Rewilding Europe has received a grant of $5 million – €4,927,000 – to advance European rewilding in three main areas, under its Strategic Plan 2021-2030.
The funding has come from charitable fund, Arcadia, with the aim of developing innovative rewilding models; supporting wildlife comeback and coexistence; and scaling up and enhancing European rewilding.
Rewilding Europe’s executive director, Frans Schepers, said the funding will help to grow its demonstration role in rewilding landscapes across Europe, and its upscaling role beyond these landscapes, with the goal of making rewilding far more widely practised.
By 2030, Rewilding Europe wants to see rewilding practised extensively, at scale, right across Europe, it said.
The private sector will be essential to this scaling-up process, which is why Rewilding Europe is working to develop and demonstrate innovative and scalable rewilding models.
By making rewilding commercially investable and economically competitive, these models – which encompass everything from the transformation of forests and restoration of peatland to wildlife photography and dam removal – will amplify its positive impact.
Supported by Arcadia’s first-phase funding, Rewilding Europe has already made good progress in developing models for a range of sectors and interventions, it said.
The new funding will help to create a pipeline of investable rewilding businesses, involving new finance mechanisms and investment from the private and corporate sector.
Supporting wildlife comeback
Supporting wildlife comeback has always been a core activity in Rewilding Europe – either by providing the right conditions for wildlife species to return of their own accord, or through reintroductions and population reinforcements.
To accelerate this, this recent Arcadia funding will be used to develop a new approach and tool, tentatively called the European Wildlife Comeback Fund, according to to the group.
The aim of the new initiative, which will be officially launched later this year, is to support reintroductions and population reinforcements in a proactive and flexible way.
Following International Union for the Conservation of Nature guidelines, it will focus on building minimum viable populations of species and promoting human-wildlife coexistence.
Natural grazing with large herbivores will be advanced as a key natural process, following the outcomes and recommendations of the EU GrazeLIFE initiative (co-funded by Arcadia).
The role of wildlife in capturing carbon to address the impact of climate change will also be promoted.
Scaling up and enhancing European rewilding
Arcadia’s funding will see Rewilding Europe scale up and enhance the European Rewilding Network and the European Young Rewilders, while setting up an online training platform to share and disseminate knowledge and best practice.
Based on a positive first meeting in Spain in 2019, Rewilding Europe will also bring together all European rewilding organisations in a European Rewilding Coalition.
And it aims to collaborate with the Europarc Federation to explore how the rewilding of European protected areas (wilder parks) can be promoted. The rewilding of such areas could help to spearhead and scale-up nature recovery in Europe.