With the New Year just arrived, it is time to look back at 2012, a year in which the Tauros Programme certainly took a flight. Above all, a communications flight. We can just stare in wonder at the response from the international media on what we are doing.

Rewilding Europe and the Taurus Foundation have today signed a long-term agreement about helping to preserve biodiversity in Europe through a breeding programme to bring back a functional, wild version of the Aurochs. The Aurochs is the ancestor of all domestic cattle in the world and was for hundreds of thousands of years a keystone-species in many European ecosystems.

Looking back at a fantastic week in the ”Pantanal of Europe”, where I did a photo mission for Rewilding Europe, all well organised by Rewilding Europe’s man on the ground – Cristian Mititelu. Boat trips, canoe trips, horse cart rides, hikes and ultra-light flights through or over the different habitats of this huge and to a great part still pretty wild area. And it is getting wilder…

The Iberian Peninsula is one of the oldest inhabited territories in Europe. In Western Iberia man always lived in and with nature resulting in a spectacular landscape with dehesas, mountain ridges and valleys with steep cliffs. Right now, the situation is changing.