Europe’s nature is declining at a rapid rate, as assessments under the Habitats Directive (European Environment Agency, 2020) and the IUCN Red List of Species (e.g. IUCN, 2019) repeatedly show. Its intact ecosystems tend to be small and isolated, which hinders the ecological processes and functions necessary for their survival. Restoring nature across degraded landscapes, while protecting the intact nature we have left, is crucial to support biodiversity and the ecosystems on which we all rely.

IUCN Member Rewilding Europe recently launched a call for action to drive forward and scale up practical rewilding across Europe, urging EU politicians to prioritise nature restoration in the upcoming EU Biodiversity Strategy to 2030. Organisations and individuals across sectors, including energy, land management, forestry, river management, investment, research and others, as well as citizens, are called on to co-sign and share the #CallForAWilderEurope. To date around 60 organisations in Europe have co-signed the Call for Action for A Wilder Europe and a global call for action will follow in the lead-up to the 15th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity.

In support of the call for action, a consortium of partners including IUCN Members Rewilding Europe, WWF and Birdlife International, with European Environmental Bureau, iDiv and Martin-Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, have published a series of policy papers that make the case for landscape-scale nature recovery. The consortium calls on the European Commission to propose legislation that drives ecosystem restoration in the upcoming Biodiversity Strategy to 2030, increasing the share of the European territory in good ecological condition.

To support decision makers at different levels, the consortium has suggested priority corridors for nature recovery that will improve connectivity between the sites of Europe’s existing intact nature. The suggestions are based on spatial analyses of the ecological integrity of nature and the extent of impacts from forestry and grazing. The recovery of natural ecosystems will not only tackle the biodiversity crisis but also act as a nature-based solution for climate change and provide many social and economic benefits to rural communities.

Links

https://rewildingeurope.com/callforawildereurope/

https://rewildingeurope.com/space-for-wild-nature/