Researchers at the German Center for Integrative Biodiversity Research have mapped a path forward that refuses to pit climate action against nature recovery—two of Europe's most urgent priorities that have long seemed to pull in different directions.
A new climate-smart rewilding framework, published in One Earth by scientists from iDiv, Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, and the EU Horizon project WildE, identifies European landscapes where ecological restoration, climate mitigation, climate adaptation, and community wellbeing can advance together. The analysis reveals that many regions across the continent hold this untapped potential, with low socioeconomic risk—a finding that reshapes how policymakers and land managers can think about their restoration priorities.
The researchers, led by Dr. Gavin Stark, didn't search for a single perfect region to serve as a model. Instead, they identified regional strengths that reflect the continent's diverse geography and challenges. Eastern and southern Europe show the highest overall suitability for climate-smart rewilding interventions, while northern regions stand out particularly for climate adaptation benefits. Eastern Europe offers high climate mitigation potential, and though western Europe faces more constraints due to landscape fragmentation, opportunities still exist when approached strategically.
The framework tackles a genuine tension in contemporary conservation: fast-growing monoculture forests store carbon quickly, but they support far fewer plant and animal species than diverse, mixed forests. Similarly, abandoned farmland can boost biodiversity and carbon storage as vegetation naturally recovers, yet it may simultaneously increase wildfire risk—creating a trade-off that demands thoughtful management rather than hands-off rewilding.
One concrete solution emerging from the research involves managing vegetation through natural grazing by reintroduced or free-ranging herbivores, or through controlled livestock grazing. Both approaches reduce the dangerous buildup of dry biomass that fuels wildfires, thereby addressing the climate adaptation challenge while supporting ecological restoration. In the Baltic States, Finland, and parts of Sweden, the framework identifies connectivity hotspots where restoring ecological corridors would allow animals to move more freely in response to climate change, simultaneously supporting biodiversity recovery and climate resilience.
What sets this framework apart is its refusal to accept the single-objective restoration approaches that have often dominated conservation work—focusing narrowly on either climate or biodiversity to the exclusion of broader social and ecological goals. Prof. Dr. Henrique Pereira, a senior author, emphasizes that climate-smart rewilding "moves beyond single goal ecological restoration approaches that focus either in climate change or biodiversity change alone, and therefore often have undesirable side effects." By addressing multiple objectives together, the framework delivers more benefits for both nature and people.
The researchers acknowledge that implementation is never one-size-fits-all. The framework's performance depends on context, requiring adjustments to local conditions and appropriate spatial scales. That's why they've made the data widely accessible: the framework and spatial outputs are available through the WildE website, the WildE Knowledge Hub, and the EBV Data Portal. All underlying data and code needed to reproduce the maps will also be available on Zenodo, enabling practitioners, researchers, policymakers, and land managers across Europe to explore regional opportunities, adapt the analyses to their own planning contexts, and apply the framework beyond climate and biodiversity questions.
In a moment when ecological urgency demands rapid action, this framework offers something rarer: a systematic way to move faster on multiple fronts simultaneously.