Join our celebration of World Rewilding Day on March 20th, raising awareness of the benefits of wilder nature for wildlife, people and planet.
Rewilding benefits
Europe and its people face a wide range of challenges, including biodiversity decline, rising global temperatures, and declining opportunities for rural economies. Applied at scale, rewilding can help to address these challenges simultaneously.
Recovering nature to full health and functionality can mitigate scale and impact of global warming, enhance biodiversity, and create new sources of sustainable revenue for communities. Rewilding also helps nature to deliver a range of other benefits that are essential to human existence, such as clean air, fertile soil, good health, wellbeing and resilience to disease.
The need for nature and the wide range of benefits it provides has never been greater. We ask all fellow rewilders to show and share #WhyWeRewild!
Nelleke de Weerd
What is rewilding?
Rewilding is an innovative way of restoring wild nature. It’s about letting nature take care of itself, enabling natural processes to shape land and sea and restore degraded landscapes.
We can give it a helping hand by creating the right conditions – by removing dykes and dams to free up rivers, by reducing active management of wildlife populations, by allowing natural forest regeneration, and by reintroducing species that have disappeared as a result of man’s actions. Then we should step back and let nature manage itself.
Wild nature is an essential element of a prosperous and healthy society. Rewilding can generate new business opportunities, jobs and income, while connecting with wild nature makes us feel good and keeps us mentally and physically well.
Nature is our ally
Last year the first-ever World Rewilding Day was launched by the Global Rewilding Alliance on March 20. This year rewilding initiatives from six continents will again join forces, to raise awareness about the many benefits of rewilding and to highlight the beneficial impact of rewilding to tackle our climate crisis.
Scientific research is now showing that the restoration of wildlife populations to significant, near historic levels has the potential to hugely scale up climate change mitigation and keep global warming below the critical 1.5oC threshold. This science is called: “Animating the Carbon Cycle”. To ensure the full range of benefits that such “animation” offers, we urgently need to scale up restoration and rewilding.
Peter Cairns
Rewilding in action
Rewilding Europe wants to demonstrate the benefits of wilder nature through the rewilding of diverse European landscapes, and to inspire and enable others to engage in rewilding by providing tools and practical expertise.
Our goal is that rewilding is being practised at scale across Europe. The application of rewilding principles, models and tools is delivering measurable, demonstrable, and sustained benefits for nature and people. With many actors, we create a Europe that is richer in nature and more resilient to climate change.
The principles of rewilding
Rewilding practitioners from across Europe have co-formulated a set of principles that characterise and guide rewilding in a European context. We follow these rewilding principles as we work towards a future where people and nature flourish alongside one another.
How to get involved
Join the rewilding movement!
There has never been a better time to get involved in rewilding. The rewilding movement is about co-creating a wilder, better future. Whether you’re a citizen, entrepreneur, land manager, policymaker or scientist, there’s room for you to get involved. Only by scaling up rewilding can we help nature help us to fix our biggest problems, and your support, energy and creativity is more important than ever.
Help us spread the word this World Rewilding Day and show why rewilding is vital for people, nature and the future of our planet.
Nelleke de Weerd
Become an active rewilder
At Rewilding Europe we want to see rewilding taking place on an increasing scale across Europe. As we work to make Europe a wilder place, we are always looking to collaborate with conservation organisations, public or private institutions, foundations, companies and private individuals.
Are you already involved in rewilding as an initiative and looking to share knowledge and experience? Then we invite you to join the European Rewilding Network!
Spread the word: #WhyWeRewild!
Rewilding is a response to growing public demand for a more hopeful, ambitious and exciting form of conservation. The interest and support of people like you is vital for the rewilding movement!
Help us to reach out, start a dialogue and inspire the people around you. Show them #WhyWeRewild by sharing the rewilding narrative through one of the following cards on social media:
Action on the ground: a message from our teams
In the coming week, leading up to #WorldRewildingDay, our amazing local teams across Europe will each show you how they are working in their rewilding landscapes to support nature recovery. Together, they are telling about the many reasons #WhyWeRewild. One by one, their actions are contributing to healthy ecosystems, which are vital to tackle our climate and biodiversity crises.
