Rewilding Law Group

Rewilding projects across Europe and beyond often face similar legal questions and challenges, but opportunities to share experiences and learn from one another are limited. We believe that building a stronger community around rewilding law is essential to accelerating nature recovery and developing legal systems that better support rewilding.

About the Group

Our Rewilding Law Group brings together rewilders, lawyers, academics, policymakers, students and others interested in the intersection of law and rewilding. It provides a space to connect, share practical experiences, explore emerging legal challenges and learn from innovative approaches being developed across different countries and projects, whether you are an established practitioner or just beginning to explore this field.

The Group meets online four times a year and features expert speakers, project case studies and open discussion. Previous sessions have explored topics including wolf management and culling, marine rewilding, the role of natural processes in rewilding, and the first fully wild beaver releases in England.

Recordings, presentations and meeting notes from previous sessions can be accessed below. Join us to connect with others interested in this rapidly evolving field and help shape the future of rewilding law.

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A modern, brightly lit boardroom with a large wooden table where legal professionals are engaged in a collaborative discussion.

Arnaud Abadie

June 2026

Natural Processes

Leo Linnartz, ecologist and rewilding expert at ARK Rewilding Nederland, discussed the role of natural processes in helping ecosystems restore themselves to rich, self-regulating states. The session covered the hierarchy of abiotic and biotic processes, how large herbivores and disturbance events shape mosaic landscapes, the deep-time baseline for Europe's biodiversity and its more recent loss of megafauna, and the ecological and cultural barriers to accepting natural processes such as death and decay in the landscape.

March 2026

Wild Beaver Reintroductions in England

Gen Crisford, Beaver Project Officer at National Trust Purbeck, discussed the first officially licensed wild releases of Eurasian beavers in England and the years of preparation required to secure approval. The session covered feasibility assessments, stakeholder consultation, the beaver release licensing process, post-release monitoring and management, and key lessons for future beaver reintroductions in England and Wales.

February 2026

Coexistence, Rewilding and the Wolf in the EU

Hosted jointly with the Berlin Rewilding Konferenz, this German-language session featured Dr Thorsten Gieser (University of Koblenz) exploring the politics of wolf conservation in Germany and Europe. The discussion covered campaigns to weaken wolf protection, proposed changes to German hunting law, predator ecology in human-dominated landscapes, livestock protection, misinformation and power dynamics in the wolf debate, and what meaningful coexistence with large carnivores might look like.

December 2025

Wolf Protection in Europe – Part II

Gaia Angelini (Green Impact), Sara González Merinero (Fondo Lobo) and Lucie Wuethrich (Swiss wolf campaigner) explored current legal debates surrounding wolf conservation in Europe. The discussion covered legal challenges to the EU wolf downlisting, the role of coexistence measures under the Common Agricultural Policy, wolf litigation in Spain concerning the Iberian wolf, and the IUCN Emergency Motion on Switzerland's pre-emptive wolf cub culls.

October 2025

Wolf Protection in Europe – Part I

Professor Arie Trouwborst, Professor of Nature Conservation Law at Tilburg University (Netherlands), explored the legal framework underpinning wolf recovery across Europe, including the Bern Convention and EU Habitats Directive. The session examined the 2025 downlisting of wolves from Annex IV to Annex V, key Court of Justice of the European Union rulings on favourable conservation status, and the legal constraints that continue to govern wolf culling and management.

May 2025

Rewilding the Sea

Louise MacCallum, Project Lead for the Solent Seascape Project at Blue Marine Foundation, discussed the restoration of interconnected marine and coastal habitats across the Solent, including seagrass meadows, saltmarsh, native oyster reefs and seabird nesting sites. The session explored marine licensing and regulatory barriers, voluntary biodiversity credits, and how the project is working with regulators and local communities to support large-scale ecosystem restoration.

February 2025

Legal Personhood for Nature

Spanish lawyer Sara González Merinero explored the landmark legal recognition of the Mar Menor Lagoon in Murcia, Spain as the first ecosystem in Europe to be granted legal personhood and enforceable legal rights. She discussed the citizen-led campaign that secured the legislation, Spain's Constitutional Court decision upholding the law, and the wider implications for the global Rights of Nature movement.

November 2024

Large Herbivores in Rewilding

Roeland Vermeulen, Director of FREE Nature (Netherlands), shared lessons from across Europe on rewilding with semi-wild and de-domesticated large herbivores. The discussion covered livestock registration and identification rules, animal welfare, carcass disposal law, liability for damage, and the possibilities for a legal transition from livestock to “wild status” for species used as ecosystem engineers.

August 2024

Corridors and Connectivity

This session explored the legal challenges of creating wildlife corridors and delivering landscape-scale nature recovery. Pedro Prata (Rewilding Portugal) discussed land ownership and habitat connectivity in the Greater Côa Valley, while Ian Rogers (Weald to Waves) and David Hunter (Bates Wells) examined conservation covenants, collaboration agreements, nature markets and long-term governance for ecological restoration projects linking Knepp Wildland, Ashdown Forest and the Sussex coast as well as the Adur River Recovery.

Staffan Widstrand / Rewilding Europe

April 2024