Image Credit: Shazzashaw from Getty Images Signature
Meeting Summary – June 25, 2024
The Global Rewilding Communicators Network, an initiative by the Global Rewilding Alliance, aims to connect communicators active in the rewilding movement from all around the world. Our goal is to unite people across the movement, share best practices, highlight upcoming events, celebrate successes, and foster connections to better support one another.
Thank you to everyone who joined us live on June 25, 2024, joining over 40 key rewilding communicators from a wide variety of organisations across the world. The desire to connect and collaborate is palpable, and we certainly came away uplifted after sharing the collective enthusiasm to be a part of this growing movement.
For those that missed the call, and those interested in the work that is happening ‘behind the scenes’, we summarise the main takeaways in this article. There is a lot to get stuck into!
Photo credit: Real Window Media
Celebrating Rewilding Success
While it is tempting to rush on to the next thing after achieving milestones, we believe it is important to take a moment to celebrate our many collective successes and stories. This builds our sense of ‘hope into action’ that then acts as a stable foundation for the next steps.
The network shared some incredible news and success stories worldwide – to name only a few:
- A herd of European Bison in Romania are drawing down vast amounts of carbon, and this story reached over 700 million people in just the first few days.
- The recent 2-day ‘Rewilding Hope: Land to Sea’ online conference gathered an array of inspirational rewilders to share their successes, challenges and ambitions. Get involved: access the recording and our team’s thoughts.
- Rewilding Ukraine have brought hope with initiatives like the return of 6 rewilding buffalo, offering optimism in challenging times.
- In India, the Edhkwehlynawd Botanical Reserve is restoring the ancient Shola-grassland montane ecosystems, converting tea gardens to native grasslands using indigenous knowledge.
- Rewilding America Now have recently released 225 wild horses.
- Rewilding Britain’s report has highlighted that rewilding sites across the UK have seen a 400% increase in jobs since 2008.
- Partners in Sweden are actively protecting its five large carnivores, in the teeth of unfriendly policy headwinds from the current Swedish government. 70% of Swedes want healthy populations of predators in their landscapes
- Rewilding South Africa are celebrating the quarterly release of their species- and ecosystem- packed magazine.
- The Scottish Rewilding Alliance celebrates Black Grouse numbers that are improving across 12 sites in the Beauly area.
- Nattergal showcased the net carbon rewilding report, revealing higher than anticipated results.
- Celebrating 35 years of rewilding, ARK Rewilding Nederland have published book and are growing a network of young rewilders.
- The Blue Alliance held a webinar on ‘Tourism as a Catalyst for Coastal Community Regeneration’.
- American Prairie are rewilding nearly one thousand bison in the USA.
- The Wildwood Trust is celebrating the second reintroduction of the Chough native bird species to Kent this summer.
Beyond this group, success stories keep pouring in, like the 7 Przewalski’s horses returning to their native steppe grassland ecosystem in Kazakhstan with the help from the team at Altyn Dala Conservation Initiative. Species once declared extinct are making a comeback.
This is the power of rewilding!
Upcoming Events
You are part of an active movement, which means there are many events, media stories, announcements, or campaigns happening all throughout the year. How do we best share in each others’ achievements, harness the power of being part of a global alliance and make the most of network effects?
One of the main focuses for our recent call was to create a Forward Calendar for the year.
By creating a shared Forward Calendar, our goal is to make it easy to support each other’s initiatives. We’ve noticed that some stories, campaigns and posts really take off, and this most often happens when they receive a lot of support early on, such as likes, reposts and comments on social media. This is especially important when we are trying to influence the various algorithms.
On the call, we did a first-round of sharing our big, upcoming events and celebrations. Our team is pulling them all together so that soon you will be able to mark your calendar! Watch out for the first edition coming soon.
Photo credit: John Morrison from Getty Images Signature
Communication Topics To Explore Together
We aim to provide value from these meetings and explore how we can better our communications when talking about rewilding. There is a lot we can learn from each other; our Alliance convenes many different organisations with a diverse set of skills. Learning from each other’s mistakes and successes can really help the movement as a whole.
Our next meeting will be about how to communicate rewilding to diverse audiences, making rewilding accessible and engaging.
Here is a product of brainstorming possible future topics together:
- Motivating the corporate world to participate in rewilding.
- How to make challenges less depressing.
- Training on creating short films.
- Developing fact sheets about climate and rewilding.
- Sharing communication top tips on social media.
- Linking rewilding to Net Zero and climate change – using rewilding as a means of achieving carbon sequestration.
- Active hope with Joanna Macy and Britt Wray, focusing on hope, rewilding, and climate anxiety.
- Workshop issues raised in rewilding films to enhance impact and gather feedback to feed a constant learning process.
- As a movement, how to push boundaries without alienating others.
- Free-market conservation, with insights from American Prairie. This links to another requested topic of communicating rewilding to the political right.
- Building movements, as shared by Rewilding Britain.
- Sharing each of our communications styles. For instance, using humour in communications.
- A-Z rewilding: a collection of language that is successful in inspiring people for action.
- Attracting funders, advertisers, and partners outside our circles.
- Training on behaviour change techniques using positive social norms and the COM-B model.
- Learning about Climate Psychology to address climate anxiety – how do we go towards our collective crises without unduly re-traumatizing people?
- Changing the ‘business as usual’ mindset with communications.
- How do we convert ideas and words into actions?
We want to hear from you! If you have a topic that you feel particularly passionate about, have gained experience in, and want to share with the movement, please get in touch with us. We will create a flow of topics for future meetings.
These meetings create an opportunity for each and every one of us to lead and share insights as well as learn from the collective wisdom!
Photo credit: Shakhawat Shaon from Pexels
Mark Your Calendar
The Global Rewilding Communicators Network will meet every couple of months. Next one will be: 5th September (Thursday), provisionally at 8am UK, 9am CEST, 12:30pm IST, 5pm ACT.
Topic: how to communicate rewilding to diverse audiences, making rewilding accessible and engaging. More on this soon…
Your feedback
One of the many reasons why we love these meetings is the feeling that everyone involved enjoys them, and goes away from the hour feeling inspired and energised. Here is some of your collective feedback from the last one…
“This is a meeting I want to be a part of, very inspiring, and ideas are already spinning,” shared one participant.
“Really riveting meeting for me – SO much going on out there already adds to HOPE!” added another, with someone else agreeing, “Very glad to be meeting so many other rewilders and hearing these stories – thank you”
There were plenty of compliments for each others’ work going around, one saying that they, “Just watched ‘Why not Scotland?’ amazing! – we need more of this type of content in schools and public places…”
One participant had to jump off early to capture some photos of their new Arctic Fox pups – so from now on we will only accept such an amazing excuse!
Photo credit: Venemama from Getty Images
Stay Connected
Lastly, a call to action for you all. If there were three things to do, we would recommend connecting with us on socials, and then watching these two videos:
- How to turn climate anxiety into action – a Ted Talk by Renee Lertzman
- Local Climate Solutions: Biodiversity & Forest Conservation in the Sierra Gorda
To make sure to stay updated on success stories and calendar updates, follow the Global Rewilding Alliance on social media – you can find us on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, and X. If you haven’t yet, we will make sure to follow you back and share your updates when we can!
Together, we can amplify the rewilding movement and create a positive impact on our planet.
Thank you for your inspiring energy. We couldn’t be more proud to be a part of this growing movement.