Europe’s Biggest Rewilding Bet Brings Wildlife Back

France launched its largest rewilding landscape in 2025 in the Dauphiné Alps, aiming to rebuild resilient mountain ecosystems by helping key wildlife return and thrive with minimal human intervention.

“We’re not starting from scratch,” said Olivier Raynaud, project lead for Rewilding France in the Dauphiné Alps.

The new site is Rewilding Europe’s 11th landscape. It builds on decades of natural forest regrowth and earlier wildlife recoveries, including the return of roe deer, marmots, beavers, and wolves since the 1990s. The project now focuses on strengthening populations of herbivores and predators, such as alpine ibex, wild horses, lynx, wolves and four vulture species, while restoring river flows to reduce flooding and protect drinking-water supplies. With roughly 60% of the range forested and much of it privately owned, success depends on partnerships with landowners, practical tools such as fencing and guard dogs when livestock is at risk, and nature-based local incomes from wildlife tourism, sustainable timber, and other rural enterprises.