Periodic Reporting for period 2 - wildE (Climate-smart rewilding: ecological restoration for climate change mitigation, adaptation and biodiversity support in Europe)
Berichtszeitraum: 2024-07-01 bis 2025-12-31
The wildE project introduces ‘climate-smart rewilding’ as an innovative approach to create biodiversity and climate benefits while also addressing other socio-environmental needs. The project develops a research and innovation programme addressing the climate-biodiversity nexus in tight association with the socio-economic dimension of large-scale ecological restoration. It also projects scenarios to assess Europe’s rewilding potentials under diverse land-use and climate change futures. The goal is to develop tangible and readily accessible decision-support and management guidelines that enable policymakers, conservation managers, communities, and the private sector to co-construct climate-smart rewilding strategies as effective Nature-based Solutions (NbS) for meeting the EU’s targets on climate change mitigation and adaptation as well as biodiversity support. To this end, the project is embedded within an ambitious stakeholder engagement and communications programme.
During the first 36 months of the project, a primary focus has been on learning, data collection and interpretation in four major fields:
(1) Development of concepts and literature syntheses related with rewilding. We published a formal framework for ‘climate-smart rewilding’ – a core component of this project - as well as several literature reviews and meta-analyses addressing different environmental, socio-economic and political aspects associated with rewilding and alternative land management options. Severl further articles are under way.
(2) Empirical analyses of recent European-scale rewilding trends and their implications. Activities included detailed remote sensing studies of land abandonment since 1989 and its ecosystem-level consequences, as well as an EU-wide representative survey on social perceptions and attitudes towards nature and wilderness including >13,000 respondents. The data collection was successfully finished and several major research articles are awaitung publication.
(3) In-depth analyses of the environmental, social and economic implications of rewilding in the project’s eight case studies. Activities included diverse fine-scale ecological studies as well as the organisation of local stakeholder workshops, focus group discussions and interviews, which informed ongoing detailed studies of the social perception, material and nonmaterial benefits, and opportunity costs of rewilding compared to alternative land uses. Data collection is mostly finished and the primary focus lies now on their interpretation.
(4) Model-based estimates of the potential of rewilding to address EU biodiversity and climate goals. Activities included the development of relevant land use change and climate scenarios and their integration into land use, ecosystem, and economic (opportunity cost) models involving extensive model adjustment, parametrisation, and testing. First major papers addressing climate-smart rewilding were published.
The described activities were greatly facilitated by >25 meetings and workshops held through the first three years of the project. Much of the described work was led by the >20 contracted early-stage (PhD or postdoctoral) researchers. Overall, the research work advanced very smoothly and most often fully in line with the original plans and schedules.
(1) Development of concepts and literature syntheses related with rewilding. We published a formal framework for ‘climate-smart rewilding’ – a core component of this project - as well as several literature reviews and meta-analyses addressing different environmental, socio-economic and political aspects associated with rewilding and alternative land management options. Severl further articles are under way.
(2) Empirical analyses of recent European-scale rewilding trends and their implications. Activities included detailed remote sensing studies of land abandonment since 1989 and its ecosystem-level consequences, as well as an EU-wide representative survey on social perceptions and attitudes towards nature and wilderness including >13,000 respondents. The data collection was successfully finished and several major research articles are awaitung publication.
(3) In-depth analyses of the environmental, social and economic implications of rewilding in the project’s eight case studies. Activities included diverse fine-scale ecological studies as well as the organisation of local stakeholder workshops, focus group discussions and interviews, which informed ongoing detailed studies of the social perception, material and nonmaterial benefits, and opportunity costs of rewilding compared to alternative land uses. Data collection is mostly finished and the primary focus lies now on their interpretation.
(4) Model-based estimates of the potential of rewilding to address EU biodiversity and climate goals. Activities included the development of relevant land use change and climate scenarios and their integration into land use, ecosystem, and economic (opportunity cost) models involving extensive model adjustment, parametrisation, and testing. First major papers addressing climate-smart rewilding were published.
The described activities were greatly facilitated by >25 meetings and workshops held through the first three years of the project. Much of the described work was led by the >20 contracted early-stage (PhD or postdoctoral) researchers. Overall, the research work advanced very smoothly and most often fully in line with the original plans and schedules.
