A succession of European Erasmus+ students are now volunteering with Italian NGO Salviamo l’Orso. As they make an invaluable contribution to Marsican brown bear conservation in the Central Apennines rewilding area, they are also learning from their experience.

A presentation given at the University of Zagreb last December is part of our commitment to involve more young people in rewilding.

Rewilding Europe places high value on education programmes and activities for kids, students, volunteers, activists and other nature enthusiasts. We believe that an essential part of our work is to communicate and share our passion, knowledge and enthusiasm for the natural world, and the philosophy of rewilding with the generations to come. In May, the ‘Black Vultures Nature Camp’ for children and Earth Day celebration in the Bulgarian Rhodope Mountains successfully empowered a new generation of young Europeans to share this vision further.

This year’s first web-based seminar of the European Rewilding Network took place end of March. Members from 14 European rewilding sites joined in and discussed how to engage students in rewilding related work. The participants addressed the great potential of involving this young generation and shared experiences about how to best start internship programmes.

In April 2015, Rewilding Europe offered two internship positions for a desk study to collect information about wildlife in rewilding areas, in particular on the larger mammals and birds. Out of many applications received, one student and a volunteer were selected: Anna Luijten and Jelle Harms from The Netherlands. The goal of the study was to obtain an overview of the key species, their numbers, distribution, trends, habitat preferences and populations estimates. In this blog you can read how it is being an intern at Rewilding Europe.

We have experienced that there is a lot of interest with students in topics that Rewilding Europe is addressing within its initiative.