What is your background?

Initially, I qualified as a wilderness guide of walking safaris and a tracker in South Africa in 2012. Now I am enrolled in a masters in Biological Diversity, Ecology & Evolution.

When did you got involved in rewilding for the first time?

I got involved in the Bison Rewilding Project in Romania in the Southern Carpathians in early 2015, and ended up living there full time for 3,5 years. Together with the local team, I focused mainly on setting up sustainable ecotourism programs that enable guests to have special and memorable experiences, and the local community to benefit from rewilding. With the recently built WeWilder campus we have reached a significant milestone in complementing the bison rewilding process.

Do you have any suggestions for anyone that wants to get involved with rewilding?

The simplest way to get involved is to start talking about it with others and I guess to follow the flow of opportunities. I don’t think there is a clear answer to this, since every one is different and has a different path. But one thing is for sure, you don’t have to be an ecologist to be active in rewilding!

What do you do and how is that linked to rewilding?

I am a professional field mycologist specialising in the conservation of fungi, and I work as a self-employed consultant on a variety of rewilding projects across the UK. My role involves conduction fungal biodiversity surveys and monitoring, using field identification skills as well as DNA approaches to study how fungi are recovering as the rewilding process unfolds. Because fungi are highly interdependent with plants and animals and are dynamic in nature, traditional conservation measures that focus on preserving areas in which important fungi are found may not be sufficient to prevent their decline, especially if there are other missing elements of the ecosystem. I take my experience in fungal ecology to help rewilding projects develop strategies for preserving fungal diversity, and help them understand how that fungal diversity in turn supports the rest of the ecosystem.

What is your background?

I studied for a MSc in Plant and Fungal Taxonomy, Diversity, and Conservation at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and Queen Mary University of London and have previously worked as a science teacher in a secondary school.

When and how did you got involved in rewilding for the first time?

Like many people, my initial inroad to rewilding was the book Feral by George Monbiot, which immediately resonated with me as a conservation paradigm fit for the 21st century. Coinciding with the time I read that book in my early twenties, I was involved with my university’s mountaineering society and one of our autumn trips had us visit Snowdonia in Wales. On a walk one evening, I found myself in a very peculiar woodland. It was rather damp, the field layer lush with ferns, mosses, and other herbaceous plants, and lichens draped the trees. I was captivated by this habitat which I’ve never experienced before, and it was many years before I realised I had entered a remnant of an Atlantic rainforest. Since then, the preservation and restoration of oceanic woodlands and their fungi has been the driving force behind my interest in rewilding, and I am now involved with multiple rainforest projects, studying their fungal diversity.

Do you have any suggestions for a young person that wants to get involved with rewilding?

My biggest piece of advice would be to consider rewilding like one would consider any ecosystem: as composed of numerous interacting and interrelated components that give rise to the whole. Oftentimes we may get sidetracked by assuming that rewilding work only involves the reintroduction of charismatic megafauna, or having to own land as a prerequisite, but the truth is that it is a holistic approach to nature recovery that needs multiple skillsets – including soft skills such as communication – and requires specialists with knowledge across many taxonomic groups, not just animals! It’s up to you to analyse the direction that rewilding is heading as a movement, and figure out how your unique interests and skills can be of value to it.

What do you do and how is that linked to rewilding?

At the moment I’m a PhD candidate at the University of Groningen. My project is called ‘On the European bison’s rewilding hooves: How to visualize it?’. It is an interdisciplinary practice-based PhD research between visual arts and natural sciences. I look into the effectiveness of different visual communication tools for specific ecological subjects, using a study case of rewilding with European bison as the ecological base for my visual research. A visual communication toolkit created in the project for this ecological subject is available.

What is your background?

My background is scientific and children’s illustration, and graphic design.

When did you get involved in rewilding for the first time?

At the start of my PhD in 2019 I first heard about rewilding and got interested in the subject, to a point where I decided to make it part of my research.

Do you have any suggestions for a young person that wants to get involved with rewilding?

Any moment, age and place seems good to get involved in rewilding. In my case I come from visual arts and through the bridge of visual communication managed to connect natural sciences to my own background. Rewilding can be covered and helped by many areas and audiences, its just a matter of seeing what each person’s potential contribution can be and apply it to the rewilding process.

