We are thrilled to announce that Arcadia – a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin – has awarded Rewilding Europe a significant grant to advance rewilding in Europe.

An inaugural grant from the newly established Endangered Landscapes Programme will enable Rewilding Europe and local partners to develop a 120,000-hectare wildlife corridor in the Greater Côa Valley in northern Portugal. By scaling up current rewilding efforts in Western Iberia, this will transform a region with high levels of rural depopulation and species loss into one with new opportunities for both wild nature and people. The 2.6 million euro grant complements another for 2.1 million euros for a record-breaking wetland and steppe restoration project in the Danube Delta.

By reconnecting isolated areas of wild nature, wildlife corridors are an effective method of enhancing biodiversity and boosting animal populations. Rewilding Europe, which is working to establish wildlife corridors in a number of its operational areas, believes rewilding can help to create an urgently needed, well-connected network of green and blue infrastructure right across Europe.

The new German study is good news for bear conservation in Europe, but has implications for rewilding and the mitigation of human-wildlife conflict.

Karakachan horse herds based in the Rhodope Mountains rewilding area are boosting local biodiversity through their free roaming grazing behaviour. Two new herd contracts begin their incorporation into the European Wildlife Bank.

Rewilding Europe’s writer and editor Daniel Allen spoke with Alexandros Karamanlidis, our regional manager and PhD wildlife biologist about the resurgence of apex predators across much of Europe, and the implications for conservation strategies and tourism.

Recently taken photos and videos confirm that the Mediterranean monk seal is sensationally making a comeback in Croatia. The scientists still don’t know the exact number of individuals, but the “Mediterranean Monk Seal Group” has collected over 4,500 photos and video clips proving that the Adriatic is again a permanent habitat for these critically endangered mammals.

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.

Sitting in the middle of a vast river delta, surrounded by tall Phragmites australis* reeds, an intense feeling of peace began to filter through my veins. No office, no fingers flying on the keyboard, no phonecalls. Just wide open landscape.

From the wide and relatively intact Dehesa forests of the Salamanca district in Castilla y León. After five minutes in the Campanarios de Azába nature reserve, we understand that we must be in the right place with the impressive sight of more than 100 large raptors slowly taking to their wings in the air thermals of the morning sun over the holm and cork oaks of the reserve.