Today, scaled-up rewilding efforts in the Southern Carpathian mountains of Romania are enriching biodiversity and delivering tangible benefits for local communities. By showcasing these efforts and amplifying engagement, the newly launched Rewilding Romania website will support this upward trajectory.
A window onto Romanian rewilding
Developing and nurturing positive attitudes towards nature and nature recovery is essential to the success of rewilding efforts and the growth of the rewilding movement. Across Rewilding Europe’s burgeoning portfolio of rewilding landscapes, dedicated websites are helping to build engagement, informing and inspiring people of all backgrounds by showcasing the excitement, hope, opportunities, and wide-ranging benefits of rewilding.
People in Romania and around the world can now get even closer to the work of the Rewilding Romania team, with the launch of a dedicated new Rewilding Romania website. By promoting the team’s efforts and giving people insight into the landscape and its amazing wildlife, the site will help to realise the rewilding vision in the Southern Carpathians and upscale rewilding within the country and further afield. The site is complemented by an existing Rewilding Danube Delta website, which profiles rewilding efforts in the Danube Delta rewilding landscape, part of which is located in Romania.
“Our mission is to demonstrate the benefits of rewilding for both nature and people,” says Rewilding Romania Executive Director Marina Drugă. “This new website will be a place where visitors can learn about nature recovery and the importance of fostering an environment where people and healthy wild nature thrive alongside each other. In partnership with Rewilding Europe, we also want to support the efforts of other rewilding initiatives, and the site will also act as a platform for generating fruitful collaboration.”
Taking rewilding to the next level
With its mix of beautiful imagery and insightful copy, the bilingual Rewilding Romania website encourages Romanian and international visitors to explore and gain a deeper understanding of the work being carried out by the local rewilding team, offering a fresh and more hopeful perspective on the landscape.
Over the course of nearly a decade, Rewilding Europe and WWF-Romania successfully translocated 105 European bison to Romania’s Țarcu Mountains – a part of the Southern Carpathians rewilding landscape where no wild bison had roamed free for at least 250 years. Today, the thriving bison population established by these translocations is growing naturally and delivering wide-ranging benefits on a growing scale. It now boasts over 200 individuals, with more than half born of these animals born in the wild.
The current focus of Rewilding Romania, which was established at the end of 2022, is to take European bison recovery and broader rewilding efforts in the Southern Carpathians to the next level. Discussions with two national and local hunting associations are enhancing cooperation, ensuring growing bison herds can continue to increase their geographical range safely. The Rewilding Romania team are also exploring opportunities to expand wildlife comeback and fostering a culture where people and wildlife can thrive alongside each other, through measures to enhance coexistence, inspire broader engagement with rewilding, support the development of nature-based economies, and revitalise rivers for the benefit of both nature and local communities.
Amplifying engagement
As an iconic keystone herbivore which has made a remarkable comeback in Europe over recent decades, the European bison is a flagship species for Rewilding Romania. Engagement with rewilding and bison recovery in the Southern Carpathians was boosted by “Zimbrul“, a beautiful documentary shot by award-winning French filmmaker Emmanuel Rondeau. An intimate portrayal of people’s feelings about the return of the European bison in the landscape, it has now been viewed over 16,000 times online. Emmanuel is now working on another Southern Carpathians rewilding documentary – one of a series on Rewilding Europe’s rewilding landscapes – which will be released in 2025.
The Rewilding Romania website is Rewilding Europe’s ninth dedicated rewilding landscape website, following the launch of the Rewilding Rhodopes, Rewilding Oder Delta, Rewilding Danube Delta, Rewilding Apennines, Rewilding Portugal, Rewilding Sweden, Rewilding Spain, and Rewilding Velebit sites. Visit them all to find out more about how our rewilding teams are working at the forefront of nature recovery and building engagement with rewilding right across Europe.