The production and communication of research results is now advancing fast and proceeds in most cases as scheduled. Some relevant emerging results are:
The climate-smart rewilding framework, a cornerstone of the wildE project, is currently being published. Around ten further concept papers, literature reviews, and meta-analyses either have already been published or exist as advanced manuscripts. These syntheses address a wide range of topics related to rewilding, including: a) effects of boreal forest vegetation structure on biodiversity; b) consequences of rewilding for ecosystem resilience to climate change related disturbances; c) environmental and social implications of recent natural forest expansion in Europe; d) rewilding beneifts in term of ecosystem services; e) societal perceptions of rewilding and wilderness and their cultural and socio-economic drivers; f) conflicts related with rewilding and their management; g) relations between rewilding and wildfires; h) the integration of rewilding within agricultural landscapes; and i) the consideration of rewilding principles in European policy documents. Concept papers and literature syntheses represent a particularly relevant update of the scientific state-of-the-art in rewilding and an important knowledge base upon which subsequent wildE project publications, as well as the scientific community at large, can build.
The Pan-European analyses of land cover changes have generated very high-resolution annual maps of fallow/active agricultural lands and fractional woody cover, allowing to infer so far unavailable fine-scale geographical patterns and trends of agricultural abandonment and non-intentional rewilding since 1989. This information is highly complementary to other Pan-European estimates of land abandonment based on different approaches, and it will allow elucidating of relevant fine-scale environmental drivers of land abandonment. Further analyses of historical vegetation responses to passive rewilding following farmland abandonment over the last two decades have moreover documented a marked increase of woody vegetation cover and height across Europe, pointing to a significant carbon sequestration and storage effect of passive rewilding in the area. Model-based mappings have furthermore identified areas in Europe where rewilding could generate the greatest co-benefits in terms of biodiversity and carbon storage while aligning with competitive land uses (i.e. be climate-smart). Finally, a European-wide representative survey on social perceptions of rewilding and wilderness has provided extensive and valuable data on people’s motivations and attitudes towards nature and restoration, whose analyses are showing first trends of great potential policy relevance.
The climate-smart rewilding framework, a cornerstone of the wildE project, is currently being published. Around ten further concept papers, literature reviews, and meta-analyses either have already been published or exist as advanced manuscripts. These syntheses address a wide range of topics related to rewilding, including: a) effects of boreal forest vegetation structure on biodiversity; b) consequences of rewilding for ecosystem resilience to climate change related disturbances; c) environmental and social implications of recent natural forest expansion in Europe; d) rewilding beneifts in term of ecosystem services; e) societal perceptions of rewilding and wilderness and their cultural and socio-economic drivers; f) conflicts related with rewilding and their management; g) relations between rewilding and wildfires; h) the integration of rewilding within agricultural landscapes; and i) the consideration of rewilding principles in European policy documents. Concept papers and literature syntheses represent a particularly relevant update of the scientific state-of-the-art in rewilding and an important knowledge base upon which subsequent wildE project publications, as well as the scientific community at large, can build.
The Pan-European analyses of land cover changes have generated very high-resolution annual maps of fallow/active agricultural lands and fractional woody cover, allowing to infer so far unavailable fine-scale geographical patterns and trends of agricultural abandonment and non-intentional rewilding since 1989. This information is highly complementary to other Pan-European estimates of land abandonment based on different approaches, and it will allow elucidating of relevant fine-scale environmental drivers of land abandonment. Further analyses of historical vegetation responses to passive rewilding following farmland abandonment over the last two decades have moreover documented a marked increase of woody vegetation cover and height across Europe, pointing to a significant carbon sequestration and storage effect of passive rewilding in the area. Model-based mappings have furthermore identified areas in Europe where rewilding could generate the greatest co-benefits in terms of biodiversity and carbon storage while aligning with competitive land uses (i.e. be climate-smart). Finally, a European-wide representative survey on social perceptions of rewilding and wilderness has provided extensive and valuable data on people’s motivations and attitudes towards nature and restoration, whose analyses are showing first trends of great potential policy relevance.