Rewilding in Europe

What comes to your mind when you hear the word rewilding? You may think of bison on open plains, wolves in forests, or rivers returning to their natural courses. You probably do not imagine people playing a central role.

A recent study by Zoderer et al. (2025) of 89 initiatives within the European Rewilding Network (ERN) challenges this perception. The findings indicate that “rewilding” refers to six distinct strategies, including megaherbivore landscapes, species reintroductions, coexistence efforts, and 'wild nature' branding, all of which involve human participation. Rather than removing people from nature, rewilding in Europe involves restructuring relationships among people, land, and wildlife, thereby redefining the concept of 'wild'¹.

Theoretically, rewilding is often conceptualized as the restoration of 'wilderness' through the reactivation of ecological processes such as trophic interactions, disturbance regimes, and connectivity, thereby enabling ecosystems to regain self-organizing capacities^2,3.

In public debates, people use rewilding as a remarkably flexible term. Depending on the speaker, it can mean grazing by large herbivores, bringing back predators, restoring peatlands, or simply renaming existing protected areas as 'wild'^1,2. This broad application makes coalition-building easier but also blurs what actually occurs in a specific landscape and which social and ecological outcomes result from those choices.

So, how did the authors study rewilding in practice? 

The approach adopted by the research team provides a fresh perspective compared to previous surveys. This study uniquely examines how rewilding slogans translate into actual practice by analyzing all projects listed in the ERN as of October 2023, totaling 89 initiatives from 28 countries¹. Established in 2013 by the non-profit Rewilding Europe, the ERN aims to connect practitioners, share knowledge, and support long-term rewilding efforts aligned with Rewilding Europe's core goals⁴.

For each project, the researchers systematically collected information from ERN descriptions and project websites, looking at several key dimensions¹. They coded ecological goals, such as biodiversity, process restoration, particular species, or ecosystem types. Moreover, they captured socioeconomic goals, including tourism, rural development, education, awareness, and the creation of new business modes. They documented interventions, including the use of large herbivores and carnivore reintroductions, river restoration, peatland re-wetting, legal protection, communication, and participation. They also noted which ecological processes projects emphasised – disturbance regimes, trophic complexity, succession, connectivity, and others – and, crucially, which roles were assigned to people: visitors, land users, entrepreneurs, volunteers, project partners, and decision-makers¹.

Rather than analyzing these areas separately, Zoderer and colleagues used multiple correspondence analyses to reduce the complexity of the categorial data. To detect recurring combinations of goal, interventions, and human roles, they applied clustering methods¹. In other words, they asked which patterns appear often enough to count as a distinct way of doing rewilding.

Rewilding in Practice: Six Distinct Paths

The analysis shows that there is no singular European rewilding model. Instead, six strategies emerge, each having its own ecological priorities and social configurations. These strategies include megaherbivore rewilding, multi-intervention rewilding, ecosystem restoration, species breeding and reintroduction, fostering human-wildlife coexistence, and wild nature protection¹. This framework helps clarify the various approaches to rewilding taking place across the continent.

Megaherbivore rewilding is the approach many people picture first: bison, wild horses, and hardy cattle moving through open landscapes. Projects in this group use large grazing animals as ecosystem engineers that maintain a shifting pattern of grassland, scrub, and woodland. Nature-based tourism is central: wildlife-viewing hides, guided tours, and regional branding are key elements. People appear mainly as visitors or paying clients, while local land uses and decision-making processes are present but less central in the way these projects tell their story.

Multi-intervention rewilding threats rewilding as a package rather than a single tool. These projects combine herbivore releasing with river restoration, habitat measures, participatory planning, and economic support schemes. Ecological and social actions are explicitly linked, with local people involved simultaneously as residents, partners, business owners, and visitors. The focus is on reshaping both ecosystems and institutions.

Ecosystem restoration sits closest to traditional ecological restoration. Here, rewilding focuses on repairing damaged ecosystems, such as drained peatlands, straightened rivers, and wetlands, using engineering methods such as re-wetting and barrier removal. Alongside ecological goals, there is a strong attention to co-benefits, such as reducing flood risk, improving water quality, and creating recreational opportunities. People are seen both as beneficiaries and as land users who may need to adjust their practices, often in cooperation with local authorities, farmers, and NGOs.

Species breeding and reintroduction is the cluster you land in if you associate rewilding mainly with wolves, lynx, or vultures returning to the landscape. These projects invest in breeding, veterinary care, monitoring, and carefully staged release of target species such as wolves, lynx, and vultures. They are technically complex and highly regulated. Beyond increasing biodiversity or raising awareness, social and economic goals are often poorly articulated. People appear mostly in two roles: as potential sources of conflict, for example, livestock owners or hunters, and as audiences for education and communication campaigns. Co-decision and co-governance are much less visible.

Fostering human–wildlife coexistence remains a smaller but distinct group. These projects understand rewilding as helping people and wildlife coexist in working landscapes. They use tools like livestock-guarding dogs, changes in husbandry, compensation or reward schemes, and targeted communication and dialogue. Local communities are treated as central actors rather than as secondary actors, and ecological change is addressed alongside social conflict management. Politics and trade-offs are not brushed aside; they are confronted explicitly.

Finally, wild nature protection focuses on securing and promoting large, mostly already low-intensity areas as 'wild nature.' The main strategies are to reduce intensive land use, strengthen legal protections, and organize controlled access through trails, viewpoints, and visitor centers that stage a particular vision of wildlife. Rewilding in this mode is less about adding missing elements and more about defending and reframing what is already there.

People are involved in every project – but not in the same way

Across all six strategies, one result is hard to ignore: people are present in every form of rewilding¹. They appear as tourists, volunteers, farmers, hunters, rangers, NGO staff, business owners, and students. The crucial difference between strategies lies in how projects define these roles and which forms of participation are considered legitimate.

Megaherbivore strategies place visitors and tourism businesses at the centre stage. Species reintroduction strategies often highlight experts and regulators while marginalizing local voices. Coexistence and multi-intervention strategies, in contrast, foreground local land users and partners as co-shapers of the landscape¹.

This may sound obvious, but it cuts against a familiar narrative of rewilding as simply 'removing humans so nature can heal'. The study makes clear that rewilding is always a set of human decisions: which species and processes should return, which risks and conflicts are acceptable, whose economies must adjust, and whose vision of “wildness” becomes fixed in the landscape¹.

Rewilding, Beyond the Buzzword

This study reveals that rewilding in Europe is not a unified movement but rather a diverse set of approaches that show how people and ecosystems interact and transform together. Recognizing this variety helps us understand that rewilding is inherently political: each project shapes outcomes for people, landscapes, and the meaning of 'wildness' in distinct ways.

For rewilding to contribute meaningfully to conservation in Europe, we must move beyond simple slogans and glossy images. Clear distinctions between strategies, transparent decision-making, and in-depth review of whose interests are served are essential. The study offers a way to ask better questions and to engage with rewilding as a set of decisions rather than a universal solution.

References

1. Zoderer, B. M., Busse Von Colbe, J. & Loos, J. Rewilding in Europe: A Systematic Characterization and Classification of 89 Rewilding Projects. Conservation Letters. 18, e13157 (2025).

2. Lorimer, J. et al. Rewilding: Science, Practice, and Politics. Annu. Rev. Environ. Resour. 40, 39–62 (2015).

3. Perino, A. et al. Rewilding complex ecosystems. Science 364, eaav5570 (2019).

4. Schepers, F. & Jepson, P. Rewilding in a European Context: a new agenda for wildlife recovery in Europe. Conservation & Society 14, 62–71 (2016).