Nearly 25% of the European landscape has the potential to be rewilded, with over two-thirds of the territories lying in countries with cooler climates such as Scandinavia, Scotland, and the Baltic states, researchers have found.

A report published Thursday in the journal Current Biology showed that roughly 117 million hectares of the European continent – around a quarter of the whole territory – are primed with rewilding opportunities aimed at restoring trophic interactions and fostering self-regulating ecosystems.

As a practice that provides alternative land use to land abandonment, rewilding is gaining traction among European countries as a means to halt and reverse biodiversity loss and reach the 30×30 target established under the European Biodiversity Strategy and the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.

But in the absence of clear criteria for identifying and prioritising rewilding areas, there is a risk that the limited resources available for the purpose could be misallocated, authors pointed out.

The report developed a set of criteria to map areas and guide efforts for land acquisition and management. Following the researchers’ methodology, a suitable land can be defined as an extensive tract of land covering more than 10,000 ha, with little human disturbance that features vital species.

According to the report, countries such as the UK, France, Spain, and the Scandinavian nations are set to reach their conservation goals if they adopt the study’s suggested rewilding zones and strategies.

Areas suitable for rewilding across European countries. Source: first author Miguel Bastos Araujo. 

“This approach is rooted in the evidence that human activities are primary contributors of contemporary species extinctions,” the study said.

“The guiding principle is that conducting rewilding in areas less impacted by human activities would more easily lead to the reconstitution of complex trophic communities.”

NOT FOR EVERYONE

Based on the size of the land and the types of animals that inhabit the area, researchers also identified two strategies for rewilding, defined as ‘passive’ and ‘active’.

While passive rewilding focuses primarily on managing existing and abandoned wild areas to promote natural dynamics, active rewilding involves the reintroduction of missing native species critical to the regeneration of the ecosystem.

“There are many areas in Europe that have a low enough human footprint, as well as the presence of key animal species, to potentially be rewilded,” said Miguel Bastos Araujo, first author and biogeographer at Spain’s National Museum of Natural Sciences and at Portugal’s University of Evora.

Passive rewilding opportunities have been mostly identified in Scandinavia, Scotland, Baltic states, Ireland, and southeastern Europe, while active rewilding possibilities have been mapped in Corsica, Sardinia, southern France, and parts of the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway.

However, countries with high levels of human population and limited potential for rewilding – such as Ireland, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Denmark –  should consider alternative conservation strategies to reach the targets, the study said.

“Conservation strategies involving ecological restoration of densely populated areas could help some countries reach conservation goals,” Araujo said.

“Countries could reclaim land to turn it into conservation areas or establish networks of small, protected habitats. Traditional multi-use landscapes, like the oak parklands in the Iberian Peninsula and various extensive agricultural and forestry systems across Europe, could also help if managed sustainably.”

In the last few months, several initiatives have been launched in the UK to promote rewilding projects within carbon and biodiversity markets, including the ‘first-of-its-kind‘ purchase of carbon credits from a biodiversity-focused rewilding project in the country.

Non-profit Rewilding Britain recently called on the government to provide more clarity on the compliance and voluntary nature markets to provide the long-term stability needed to enable rewilding at scale.

By Giada Ferraglioni – giada@carbon-pulse.com

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