First Rewilding seminar held in Spain

On December 14, the last day of the successful Madrid Wild Wonders exhibition, Spain’s first ever Rewilding seminar was held at the Cañada Real Wildlife Park in El Escorial outside Madrid, under the headline “Making Iberia a Wilder Place”. The theme all through the day was how to turn present problems into opportunities for people and for nature.

More than 50 people, mainly decision makers from public nature conservation agencies, corporate and scientific institutions, NGOs and media attended the seminar, which was hosted by Fundación José Maria Blanc and organised by Rewilding Europe together with our partners Fundación Naturaleza y Hombre, Fundación Felíx Rodríguez de la Fuente and the Associação Transumância e Natureza.

Among the speakers were Vance Martin from the WILD Foundation, journalist Benigno Varillas from the Fundación Felíx Rodríguez de la Fuente, Director Miguel Angel Simón from the LIFE Iberian lynx project, Professor Henrique Pereira from the Universidad de Lisboa, Ronald Goderie from the Taurus Foundation, Carlos Sánchez from the Fundación Naturaleza y Hombre and IUCN Spain, António Monteiro from Associação Transumância e Natureza and Frans Schepers, Neil Birnie, Deli Saavedra and Staffan Widstrand from Rewilding Europe.

Subjects covered were: Wildlife comeback in Spain, rewilding as a fire prevention option, the comeback of the Iberian lynx, non-intervention management, wildlife watching worldwide and in Europe, the business case for rewilding, the WILD 10 World Wilderness Congress coming to Salamanca in 2013, the Tauros project and reports from the Western Iberian rewilding areas Campanarios de Azaba and Faia Brava.

Download the program in Spanish and in English.

Download the media release in Spanish.

21 December 2012