Rewilding Spain
Fundación Española de Renaturalización (Rewilding Spain) is the leading non-governmental organization dedicated to rewilding in Spain. It is a foundation legally established in 2021, whose founding purpose is to promote the recovery of nature and wildlife in Spain, based on natural processes and for the benefit of society.
The organization is an active member of the Rewilding Europe network, to which it contributes particularly through the Iberian Highlands Landscape, the largest rewilding initiative in S Europe. This initiative has allowed the organization to gain significant experience in managing a large restoration landscape, through an enthusiastic team of 24 people and collaboration with multiple entities, and this experience can be highly valuable for managing new rewilding initiatives.
Private estates, a huge opportunity for rewilding in Spain
In 2025, Rewilding Spain launched a new program for rewilding estates, aimed at harnessing the great potential that exists in Spain to rewild private estates and public forests in need of a reorientation of their goals and management.
Our approach to rewilding a property is formalized in a “Rewilding Action Plan.” This plan includes an inventory of the property’s natural processes, identifies those altered by human activity, and outlines specific actions to restore their functionality. This may include the recovery of keystone species (large herbivores, scavengers, etc.), the restoration of the controlled role of fire in the ecosystem, the removal of fences or obstacles to the free flow of water, or the protection of stands of old-growth forest.
To this end, templates for property rewilding plans, monitoring programs, and a estate-scale business model have already been developed and are being implemented on some pilot estates.
In the mid-term, we plan to establish a network of estates to promote experience exchange, demonstrate the value of business models based on rewilding and develop a portfolio of case studies showing the application of rewilding in different contexts.
We aim to demonstrate the benefits of a wilder nature by rewilding a variety of Spanish landscapes, while also inspiring and enabling others to become involved in rewilding based on our experience.
Building on Fernando Morán’s legacy
Fernando Morán started the path of working with estates owners to restore large herbivores like wisent and wild horse.
Now we must honour his memory and face the challenge of bringing back key natural processes and keystone species, benefiting new rewilding areas based on large estates.
A call to action
Help us build a portfolio of large rewilded estates that can deliver direct benefits to biodiversity and landscape resilience, while creating a business model that can inspire multiple landowners and start a “rewilding fashion” in Spain.
Your support can make a difference to make possible this challenge. We are already working in four pilot estates and evaluating more than 10 other candidate properties in seven Spanish regions.
