Our mission

We want to make Europe a wilder place, with more space for wild nature, wildlife and natural processes. In bringing back the variety of life, we will continue to explore new ways for people to enjoy and earn a fair living from the wild.

Our vision

Wild nature is recognised as a fundamental part of Europe’s heritage and an essential element in a modern, prosperous and healthy society.

Our aim

To create large, rewilded landscapes in at least 10 different regions across Europe. These will demonstrate how Rewilding Europe’s vision can be put into practice on a far larger scale.

Rewilding is a progressive approach to conservation. It’s about letting nature take care of itself, enabling natural processes to shape land and sea, repair damaged ecosystems and restore degraded landscapes. Through rewilding, wildlife’s natural rhythms create wilder, more biodiverse habitats.

Rewilding is about:

Nature’s own ways

Nature knows best when it comes to survival and self-governance.

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.

Bringing back wildlife

European wildlife species have strongly declined, even in our wildest areas. Some of them have even gone extinct, while they play a critically important ecological role. Rewilding works to restore lost species guilds by giving them space to thrive, by population enhancement, and by reintroducing key native species.

Ensuring wellbeing

When nature is healthy, we are healthier too. We rely on the natural world for water, food and air. There is a growing realisation that connecting with wild nature makes us feel good and keeps us mentally and physically well.

Rewilding is about reconnecting a modern society – both rural and urban – with wilder nature. We invite people to experience and live in these new, rewilded landscapes.

Delivering for the future

There is no defined end point for rewilding. The aim is to support nature-driven processes, which in turn will bring about wilder nature. This takes time and space. Rewilding is about moving up a scale of wildness, where every step moving up this scale is seen as progress.

If we create and protect areas where rewilding can take place, both people and wildlife will benefit in the long term.