Rewilding our World

Restoring Italy’s Wild Heart

Restoring Italy’s Wild Heart– a mini-documentary about the people, wildlife and stunning landscapes behind our Nature and Carbon Corridors Project in the Apennines.

Rewilding Apennines: Come and join us in 2024

Watch Rewilding Apennines’ Valerio Reale explain how our funding for rewilding helps acquire land for wildlife corridors.

Created with the support of local farmers and communities, these corridors aim to allow nature to thrive and enable the region’s endangered Marsican Brown Bear and other wild animals to roam freely.

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“Working with Exodus Travels is hugely important for us to scale up our local rewilding impact on the ground. Our partnership not only helps to address climate change, but also boosts biodiversity, helps raise awareness of how animals and people can co-exist in a sensitive area and it provides wide-ranging benefits for local people.”

Valerio Reale – Head of Enterprise at Rewilding Apennines

What is rewilding, and why is it important?

The world is packed with an almost unimaginable abundance of flora and fauna, but with decades of deforestation, farming, and industrialisation, our planet’s most beautifully biodiverse regions are significantly at risk of disappearing unless we start to increase our conservation efforts and create more wild spaces. When there are more trees, more meadows and more wetlands, we will start to see more wildlife!   

The process of rewilding helps to restore nature’s ecosystems and biodiversity for wildlife to return and thrive.  This approach also helps to combat climate change by increasing the land’s ability to absorb carbon and recognises the important part that people play as stewards of the land.    

Rewilding helps to restore and protect our planet’s ecosystems and biodiversity, which in turn plays a vital role in tackling climate change. Healthy natural ecosystems – like diverse forests, wetlands and grasslands, help provide highly effective carbon sinks, removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. However, when we diminish or degrade these ecosystems, for example, through deforestation, farming and industrialisation, we not only lose these carbon sinks, but any stored carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere. In turn, this contributes to a rise in our global temperature – leading to melting icecaps, rising sea levels and the further destruction of our biodiverse regions. We need to help find ways of working with nature instead of against it.   

Who are Rewilding Apennines? 

Rewilding Apennines is a non-profit organisation (NGO) based in central Italy. The Central Apennines features peaks reaching nearly 3,000 meters, grasslands, deep canyons and some of Europe’s oldest beech forests. It is a biodiversity hotspot and also home to the endangered Marsican brown bear as well as the grey wolf, Apennine chamois, red deer, golden eagle, Griffon vulture and a number of other species.     

The organisation works to support natural processes such as forest regeneration and free flowing rivers and it acts to remove invasive species and reintroduce native species to diversify environments.  To help people and wild animals coexist, they have also established a number of coexistence corridors to connect the local economy with nature. In some areas, they’ve also initiated ‘bear smart communities’ – a model that encourages cooperation and solutions that aim to reduce human/wildlife conflict.   

With their extensive knowledge and unrivalled expertise in the areas of biodiversity and wildlife protection, the team also pursue rewilding as an effective climate solution which helps to increase climate resilience, provide an effective carbon sink, and counteract the emerging environmental threats created by rural land-abandonment. Working collaboratively and building good relationships with local communities, National Park staff, landowners, and regional governments, this forward-thinking NGO is leading the way in the conservation movement across the wild heart of Italy.   

How can you experience the beautiful, wild Apennines?

Another way Exodus is helping to support Rewilding Europe’s cause is with our trip, Italian Apennines: Walks & Wildlife. This trip not only allows travellers to see the beneficial impact of rewilding and building wildlife corridors first-hand, but it also allows us to engage local communities in the rewilding and conservation of these landscapes by developing ‘nature-based’ economic and employment opportunities through tourism. 

All profits from the sale of this trip go to Rewilding Apennines’ vital work, and as with all of our trips, 100 square metres of land will be rewilded for each passenger who travels. Click here to find out more about this trip. 

Photography credits to Bruno D’Amicis & Angela Tavone / Rewilding Europe