The Central Apennines rewilding initiative was relaunched in the summer of 2018. Over the last 12 months, the development of wildlife corridors has provided a better platform for Marsican brown bear recovery.

Rewilding Europe is delighted to announced that Salviamo l’Orso, our partner in the Central Apennines rewilding area, has been awarded a grant from the European Outdoor Conservation Association (EOCA).

Today, an important step has been taken for the rewilding of the Central Apennines, by the signing of a Memorandum of understanding between Rewilding Apennines and the Abruzzo National Park. The document was signed by Antonio Carrara, President of the Abruzzo NP and Alberto Zocchi, Chairman of the Rewilding Apennines Association and leader of the local rewilding team.

The small municipalities of Gioia dei Marsi and Lecce nei Marsi in the Central Apennines have decided to bet on nature and to find new ways to earn money from the wilderness on their own “door step”. Creating new opportunities for local businesses and at the same time ensuring an even better protection of those areas. Land abandonment and depopulation are problems that hundreds of regional and EU initiatives so far have failed to solve, in spite of uncountable amounts in subsidies. But now, thanks to the beginning return of wild nature, these problems could instead be made into opportunity. Gioia dei Marsi and Lecce nei Marsi give a good example how the problems are turned into opportunities.

On January 9, the newly established Italian NGO “Rewilding Apennines” signed a contract with Rewilding Europe, about a 3-year workplan, developed by the two organisations together during the last months of 2013. This after the official announcement the past October during WILD 10, the World Wilderness Congress in Salamanca, Spain, that the Central Apennines have been selected as the sixth area within the Rewilding Europe initiative.