The Dutch TV company Endemol filmed Staffan Widstrand, Marketing Director of Rewilding Europe, guiding the Dutch TV presenter Martijn Krabbé on an action-filled visit to the Western Iberia rewilding area, for the TV programme “Kanjers Van Goud” (“Heroes of Gold”). This TV programme is connected to the Dutch Postcode Lottery, and will be broadcasted later this year.
We continue to make steady progress as we seek to develop businesses which will support our rewilding objectives. We’re working both to identify and support existing businesses which are relevant to our rewilding areas – and also to design some new businesses where we feel there is an opportunity to create something different and complementary.
A herd of 24 Retuerta horses, coming from the Doñana biological station in southern Spain, were released in the Campanarios de Azaba reserve on July 27. The release was possible thanks to the Rewilding Europe initiative and the collaboration between the Nature and Man Foundation and the Doñana Biological Station.
Rewilding Europe aims to rewild at least one million hectares of Europe by 2020, consisting of ten areas, each at least 100,000 ha, which together reflect a wide selection of European regions.
One of the programme goals of Rewilding Europe is “by 2020, rewild 1 million ha (10,000 km²) across 10 places in Europe covering different regions and biomes, including areas of both land and sea”. The rewilding concept was introduced at the “EC Presidency Conference on Wilderness and Large Natural Habitat Areas” in May 2009, and the participants were invited to submit nominations for potential model areas.
Since the beginning of our work in Western Iberia last year, a lot of attention has been given to bringing back wildlife, including rewilding horses and bovines. To scale up the efforts in the Faia Brava Reserve in north-eastern Portugal, a 25,000 ha area along the Côa River has been selected for the return of Iberian ibex, red deer and roe deer.
Different editions from the January GEO magazine are now available as free download! In 2011 Anke Sparmann, author of GEO Magazine, travelled across European nature reserves. Her story was the cover story in 11 countries from Brazil to Slovakia and from Spain to India.
The Iberian Peninsula is one of the oldest inhabited territories in Europe. In Western Iberia man always lived in and with nature resulting in a spectacular landscape with dehesas, mountain ridges and valleys with steep cliffs. Right now, the situation is changing.
A 12-page story was published in the September issue of the National Geographic Magazine, Dutch/Belgian edition. NGM Staff writer Pancras Dijk visited the rewilding areas Campanarios de Azaba and Faia Brava in Western Iberia, both parts of the Rewilding Europe initiative. The opening spread can be seen here.
In the last months Anke Sparmann, author of German GEO Magazine, travelled across European nature reserves. The cover story of GEO’s September issue – published on August 19 – features her journey into a continent getting wilder day by day.