page_title: Rewilding (conservation biology)
section_title: Projects in Europe
hierarchical_section_title: Rewilding (conservation biology) / Major rewilding projects / Projects in Europe
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Verbreitungskarte des Europäischen Wisents (Bison bonasus)&#160;&#160; während des Holozäns&#160;&#160; während des Hochmittelalters&#160;&#160; Reliktbestände im 20. JahrhundertEnglish: Holocene &amp; Historic range map of the European bison (Bison bonasus): Holocene in light green; range in the high middle ages in dark green, relict populations in the 20th century in red
context_page_description: Rewilding is large-scale conservation aimed at restoring and protecting natural processes and core wilderness areas, providing connectivity between such areas, and protecting or reintroducing apex predators and keystone species. Rewilding projects may require ecological restoration or wilderness engineering, particularly to restore connectivity between fragmented protected areas, and reintroduction of predators and keystone species where extirpated. The ultimate goal of rewilding efforts is to create ecosystems requiring passive management by limiting human control of ecosystems. Successful long term rewilding projects should be considered to have little to no human-based ecological management, as successful reintroduction of keystone species creates a self-regulatory and self-sustaining stable ecosystem, with near pre-human levels of biodiversity.
context_section_description: In the 1980s, the Dutch government began introducing proxy species in the Oostvaardersplassen nature reserve in order to recreate a grassland ecology. Though not explicitly referred to as rewilding, nevertheless many of the goals and intentions of the project were in line with those of rewilding. The reserve is considered somewhat controversial due to the lack of predators and other native megafauna such as wolves, bears, lynx, elk, boar, and wisent.
  Since the 1980s, 8.5 million trees have been planted in the United Kingdom in an area of the midlands around the villages of Moira and Donisthorpe, close to Leicester. The area is called The National Forest. Another, larger, reforestation project, aiming to plant 50 million trees is beginning in South Yorkshire, called The Northern Forest. Despite this, the UK government has been criticised for not achieving its tree planting goals. Knepp Castle and Roy Dennis Wildlife Foundation have overseen reintroductions of extinct bird species in the UK.
  In 2011, the 'Rewilding Europe' initiative was established with the aim of rewilding 1 million hectares of land in ten areas including the western Iberian Peninsula, Velebit, the Carpathians and the Danube delta by 2020, mostly abandoned farmland among other identified candidate site. The present project considers only species that are still present in Europe, such as the Iberian lynx, Eurasian lynx, wolf, European jackal, Brown bear, chamois, Spanish ibex, European bison, red deer, griffon vulture, cinereous vulture, Egyptian vulture, Great white pelican and horned viper, along with a few primitive breeds of domestic horse and cattle as proxies for the extinct tarpan and aurochs. Since 2012, Rewilding Europe is heavily involved in the Tauros Programme, which seeks to recreate the phenotype of the aurochs, the wild ancestors of domestic cattle by selectively breeding existing breeds of cattle. Many projects also employ domestic water buffalo as a grazing proxy for the extinct European water buffalo.Reviving Europe.
  In 2010 and 2011, an unrelated initiative in the village of San Cebrián de Mudá (190 inhabitants) in Palencia, northern Spain released 18 European bisons (a species extinct in Spain since the Middle Ages) in a natural area already inhabited by roe deer, wild boar, red fox and grey wolf, as part of the creation of a 240-hectare "Quaternary Park". Three Przewalski horses from a breeding center in Le Villaret, France were added to the park in October 2012. Onagers and "aurochs" were planned to follow.
  On 11 April 2013, eight European bison (one male, five females and two calves) were released into the wild in the Bad Berleburg region of Germany, after 300 years of absence from the region.
  In 2014 the German government built a 3 km road tunnel to remove an Autobahn from the Leutratal und Cospoth nature reserve.
  In 2016 and 2018, the True Nature Foundation reintroduced in total 7 European bison of the Lowland-Caucasian breeding line in Anciles Wildlife Reserve in the Parque Regional de Picos de Europa in the Cantabrian mountains in northern Spain.
caption: Historic range of the European bison.   Maximum Holocene range  Range during the high middle ages  Relict 20th century populations
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