Europe has been plowed, logged, paved and settled for more than a millennium, making it appear to be one of the least wild continents on the planet.
But look again. Nearly a quarter of this populous region is pristine enough to support key herbivores and carnivores, hallmarks of functional wild ecosystems, according to new research. From the Arctic tundra of Norway to the Sierra Nevada mountains of southern Spain, large tracts of land with minimal human presence offer the potential to meet biodiversity targets by restoring wildlife, a process sometimes referred to as “rewilding.”
“There are many areas in Europe that have a low enough human footprint, as well as the presence of key animal species, to potentially be rewilded,” said Miguel Araújo, a biogeographer with Spain’s National Museum of Natural Sciences and the University of Évora in Portugal.
Europe, like much of the world, has set an ambitious goal of conserving 30% of land by 2030 to counter the habitat destruction that is central to the global decline of wildlife.
Araújo and a colleague at the University of Évora wanted to see how much European land showed signs of being able to boast healthy wild ecosystems to meet these targets, and where that land was located. To do that, they scrutinized maps of Europe to find places that met three key criterial: Less than 5% of the land had a human footprint, such as houses and roads; the land was clustered in areas no smaller than 100 square kilometers; and that the it was already occupied by a key herbivore or carnivore, or had the potential to do that if they animals were reintroduced.
It turns out nearly 1.2 million square kilometers of land in Europe meets these criteria, more than all of France and Spain combined, the scientists reported last week in Current Biology.
Much of that, perhaps not surprisingly, lies in places that are cold or at higher elevations – remote lands with conditions that make it hard for people to farm and live there. Large parts of Scandinavia, the highlands of northern Scotland, and mountainous regions of Spain offer some of the most promising terrain: patches of land greater than 1,000 square kilometers with few people that are already home to vital species.
Though less ideal, there are many places with more modest-sized landscapes that still met the researchers’ requirements, including large parts of Spain and Portugal, southern France, the Balkans and southeastern Europe, the Baltic states and, once again, Scandinavia.
All told, the land adds up to nearly 25% of Europe. But that doesn’t mean the continent is already on course to meet its goal. Some places had fewer key species than research suggests they would naturally have. And nearly three quarters of the land is outside areas that are currently protected, the scientists found.
Eleven countries, including ones in Scandinavia, the Baltics, France, Spain and the United Kingdom could meet their conservation goals by earmarking some of their share of this land for protection.
A number of European countries, however, still won’t be able to meet their conservation goals simply by stepping back and letting nature take its course, the scientists found. That’s particularly true in densely-settled central and southern Europe, including Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Italy and Hungary.
There, people will have to get more creative. That could mean repairing land such as old mines to make it wildlife-friendly, creating linked networks of smaller protected places, or finding ways to manage farmland or forests in a way that makes harvesting more compatible with wildlife, the researchers noted.
Either way, there’s an urgency to making progress. And it’s not just because of a political deadline of 2030. Even seemingly prime wildlife habitat is being transformed by forces such as climate change. In Scandinavia, for instance, warming winters have produced new dangers for reindeer, such as storms that cover snow in a sheet of ice, keeping the animals from reaching plants on which they feed.
“We’re racing against time,” said Araújo. “The areas that look most promising for rewilding today may not be the same in 50 years due to the impacts of climate change.”
Araújo, et. al. “Expanding European protected areas through rewilding.” Current Biology. Aug. 15, 2024.
