Celebrating 10 years of wild hope

Since we began in 2015 as a start-up charity, we’ve helped turn rewilding from a niche idea into a household concept. Not only did we encourage the popular radio drama The Archers to include it as a major storyline, but our rewilding garden featuring a beaver inspired landscape, complete with a dam made of beaver-gnawed sticks, won Best in Show at the 2022 RHS Chelsea Flower Show – and caused quite a stir. Today, 83% of the British public support rewilding, showed our most recent polling. Reframing the public narrative like this, and normalising rewilding, will be absolutely crucial to its success.

What was once an experimental form of land management carried out by a handful of forward-thinking conservationists in the 1990s has now blossomed into a resilient rewilding movement that’s taking practical and political action. Our Rewilding Network supports more than a thousand practitioners in making rewilding a reality, from the forward-thinking Knepp Estate to the ambitious Community of Arran Seabed Trust initiative. We’ve mobilised hundreds of thousands of people across Britain to stand up for change and demand that the government prioritises nature, through marches, protests, petitions and more. That’s an incredible springboard for us to build an even stronger rewilding movement together.

Take a look at Britain from the sky and you’ll now see a rich mosaic of habitats emerging, which are so different to even 10 years ago. From diverse wood pasture and flourishing peatlands to wildlife-rich scrub and expanding seagrass meadows, these are ecosystems working as they should – locking away carbon, easing drought, cleaning water and air, restoring wildlife and boosting our wellbeing. In our Rewilding Network alone, over 206,500 hectares of land and 1,000km² of sea are being transformed – and the numbers grow each year. We’re only just beginning to tap into rewilding’s full potential, but our mission is to see it flourish across at least 30% of Britain’s land and seas by 2030.

Thanks to the UK’s first dedicated rewilding funding stream – our Rewilding Innovation and Challenge Funds – vital but often overlooked innovations are finally getting the support they need. We’ve backed over 70 progressive projects with £1.1 million, enabling real progress on the ground. From trialling cutting-edge methods to monitor carbon absorption at rewilding sites to establishing outdoor education programmes that benefit young people, these projects are pushing boundaries. Many have since unlocked further funding, showing the power of seed investment. We’re excited to see practitioners sharing insights – a crucial step in turning bold rewilding ideas into mainstream practice.

Ten years ago, it was hard to imagine that by 2025 we’d see storks over Sussex, pine martens in Bannau Brycheiniog, wildcats in the Cairngorms, bison in Kent and beavers in London. Their return is no accident. It’s thanks to bold rewilders trying new approaches, and tireless campaigning by charities like Rewilding Britain, driving vital policy breakthroughs. That’s why we’re funding more projects to explore how and where missing species like elk and lynx could return – so they too can help restore ecosystems and make Britain feel truly wild once more.

It’s not just species and ecosystems who’ve felt the benefit of increased rewilding, it’s people too. We’ve been ringing the changes, working closely with rewilding practitioners across Britain to measure increases in new employment opportunities at their sites. By 2024, projects led by members in Scotland had seen a fivefold increase in jobs since rewilding began, and in England and Wales they’d doubled [1]. With many rewilding sites now offering nature-based tourism, from dawn chorus experiences at Wild Ken Hill to beaver-watching at Bamff, as well as youth engagement programmes, the positive impacts of rewilding on people’s health, wellbeing – and livelihoods – are only set to grow.

Over the past decade, we’ve campaigned, advocated, and led ground-breaking research to ensure rewilding is recognised by UK and devolved governments as a vital solution to the crises of nature loss and climate change. Today in 2025, rewilding and nature-based solutions have moved from the political fringes into key government policies, including the UK’s 25 Year Environment Plan, Wales’s 30by30 targets and frameworks, as well as England’s Environmental Land Management scheme (ELMs) and Scotland’s agricultural legislation, which both include funding streams to restore natural processes. Through our Rewilding Manifesto and by bringing politicians face-to-face with thriving landscapes, we’re determined to embed rewilding in national policy and unlock its full potential.

Our bold public campaigning and behind-the-scenes advocacy have helped unlock major funding for rewilding across Britain. A government minister confirmed that the parliamentary debate we triggered with our 100,000+ signature petition in 2019 directly influenced the announcement of the £640 million Nature for Climate Fund. Since then, we’ve championed large-scale rewilding through ELMs – now the key public funding stream in England for nature recovery, and we’re advocating for rewilding in funding schemes in Scotland and Wales. But we’re not stopping there; we’re working with a cross-sector coalition to shape new private investment models that can scale up rewilding at the pace the nature and climate emergencies demand.

Anyone who’s been lucky enough to visit a rewilding site knows it feels different – alive with wildlife, rich in new sights, sounds, and smells. The politicians we take to experience it firsthand can see it too. But we’re going further, because we know that demonstrating rewilding’s impact credibly is vital for shaping policy, unlocking funding, and building public support. That’s why we’ve been supporting projects in gathering robust data, from funding advanced methods of measuring biodiversity abundance to working out new ways of evaluating community wellbeing. Now, we’re launching a groundbreaking monitoring framework – a crucial step toward proving rewilding’s true ecological, social, and economic value.

Coastal rewilders are breathing life back into Britain’s oceans, from restoring native oysters to expanding seagrass meadows. Through our Rewilding Network and funding, we’re privileged to understand in depth the government action that will make a difference to their efforts. This year, we were proud to stand before the UK Parliament’s Environmental Audit Committee, demanding on their behalf a ban on bottom trawling in Marine Protected Areas. Our demand was cited in the Committee’s recommendation, shaping the UK Government’s pledge to end this destructive practice in England’s offshore MPAs. The journey is far from over, but together, we are turning the tide for our seas.