What do you do and how is that linked to rewilding?

Noah is the Chief Technical Officer Noah is the technical lead at Youngwilders, responsible for the detailed design of our wilding projects as well as the behind the scenes mapping and calculations which support our work. Noah has a passion for improving watercourses as part of our projects, and believes that river restoration can be the cornerstone for connectivity between wild spaces.

Jack is the Co-founder and director
of the organisation.

What is your background?

Noah has a background in Environmental Engineering, with a particular focus on hydro-morphology, flooding, and river restoration, and graduated with an MEng in The Environment, Energy and Sustainability in 2019. Jack studied Philosophy at undergraduate level before completing a Masters at the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustinability at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.

When did you get involved in rewilding for the first time?

We heard about rewilding mainly from books and the media. We started discussing it between ourselves and at some point we really decided to give it a go and try it out ourselves. We started Youngwilders from the vision that when we grow old we would like to walk through a singing landscape that has recovered on account of actions we had taken. Moving into the rewilding sphere, we felt that there were many small plots of land that had massive potential but were currently being ignored. At the same time there were masses of young people who were convinced of the worth of rewilding and who were really keen to act
but had very few opportunities to do so.

Do you have any suggestions for a young person that wants to get involved with rewilding?

Do not be intimidated if you don’t have the technical or scientific knowledge. The basic ideas of rewilding are very intuitive and anyone can grasp them. Also, the rewilding movement is bigger than solely ecological ideas and there are lots of other transferable skills like writing and speaking that are vital for the movement. Believe in yourself because everyone brings something to the table-Message anyone you think might be able to help you do
what you want to do.

What do you do and how is that linked to rewilding?

I work as a Project Coordinator for Rewildfires. The Rewildfires project aimed to research the potential for rewilding in Sicily and explore the links between fires, grazing and rewilding. After its completion our team moves forward to work on small scale projects centered around capacity building, community engagement and monitoring.

What is your background?

I come from a Design background with an MA in Design for Social Impact.

When did you get involved in rewilding for the first time?

Few years ago I came across a documentary about rewilding and wolves in Europe, which was an eye-opener. Rewilding is very catchy and it really stuck with me, so I started looking up different organisations and people. Another more solid step I took was that I participated in the Rewilding Tourism training provided by Rewilding Europe and got certified. That how it how it really began for me. After that I reached out to other Bosch alumni like myself and together we applied for funding to make a study about rewilding opportunities in Sicily.

Do you have any suggestions for a young person that wants to get involved with rewilding?

Reach out to people! This made rewilding much more approachable and tangible for me.
Don’t hesitate to get involved! The more different your background the more you enrich the filed of rewilding!
Don’t be scared to start, we had little experience with grant applications, but our efforts were successful. You will find that there are people who value what you do and are willing to finance it.
Start small: we work with small grants that are manageable but still have impact, allowing us to take action while leaving space for trial and error.
In summary: Do small projects, bring results and prove your concept!

What do you do and how is that linked to rewilding?

I am mainly involved through the rewilding project my family is running. It is a farm estate of about 26ha of which half is agriculture land and half pre-existing nature. We are trying to convert it all into one nature area by improving biodiversity in the pre-existing nature and converting the farmland back to nature using grazing of ponies and cattle in the process. I am essentially the academic advisor and planner for the
project due to my biology background. In addition I also run a website called The Extinctions  where I write scientific articles discussing the Quaternary Extinctions.

What is your background?

I have a MSc in Nature Management from Copenhagen University and BSc in Biology from the Imperial College of London.

When did you get involved in rewilding for the first time?

A friend initially introduced me to the idea years ago but it was only during my Bachelor studies that I started to really generate an interest. When you look back on what our diversity used to be you see that we have such an impoverished nature and I think people often do not seem to realize it. This led me to start the extinctions website. Another thing that inspired me was the book Wilding by Isabella Tree. Joining the European Young Rewilders and my family’s project have been a nice way to continue my involvement with rewilding.

Do you have any suggestions for a young person that wants to get involved with rewilding?

