wild nature, and who also love communicating about it, our rewilding team in Western Iberia is now offering a unique opportunity.

In early February further progress was made in the rewilding of the Rhodopes area in Bulgaria. The Rewilding Rhodopes team released nine red deer in the nature reserve of Studen Kladenets, and a group of fallow deer near Tintiava, in the Eastern Rhodopes.