European Rewilding Network (ERN) has become a functioning rewilding community

From its foundation in 2013, Rewilding Europe’s Network has grown into an incredibly diverse collection of projects and initiatives, each focusing on one or more aspects of European rewilding. The overall concept is to enhance the rewilding impact of each member by facilitating the exchange of knowledge and expertise. With the ERN celebrating its ten-year anniversary, the focus of the network is shifting away from growth, with far more emphasis on providing support for practical, result-oriented rewilding.

Empowering Young Rewilders

The future of the rewilding movement lies with young people, who are increasingly knowledgeable and passionate about nature, conservation and rewilding. Young people are already key actors in efforts to make Europe wilder, and have huge potential to accelerate the scaling up of rewilding across the continent. By inspiring and enabling them, the European Young Rewilders – officially launched in 2022 – sees youth embracing rewilding on a growing scale.

A wide array of European partnerships

At a central level we currently have 40+ strategic partnerships, divided into three categories: initiating partners, financial partners and technical partners. Our partnerships with various organisations and institutions include the Dutch Postcode Lottery, European Investment Bank, BirdLife Europe and Central Asia, the German Institute for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv), Rewilding Britain, the Zoological Society of London, Wageningen University, The Nature Conservancy, the Endangered Landscapes Programme, Cartier for Nature and the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration.

We have started influencing EU policy on the CBD restoration target

To influence the European Union (EU) conservation policy towards rewilding, we have become a member of the European Habitat Forum and IUCN. In 2017 we formed a coalition with policy and scientific partners to promote and influence the EU restoration agenda towards the new EU Biodiverslity Strategy 2030. This resulted in a number of academic papers, policy briefs and a map of a green infrastructure of Europe that were all presented in 2020.

Call to Action for a Wilder Europe and Global Charter for Rewilding the Earth

In November 2019, we published a ‘Call to Action for a Wilder Europe’, together with 18 initial partners and which has now been endorsed by 39 European organisations. The Call aims to drive forward and scale-up practical rewilding across Europe.

In March 2020, a similar initiative was taken up by the WILD Foundation, inspired by the European Call to Action, to develop and present a ‘Global Charter for Rewilding the Earth’. This has now been signed by over 96 organisation from across the world.

Local rewilding initiatives taking leadership and ownership

In each of our rewilding landscapes, we have dedicated local partners. We have also helped to establish new legal rewilding-related entities: Rewilding Apennines (2014), Rewilding Velebit (2014), Rewilding Rhodopes (2014), Rewilding Lapland (2015), Rewilding Ukraine (2016), Rewilding Danube Delta (2017), Rewilding Oder Delta and Rewilding Portugal (2019), Rewilding Spain and Rewilding Romania (2022). With each of them, we signed network agreements based on long-term rewilding visions and strategic plans for each rewilding landscape.

Greater scientific focus

We strongly support the burgeoning interest that the scientific sector is showing in rewilding, and are committed to working with partners to conduct applied science work across our rewilding landscapes. To promote more cooperation and coherence in the research agenda for rewilding in Europe, we have partnered with Wageningen University and the Netherlands Institute for Ecology (NIOO) to establish a special professorship on rewilding.

Policy report: enhancing ecological connectivity

Rewilding Europe works with a range of partners at a European level to influence policy. With funding from WWF-Netherlands, Rewilding Europe collaborated with a range of partners to produce a green ecological infrastructure map for Europe. Based on rewilding potential across Europe, it is designed to promote the connection of existing Natura 2000 sites into a more coherent ecological network. The coalition also produced policy papers calling on the European Commission to link ecological restoration to rewilding.

Rewilding principles

Rewilding Europe worked alongside leading rewilding practitioners from across Europe to produce a set of rewilding principles, which have been widely adopted across the European nature conservation sector. These principles were taken up by the World Wilderness Congress to develop the Global Charter to Rewild the Earth, published in March 2020.