My main advice is to be proactive. Don’t wait for rewilding to come to you, come to rewilding! Get yourself out there! You can figure out for your self way way suit you best but there is always a way no matter who you are! You can always start your own initiatives. Although, starting initiatives of course
depends on who you are, what is your skill-set and where the opportunities lie, there are many things you can do even if you don’t have a lot of opportunities. You can for instance, always start a blog, contact your local nature organisation and start getting involved in activism or finding a little plot in your garden or your parent’s garden and getting to work there. Rewilding happens on many scales and there are a lot of avenues into the field. There is not just the management component, there is also getting the word out, starting a dialogue, pushing politicians, communicating information to the general public or starting the discussion with people who are already involved with rewilding. Although not all will guarantee you will be working full time, they can definitely get you involved and connected with the movement.

What do you do and how is that linked to rewilding?

I have created a stepping stone in between farmlands by rewilding  a small patch of land in North Italy. The project is called a “Oasi Naturalistica a Manera” and the area covers 320 sqm. I inherited this marginal land of a cropfield from my grandfather and, despite being small, I could see how it would benefit the local biodiversity and enhance nature in an agricultural landscape.

I crowfunded to buy native plant and dig a pond. After a few months, nature was already thriving. After I kick-started the processes, the vegetation is self-regulating and invasive species do not grow. Insects, mammals, birds and other animals came back and are frequent visitors to the oasis. The biggest success has been that the pond became a breeding site for the European green toad, with recurrent egg masses. 

What is your background?

I have a bachelor in Natural Sciences and I am passionate about herpetology. 

When did you get involved in rewilding for the first time?

When I received this patch of land I started to inform myself on what to do with it and how to start the natural processes. I had never done such projects from scratches, so I asked experts and I came to know about rewilding through my courses.

Do you have any suggestions for a young person that wants to get involved with rewilding?

If you are a young person with access to a patch of land, rewild it: stepping stones are important in fragmented ecosystems. Get in contact with local nature authorities such as parks, they are often looking for people to do such things or know where to direct them. Do not let uncertainty hold you back, making mistakes is human and luckily nature is there to help us. Ask for expertise and help, including your friends: make it fun!

What do you do and how is that linked to rewilding?

I work for Sylvester Rewilding, an organisation which aims to collectively create wilderness areas in Europe that are managed democratically. As their head of Rewilding I do everything that has to do with rewilding communications. This includes managing our SoMe channels, photography, writing blog posts. I am also a part of the Eco-team of Sylvester
which focuses on the practical side of our rewild efforts. There I provide a link between the ecological team and the rest of the organisation

What is your background?

I have a BSc in Psychology and I am currently doing an MSc in Cognitive Science.

When did you get involved in rewilding for the first time?

I heard about rewidling for the first time from our co-founder Julius. He gave me the book Feral by George Monbiot and bombarded me with articles and podcasts about it. From there we started to talk about rewilding and how it can be a great opportunity to actually restore ecosystems and help solve our environmental problems. That is how I really got into
it. What really caught me about rewilding was that it included humans. This resonated with me, because as a
phycologist I knew the importance of getting people on board for successful conservation efforts. Rewilding recognised how important it is for people to see nature restoration as their own mission. This was super inspiring for me and I wanted to be part of it. My active involvement came later with Sylvester. Our community made me feel like I can put our ideas through. I was surrounded by people who believed in our dream and were willing to put all in to make rewilding happen.

Do you have any suggestions for a young person that wants to get involved with rewilding?

My main advice is to just go for it! Do not be afraid to reach out to people and ask: ‘Can I help?’. Connect, talk to people and join a community. I had no clue about ecosystems and nature conservation when I started out, but got a very positive response from the rewilding movement. People took me seriously and I felt like they valued what I do. So don’t be afraid to reach out.

What do you do and how is that linked to rewilding?

I am rewilding enthusiast, a national contact for the Young Rewilders for my home
country Portugal and a content creator. I communicate about rewilding in portugese on
social media using video and photography. As a national contact for the EYR I am a local point of reference for young rewilders in Portugal. I find potential collaborators
and also organise get togethers with other young rewilders. For instance recently I organised a hike together with other volunteers from young rewilders in Portugal as a team building event. I also connect with local oranisations, landowners and municipalities to see how we can collaborate. I am also doing rewilding in my back yard, planting native plants, creating nest boxes and seasonal water stream trying to see what kind of wildlife I can bring to the plot. I am also host of the podcast (Re)naturalizar Portugal.

What is your background?

I am a self-taught rewilder.

