Liberty Wildlife Fund supports Rewilding Europe
Rewilding Europe is very excited to announce that Liberty Wildlife Fund, a private foundation in The Netherlands, has decided to support Rewilding Europe for a period of three years.
The financial support, in total 617.000 euros, will be used for the "Wildlife Recovery Programme" that Rewilding Europe has designed. It includes three components: preparation & planning, wildlife recovery action, and wildlife communication. The comeback of wildlife is a key element in Rewilding Europe's approach, because of the ecological role that keystone species play in wild nature, and as a draw card for wildlife watching tourism.
Under preparation & planning, Rewilding Europe will develop rewilding action plans for European wild horse and the TaurOs. This component also covers support to setting up the European Wildlife Bank, establishing a network of wildlife transporters in Europe, and the development of business cases for wildlife watching.
Under the second component, wildlife recovery actions on the ground, Rewilding Europe is now able to set up breeding centres for Iberian and Alpine Ibex, TaurOs and European bison, and the re-introduction of Iberian lynx into the Western Iberia rewilding area. Also, the translocation of more than 400 animals to new rewilding areas has been made possible through this grant.
On wildlife communication, we will be able to produce factsheets on key species in different languages, a book about the Aurochs, our participation at WILD10 in Spain, and finalizing the wildlife comeback study that is produced by the Zoological Society of London and BirdLife International.
Rewilding Europe is very grateful to Liberty Wildlife Fund, and is looking forward for a successful partnership for the years to come. The funding allows us to make very good progress on making Europe a wilder place. Our European wildlife deserves it!
12 December 2012