An 850,000-acre mountain landscape east of Madrid is getting wilder. Rewilding Europe has launched its 10th rewilding project — and its first in Spain — in the Iberian Highlands, a canyon-carved stretch of pine, oak and juniper forest where fewer than two people live per square mile. Black vultures are already being released. Wild horses are already roaming. Iberian lynx are next.
At a glance
- Iberian highlands rewilding: The project covers 850,000 acres (2.1 million acres in the source’s metric original) of the southern Iberian Chain mountain range — more than five times the size of Greater London — stretching toward the Mediterranean.
- Wild horse reintroduction: Eleven semi-wild horses were released near Mazarete, with the first foal born in July 2022 C.E., and more releases planned — proof that breeding populations can establish quickly in abandoned farmland.
- Black vulture release: Up to 15 black vultures will be introduced each year, beginning with the first batch released at Alto Tajo in September 2022 C.E. Each bird carries a GPS transmitter so scientists can track their movements.
Why this landscape was chosen
The Iberian Highlands sit about two hours by car from Madrid and two and a half hours from Valencia — close enough to two of Europe’s largest cities to attract visitors, yet empty enough to function as a genuine wilderness. Since the 1950s C.E., populations in many villages here have more than halved as people moved to cities, and the land has quietly been returning to nature on its own.
Deer, ibex and wild boar have already come back without intervention. “There are less than around two people per square kilometre, which makes it very special because you can see nature in a different way,” said Pablo Schapira, team leader at Rewilding Spain. “It’s very rare to find these kinds of places in Europe.”
More than half of the landscape is already protected, mostly through the E.U.’s Natura 2000 network, which designates sites of high wildlife value. Three core zones — the Serranía de Cuenca, Alto Tajo and Montes Universales natural parks — anchor the effort.
The animals returning
The range of species involved is striking. A herd of “tauros” — cattle back-bred to fill the ecological role of the now-extinct aurochs — has already been released near Frías de Albarracín. Aurochs were the wild ancestors of domestic cattle, and their grazing behavior shaped European grasslands for millennia. Bringing that function back, even approximately, changes what the land can become.
Black vultures, one of the largest birds of prey on Earth with a wingspan of more than 10 feet, are being released at a rate of up to 15 per year at Alto Tajo. Bearded vultures — called quebrantahuesos, or bone-breakers, for their habit of dropping bones from great heights to split them open — are being encouraged to recolonize naturally through habitat improvements. The area already supports golden eagles, Egyptian vultures, griffon vultures and eagle owls.
Iberian lynx are expected to be released within one to two years, with three or four animals in the first group. Their recovery story is one of conservation’s genuine highlights: just 20 years ago, fewer than 100 remained, making them the world’s most endangered wild cats. A series of E.U.-funded breeding and reintroduction programs has since pushed their numbers above 1,000 across Spain and Portugal.
People and economics, not just wildlife
Rewilding projects fail when they ignore the communities living inside or near them. This one is explicitly designed around local benefit. David Thomas, director of the Endangered Landscapes Programme — which contributed $1.5 million to the effort — said the project “has potential to benefit both nature and people” by building the restoration process from the ground up with local organizations.
Nature-based tourism is a central goal. Schapira points out that the millions of city-dwellers within a two-hour drive represent an enormous potential audience for wilderness experiences that simply don’t exist near most European capitals. The project also aims to create incentives that protect old-growth forests currently being felled for biomass — offering landowners and communities an economic reason to leave trees standing.
The initiative has secured three years of initial funding, with an annual budget of between €800,000 and €900,000, and its organizers were seeking additional support at the time of launch. Conservationists had been working with local partners including Terra Naturalis, Asociación Nacional Micorriza and FIRE (the International Foundation for the Restoration of Ecosystems) since September 2019 C.E. to prepare the groundwork.
What this project still has to navigate
One notable absence from the reintroduction list is the Iberian wolf. Locals fear wolves will kill livestock, and the project has no plans to bring them back deliberately — though hunting pressure in the area is thought to be the main reason wolves haven’t naturally recolonized on their own. Balancing livestock-keeping traditions with large predator recovery remains one of the hardest problems in European rewilding, and this project hasn’t yet solved it.
The tension between economic pressures — mining, industrial forestry and hunting remain active interests in the region — and long-term ecological restoration will also require sustained political and financial will over the full 20-year horizon of the scheme. Three years of secured funding is a start, not a guarantee.
Still, the scale of what’s already underway is real. Horses are breeding. Vultures are flying. And a mountain range that quietly emptied over the 20th century is being asked to fill back up — this time, with something wilder.
Read more
For more on this story, see: The Guardian
For more from Good News for Humankind, see:
- Renewables now make up at least 49% of global power capacity
- Ghana expands marine protection at Cape Three Points
- The Good News for Humankind archive on wildlife conservation
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