#17 Oder Delta - Poland 🇵🇱 & Germany 🇩🇪

Whilst the vast forests of Swedish Lapland might look like a wilderness from the air, get in and amongst the trees and they're anything but. Forestry plantations dominate the map, where trees are planted in dense rows and light on the forest floor is a rare sight.  The rivers didn't escape the booming timber industry either, historically engineered beyond recognition to float logs downstream to awaiting sawmills. Boulders were ripped from the riverbeds, woody debris was removed and flooring was brought in to simplify the route as much as possible. The team at Rewilding Sweden is now busy restoring these ecosystems, where the forest and rivers are treated not as separate entities, but entwined waterscapes. Swedish Lapland is one of ten inspirational rewilding landscapes, brought together by Rewilding Europe  to drive forwards the large scale recovery of nature across the continent.

The Oder Delta is an important river catchment in the borderlands of Poland and Germany. Here, intricate waterways meander through hay meadows, alluvial forest, marshlands and lagoon, before heading out to the Baltic Sea. This landscape feels rich in life, but it could still be so much more. Pollution events have killed off huge quantities of fish and many of the waterways have been manipulated for milling, agriculture, hydro schemes and transport. Rewilding work is now focused on returning the rivers to a more natural state, and with it, the diverse bounty of life that rely on them.  

For the past few decades, Scotland's wildcat population has been clinging on by a claw. Through historic persecution, habitat loss and more recently, issues with hybridisation with feral and domestic cats, their numbers here have dwindled to practically nothing. Saving Wildcats is the first dedicated conservation breeding for release project for the species, and the team here are hard at work to restore this iconic mesopredator back to the wild. 

The Rhodope Mountains in southeastern Europe bridge the continents of Europe and Asia. This geographical crossroads makes it an area of high biodiversity, but over time the region has lost many of its key species due to poaching, habitat loss and persecution. Its position also means it's at the sharp end of climate change on the continent. Warming temperatures make wildfires and new diseases from the south an ever-increasing risk. The rewilding team here are fully focused on improving the circle of life. A suite of large herbivores are being reintroduced to maintain the mosaic, semi-open landscape, whilst providing sustenance for predators and scavengers alike. Vultures are a key component of the Eastern Rhodopes, and their restoration will help limit the spread of disease and recycle nutrients through the landscape.

The Danube Delta is a complex network of river channels, wetlands, marshes, inter-channel islands and riparian forests. No matter the season, the region hums, thrums and squawks with life. Here, restoration works are focused on reversing years of drainage by agriculture and reconnecting the natural flow of water across the landscape. Further inland, at the Tarutino Steppe, the team are also busy regenerating large swathes of semi-dry grasslands, by reintroducing an army of grazing animals, both big and small, to reignite natural processes. The work here is ambitious on any level, but to keep such focus on the restoration of nature, whilst a large-scale invasion of your country is happening, is a testament to the resolve and resilience of the people here, and also the hope that rewilding brings.

The Southern Carpathians of Romania are at the tip of Europe’s third-longest mountain chain. Here, ancient woodland cascades over the hillsides and the full suite of apex predators still roam amongst the trees.    For many years, there has been a missing element of these wild landscapes. The woodlands have been devoid of their biggest sculptor, until now.   Since 2013, European bison have come back into the equation. They disturb and disrupt as they feed, trample and push their way through the trees, leaving a dynamic wake of ecological processes no other species can achieve. Tune in to hear all about it.

The Central Apennines are just a couple of hours from Rome, and yet this is a landscape where Italian wolves roam, Marsican brown bears awake from season-long slumbers and native crayfish gather in crystal clear pools. The team here is absolutely passionate about people and place. They intertwine the need for species conservation and restoring landscape-scale ecological functions with promoting sustainable businesses and growing an unbreakable connection between communities and their surrounding environment. The Central Apennines is one of ten inspiring Rewilding Landscapes across the continent, set up by Rewilding Europe with local teams on the ground.

Whilst Eurasian lynx still have strongholds in the east of their range, subpopulations in western Europe have long been under threat. In the Dinaric Alps of Slovenia, these elusive felines are now considered endangered. So how do you go about saving the ghost of the forest? How do you even start to help an animal that does not wish to be seen? A transboundary initiative has been pulling together expertise from across the continent to bring the population back from the brink. LIFE Lynx is a member of the European Rewilding Network, a collection of groundbreaking initiatives across the continent, brought together by Rewilding Europe as part of a broader rewilding movement.

The Velebit Mountains are a 145km long mountain chain in Croatia. On the face of it, these forested hillsides seem like a rich wilderness area, but beneath the canopy, humans have shaped the land and the array of animals that live here. The Rewilding Velebit team is reinvigorating trophic chains through reintroductions of herbivores and carnivores alike. They're on a journey to transform the extractive economies of forestry and hunting tourism into more regenerative ways of making a living, through eco-tourism and carbon sequestration. The Velebit Mountains is one of ten inspiring Rewilding Landscapes across the continent, set up by Rewilding Europe with local teams on the ground.

Lille Vildmose is Denmark's biggest protected area and home to northwestern Europe's largest raised bog. This is a vital store for both carbon and water. As with many ecosystems across the continent, it has been exploited by humans over past centuries through sphagnum moss harvesting and peat mining. In this episode, we explore how four-legged tree trimmers are being utilised to restore the bog for the future. Lille Vildmose is a member of the European Rewilding Network, a collection of groundbreaking initiatives across the continent, brought together by Rewilding Europe as part of a broader rewilding movement.