A new framework that maps Europe’s climate-smart rewilding potential shows how different regions can contribute in distinct but complementary ways.
Across Europe, many landscapes show strong potential to move forward climate mitigation, climate adaptation, and biodiversity benefits, with low socio‑economic risk, according to an analysis using a new climate‑smart rewilding framework published in One Earth.
Climate-smart rewilding builds on the core ideas of rewilding – giving nature more space and restoring natural processes – but also includes interventions that consider climate benefits and benefits to communities, so-called ecosystem services.
Rather than identifying a single perfect region, the researchers from the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv), the Martin Luther University HalleWittenberg (MLU), and the EU Horizon project WildE noted regional strengths.
Eastern and southern Europe show the highest overall suitability with northern regions standing out for climate adaptation. Parts of eastern Europe offer high climate mitigation potential and western Europe is more constrained due to landscape fragmentation.
“Climate-smart rewilding brings together ecosystem restoration and climate mitigation – two urgent EU priorities that do not always progress at the same pace”, explains lead author Dr Gavin Stark of iDiv and MLU. “We wanted an approach that not only prioritises restoration but also delivers climate mitigation, climate adaptation, and benefits for people.”
For example, in some countries abandoned farmland may boost biodiversity and carbon storage as vegetation recovers – an ecosystem service – but also raises wildfire risk, highlighting how climate benefits can create ecological and management tradeoffs. A possible climate-smart rewilding intervention could be to manage vegetation through natural grazing by reintroduced or freeranging herbivores, or through controlled livestock grazing, both of which can reduce the buildup of dry biomass that fuels wildfires.
Bridging people, biodiversity, and the climate
It is no secret that carbon-first strategies can often sideline biodiversity progress and biodiversity interventions may be slower to deliver mitigation. For instance, fast-growing monoculture forests can store carbon more quickly than diverse forests, but they also support far fewer plant and animal species.
The climate-smart rewilding framework helps harmonise multiple objectives – noting where they naturally reinforce each other and where targeted interventions can allow for them to be pursued together, according to the authors.
Another example from the study identifies connectivity hotspots in the Baltic States, Finland, and parts of Sweden where restoring ecological corridors, that would allow animals to move more freely in response to climate change, support both biodiversity recovery and climate adaptation. However, careful planning is needed to balance these measures with agricultural, forestry, or regional development priorities.
“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. Climate-smart rewilding addresses multiple objectives together delivering more benefits for nature and people”, explains senior author Prof Dr Henrique Pereira of MLU and iDiv. “It helps practitioners and decisionmakers see which interventions could have the most impact when implemented in the right regions”. The authors note that the framework’s performance is always context dependent, requiring adjustments to the appropriate spatial scale and local conditions.
Read more about the Climate Smart Rewilding Framework and spatial outputs, they will soon be available on the Rewilding Knowledge Hub and in the EBV Data Portal. All data and code needed to reproduce the maps will also be available on Zenodo, enabling practitioners, researchers, policymakers, and land managers to explore regional opportunities, adapt the analyses to their own planning contexts, and apply the framework to other conservation and restoration questions.
Original publication
(Researchers with iDiv affiliation bolded)
Stark, G., Weissgerber, M., Fernández, N.,Quintero-Uribe, L. C., Giergiczny, M., Poulsen, N. R., Villar, N., Mols, B., Bakker, E. S., Smith, A. M., Winkel, G., Alagador, D., Rey-Benayas, J. M., Espelta, J. M., Selwyn, M., Brotons, L., Kluvankova, T., Brnkalakova, S., Kloibhofer, J., Prestele, R., Smith, H. G., Lázaro-González, A., Buitenwerf, R., Pearce, E. A., Svenning, J.-C., Santana, J., Beja, P., Moreira, F., Wunder, S., Svoboda, M., Vancura, V., Arneth, A., Hampe, A., & Pereira, H. M. (2026). Towards Climate-Smart Rewilding: An Integrated Framework for Biodiversity, Climate Change, and Society. One Earth. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2026.101704
Contact
Dr Gavin Stark
Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg
German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research Halle-Jena-Leipzig – iDiv
Telephone: +49 341 9739225
E-mail: gavin.stark@idiv.de
Christine Coester
Impact Unit
German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research Halle-Jena-Leipzig – iDiv
Telephone: +49 341 97 33197
E-Mail: christine.coester@idiv.de