When did you get involved in rewilding for the first time?

I heard about rewidling for the first time when I discovered the Western iberia
rewidling area (now the Greater Coa Valley) 6 or 7 years ago and thought their vision was really cool. Then it was during the pandemic that I really started to get involved. I found a video from Mossy Earth and right after I started to do more research and subscribe to their membership a few weeks later, It got me motivated to also start creating more regular content about rewilding. Five months ago I also joined the EYR as a national contact and have been reaching out to possible partners in Portugal. What grabbed me about rewilding was the hope that it brings to us, it was a different approach from traditional conservation and I see that young people in Portugal are getting more interested in it.

Do you have any suggestions for a young person that wants to get involved with rewilding?

The most important thing is to go for it. You don’t need to have a Biology or Ecology degree if you have the will to do it. Like me, you can just be self-taught! You don’t need to put yourself in a box because you don’t have certain skills. Because rewilding is so recent it is very multidisciplinary and open to people from various backgrounds.

What do you do and how is that linked to rewilding?

I am an executive director at Kernow Conservation and an Outreach officer at Cornwall Climate Action Network. Kernow Conservation is a community-led conservation group
that works to restore nature across Cornwall. We did the first watervole in
reintroduction to Southern Cornwall in 2022 and have since reintroduced over 300 water voles with the help of partners like the Rewilding Europe through European Wildlife Comeback Found. As a director I co-managed the first reintroduction. This involved anything from engaging with press and media, organising volunteer days to remove gorse and prepare the habitat, mink monitoring, doing Social Media and more. Since then I am doing more of the business side of the things, such as our partner relationships and membership scheme, looking for more funding and talking to landowners and stakeholders

What is your background?

I have a MSc in Ecology and Conservation Biology.

When did you get involved in rewilding for the first time?

I heard about rewilding for the first time from my degree in Ecology and Conservation
Biology, books like Wilding and visiting projects in the UK. I started looking for
opportunities to get involved. That is how I found Rewilding Apennines. I actually registered my CV in the volunteer database and then they contacted me that there was a spot. My internship with them catapulted me into wanting to do more with rewilding. It was the most amazing experience I have had. It was really special to have
the chance to explore the culture and do the things that the Apennines team were doing. It made me want to do similar stuff back in Cornwall.

Do you have any suggestions for a young person that wants to get involved with rewilding?

Just go for it! We started out of nothing really and had a bit of luck and did a lot of hard work. This enabled us to really make and impact. Don’t be scared to do something that is outside of the norm and start things yourself, because there are already all these big organisations doing things out there but
sometimes the bigger you are the slower things can be and the harder it is for these larger organisations to actually catapult radical change. So if you have got an idea, if you have the resources, just do it yourself. That is the only way we can radically change things, though community groups and communities coming together and just starting things by themselves on a local scale.

What do you do and how is that linked to rewilding?

I am the founder of Wildya where we are creating a mental health app that helps people transform eco-anxiety into action. We are using 15% of our revenue to restore and protect nature and in this way showing people how much nature they help to restore by working on their mental health. We restore 1 square meter per user per month and the content of our app is also inspired by the natural world. For instance you can get mentored by a beaver or by an Amazon river dolphin in a really  cool and funny way, definitely and not as crazy as it sounds.

What is your background?

I come from a business background with a Masters degree in Business Administration because I believed that businesses are the root of our environmental issues and I wanted to change and use the business models that ruin our environment to protect it.

When did you get involved in rewilding for the first time?

I came across it 3 years ago through LinkedIn and the book Rewilding by Paul Jepson and Cain Blythe and that is when I really dove into the topic, the history and got hooked into podcasts about sea wilding. I think rewilding is such a positive way of thinking and communicating and I try to constantly learn more about it.

Do you have any suggestions for a young person that wants to get involved with rewilding?

It is super lame but its really taking action. It can even be the smallest possible thing, like buying this Rewilding book by Cane or looking for one other person in the area that you live who cares about this. Just start and don’t wait or hope for others. Just do what you can but don’t wait. You can start really tiny and go big. We often have this version of who we are or would like to be but at the end of the day if our actions do not match that at all then are we really who we think or say we are? The same goes for rewilding, are you really helping if your consumer behavior, your job and lifestyle do not reflect it.