Our research
wildE is a Horizon Europe project developing climate-smart rewilding as a nature-based solution to biodiversity loss and climate change.
Our approach
Rewilding is becoming an increasingly popular approach to ecological restoration. However, until now this approach has mostly been limited to local conservation initiatives scattered across the continent.
A lack of research on the topic has limited rewilding’s contribution to important environmental policies and its adoption as a large-scale, systemic approach to restoration. To overcome these barriers, our research is:
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Climate-smart rewilding is a new concept designed to overcome barriers to rewilding by considering climatic, economic and societal challenges in order for ecological restoration to become a financially viable nature-based solution.
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Experts from the environmental sciences, social sciences and economics are collaborating with policy makers, local communities and businesses to bring together a wide-range of perspectives on rewilding.
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New insights, methods and tools for climate-smart rewilding will be shared on our Rewilding Knowledge Hub to help stakeholders collaborate on rewilding opportunities.
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Rewilding baselines
Identifying factors that make rewilding attempts more likely to be successful by developing a framework for climate-smart rewilding and using European-wide data to identify rewilding opportunities.
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Rewilding futures
Using advanced modeling techniques and rewilding scenarios to better understand how environmental and societal changes in the future might affect the potential for rewilding in Europe.
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Rewilding synthesis
Bringing together the new research and lessons from wildE to produce practical outputs and tools. These include: guidelines, policy recommendations and online tools.
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Rewilding dialogue
Ensuring there is effective two-way dialogue with key rewilding stakeholders. This includes engaging local stakeholders at eight rewilding sites and working with key scientific and policy stakeholders.
Our case studies
We are carrying out in-depth research at eight case study sites across Europe, to gather first-hand information on rewilding across a mixture of urban, peri-urban and rural landscapes.