How much of Europe’s land could become wild again?

How much of Europe’s land could become wild again?

Large parts of Europe could be deliberately left to become wild again. © Paul Hartley/ iStock

Europe is one of the most densely populated continents. But in order to achieve international environmental protection goals, nature must be given more space here – for example in the form of rewilding, in which ecosystems are returned to their natural state. According to a new study, almost 25 percent of the European landscape is suitable for such targeted rewilding, but not every country has the same potential.

The European Biodiversity Strategy envisages that at least 30 percent of Europe’s land and sea areas should be protected by 2030. Some countries – including Germany, Bulgaria and Greece – have already achieved this goal, but many others are still struggling due to their dense population and landscapes shaped by human intervention. The strategy of “rewilding” could help them. This involves restoring ecosystems destroyed by human intervention so that they can regulate themselves again and return to a state of true wilderness.

Where is there room for wilderness?

To help those countries that are currently far from their area targets, Miguel Araújo and Diogo Alagador from the Portuguese University of Évora have created a map with potential rewilding areas. “In Europe, the timing for such rewilding of areas is particularly good for the preservation of biodiversity, because declining arable land has already sparked a debate about which land use would be the best alternative to simply leaving land fallow,” explain the researchers. However, the question arises as to which areas would be suitable for such rewilding and would bring a real benefit for species and nature conservation.

For their mapping, the scientists established three main criteria for areas suitable for rewilding. Firstly, these should be areas that cover more than 10,000 hectares, so that even larger animals have enough space for their territories. The second criterion is that these areas must be minimally disturbed by humans. As a third factor, the researchers defined key species for the respective ecosystem – for example, large herbivores such as moose or carnivores such as wolves – and investigated whether these already occur in the target area.

Europe has surprisingly much wilderness potential

It was found that around 117 million hectares in Europe would in principle be suitable for rewilding. That corresponds to almost a quarter of the European landscape. But the suitable rewilding areas are very unevenly distributed. Around 70 percent of them are in colder climate zones such as Scandinavia, Scotland, the Baltic states and highland regions on the Iberian Peninsula, as Araújo and Alagador report. So-called passive rewilding could take place there, in which people withdraw from designated areas and the animals gradually resettle on their own. But of course this can only work if a country already has healthy populations of key species such as deer, ibex and lynx.

Map of rewilding areas
The marked areas are suitable for rewilding. © Araújo and Alagador, Current Biology /CC-by-sa 4.0

Countries where key species were eradicated long ago would have to resort to active rewilding instead, i.e. actively reintroducing animals such as wolves, bears and moose. Araújo and Alagador see the greatest potential for this form of rewilding in Corsica and Sardinia, as well as in southern France and the Netherlands. However, not all of the countries found suitable for rewilding in the study can achieve their goals in this way alone, as the researchers emphasize. For example, Ireland, Italy, Belgium and Denmark would also have to resort to other protection methods in order to be able to reach their area targets by 2030. And even those countries that could achieve their goals solely through rewilding – including France, Spain and the United Kingdom – must hurry up with their efforts.

“We are racing against time,” says Araújo. “The areas that look most promising for rewilding today may not be the same in 50 years due to the effects of climate change.”

Source: Cell Press; Article: Current Biology, doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2024.07.045

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