Rewilding Europe is excited to present the Annual Review 2013. During this year, we made considerable progress, advocating and working on our vision for a wilder Europe, both at the central level and in the rewilding areas.
“Although still a young initiative, we feel very much encouraged with the enthusiasm, support and feed-back we receive from all strands of society’’, Frans Schepers, Managing Director and Wiet de Bruijn, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Rewilding Europe write. ‘’Our vision of ‘Making Europe a Wilder Place’ generates a lot of interest: from local authorities to national governments, from students to scientists, from villagers and farmers to hunters, from wildlife photographers to TV broadcasting companies, from local politicians to members of the European Parliament, from local business men to capital investors, from wildlife lovers to city dwellers and from local newspapers to leading international magazines’’.
A few highlights of our achievements in 2013 are:
- Five rewilding areas operational, covering different regions and landscapes where we work to put our vision into practice: Western Iberia (Portugal and Spain); Velebit Mountains (Croatia); Eastern Carpathians (Slovakia and Poland), Southern Carpathians and Danube Delta (both in Romania).
- The Central Apennines (Italy) was added to the portfolio as the sixth rewilding area while another three new rewilding areas are in the pipeline to become part of the portfolio, in 2014 and 2015.
- Launch of Rewilding Europe Capital (REC), a specialist financing division in Rewilding Europe providing commercial finance to enterprises that generate economic and social benefits and contribute to rewilding. The first three enterprises are supported through REC, while another 15 are in the pipeline.
- Successful start of the European Wildlife Bank (EWB), a tool to reintroduce and expand naturally grazing wild herbivore populations across Europe, including the European bison, Tauros, European wild horse and others. The EWB already holds many hundreds of animals.
- Launch of the European Rewilding Network (ERN), a living network of rewilding initiatives all over Europe with 25 areas already joined by the end of the year, covering in total just over 1,5 million hectares.
- Many tangible and important rewilding, enterprise and communication milestones and results in the six rewilding areas, which are described in detail in the rewilding area sections in the Annual Review.
- A huge outreach and promotion about the rewilding of Europe, reaching out to some 155 million people over the year, both in Europe and outside, thanks to some major publications and communication activities and through many different media.
- A further consolidation and growth of the initiative in terms of management, financial support, partnership development, organisation, monitoring and evaluation.
In the Annual Review you will find many more examples and a lot of detailed information about the achievements in 2013.
Rewilding Europe hopes you enjoy reading this Annual Review and wants to thank all partners, organisations and individuals for their invaluable support and contributions to our initiative and we look forward to continue cooperation over the years to come.
You can download the Annual Review 2013 as a pdf here:
You can also order hard copies through info@rewildingeurope.com