We are excited to announce that on 15 April, Rewilding Europe was accepted to become a member of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources – IUCN. Rewilding Europe was one of the 22 new members approved by the IUCN Council meeting last week.

As rewilding is gaining momentum, it is interesting to see how people feel towards it. Wolf NGO, our partner in the Eastern Carpathians rewilding area, have conducted two polls in cooperation with the FOCUS agency, to find out people’s attitudes towards creating large wilderness areas.

The first edition of the Erasmus Intensive Programme “European Wilderness Entrepreneurship” was a great success for the Western Iberia rewilding area. During this two week event a consortium of thirty students and fifteen lecturers/researchers from universities in Bulgaria, Croatia, Portugal, Spain, Sweden and the Netherlands looked at the role of entrepreneurship to promote the future wilderness of Western Iberia.

Since many years I am dedicated to the conservation of nature and for almost a year I work with passion as Rewilding Manager at Rewilding Europe. Last months, an experience in nature and  a notice in the newspaper made me think through a rewilding perspective.

Recently, PAN Parks and Rewilding Europe agreed to work more closely together on protecting existing wilderness as well as increasing wilderness, wild areas and wildlife numbers in Europe. Both organizations offer new solutions to improve the conservation value and cost efficiency of the EU’s flagship nature protection scheme, Natura 2000, through rewilding large areas of land, promoting wilderness and increasingly using non-intervention management approaches in many Natura 2000 areas. Letting nature be itself.

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.

From 9 to 14 October, Rewilding Europe organized a Training Seminar on Wildlife Watching and Conservation Enterprise Development in Finland. Representatives of the five rewilding projects from various European countries travelled all the way up to Finland to learn from first-hand experience in the Kuhmo region, which is famous for its bear-watching facilities.

„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.

It was 25 years ago when  I saw a tortoise for the last time, as a researcher of perhaps the richest area of reptiles in Europe: Thrace. Even Egyptian vulture, imperial eagle and black vulture fed on reptiles there. And it appeared that the majestic golden eagle, elsewhere picking young ibex and chamois off the rocks, was taking almost 100 tortoises a year per eagle chick back to the nest.

On 1 June the latest of the outdoor exhibition series “Wild Wonders of Europe” was inaugurated in Copenhagen by the Danish Minister for Environment, Karen Ellemann. This was exhibition number three in the pan European tour and the first since Rewilding Europe became a main partner in this ambitious conservation communication initiative.