Engaging and empowering young people is vital to the growth of rewilding. This is why Rewilding Europe is starting up the new Young Rewilders Community.

A herd of 20 Tauros has just been released in the Velebit Mountains rewilding area in Croatia. The animals will create a wilder grassland environment and continue the Tauros Programme’s genetic refinement process.

Rewilding Europe is delighted to welcome a new member from Germany to the European Rewilding Network. Displaying impressive growth since its launch at WILD10 in Salamanca in October 2013, the network now comprises 61 members from 26 European countries (including Rewilding Europe’s eight operational areas).

Taking place at the end of February, this year’s first European Rewilding Network (ERN) webinar saw 17 participants from nine European countries come together online to discuss the challenges of introducing large herbivores.

The successful translocation saw a second group of ten Tauros join the existing herd, which arrived in the Danube Delta in 2015. Crossbreeding with local breeds should result in a free roaming, well-adapted herd of bovines that will shape a biodiverse, naturally grazed delta landscape.

This Wednesday, 20 Tauros safely arrived at the spectacular Lika Plains, Velebit rewilding area in Croatia, where they will join the existing herd in the largest Tauros breeding site of Rewilding Europe. Here, through natural grazing, wild-living herds of Tauros and horses restore natural processes. The impact of bovines on the landscape is already visible, while large predators in turn influence the behaviour of the large herbivores.

The ninth web-based seminar of the European Rewilding Network took place on December 14^th. This time, attendants active in various rewilding sites throughout Europe shared experiences in restoring natural grazing as a key ecological process by bringing back free roaming and wild-living large herbivores. The event focused in particular on horses and bovines, including the Tauros.

On Friday 16^th October, the arrival of a herd of bovines to the Danube Delta rewilding area marked the launch of the third breeding site of the Tauros Programme. After a complex logistical operation and a very long barge cruise down the Danube River, the animals arrived safely at the breeding site location, receiving a warm welcome by the new herd managers and Sfântu Gheorghe local community.

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.