Images of a majestic bison, cuddling salmon and a sturgeon swimming free all highly commended.
The winners of the Rewilding Europe Award, part of the prestigious GDT European Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition, have been announced.
The annual award celebrates powerful imagery that showcases the revival of Europe’s wild nature through rewilding.
This year’s top prize has gone to Staffan Widstrand for his image ‘Iberian lynx’, which depicts the resurgence of one of Europe’s most iconic predators in its natural habitat, and highlights the importance of predator-prey dynamics in rewilding.
We take a look at this year’s winning photos – and the stories behind the shots.
Rewilding Europe Award 2024 winners
After decades, the breeding programme for the European sea sturgeon (Acipenser sturio) is showing the first signs of success with offspring being released into the river Rhine.
The reintroductionof such endangered, yet formerly widespread, fish species gives us hope. Why else should we preserve these animals if not in the hope that our rivers will once again become home to locally extinct fish species?
A pair of huchen (Hucho hucho), also known as Danube salmon, swim above a spawning pit dug by the female in the streambed. That huchen make it this far in their life cycle cannot be taken for granted. Being able to migrate to their spawning grounds requires barrier-free access. Insurmountable weirs are only one of the many challenges facing the fish. Sections of river that are left wild as here on the Pielach in Austria are essential.
This photograph shows one of the numerous European bisons (Bison bonasus) reintroduced to Poland’s Bialowieza National Park near the border with Belarus. In 1927, the last free-living bison in the Caucasus was shot and the species was considered extinct inthe wild in Europe. With the help of a small group of animals from zoological gardens and private owners, the European bison was saved from extinction. As of 2023, around 7,200 individuals exist in Europe. However, habitat fragmentation and low genetic diversity continue to pose challenges to the survival of this species.
A marine biologist from Project Seagrass collects seagrass (Zostera marina) seeds in Porthdinllaen, North Wales, as part of the initiative Seagrass Ocean Rescue in partnership with WWF-UK and Sky Ocean Rescue. The samples are then sent to Swansea University for propagation and transferred to the Dale coast in Pembrokeshire as part of the UK’s largest seagrass reintroduction initiative with the aim of establishing one million plants.
Around the world, seagrass meadows have been lost due to human impact –including water pollution, shipping and climate change –and it is essential that action be taken now to safeguard this important habitat for the future. Seagrass, one of a small number of marine flowering plant species, plays an extremely important role in marine ecosystems as it absorbs large amounts of carbon from the atmosphere and is both habitat and nursery for diverse marine animals, including endangered (e.g., seahorses) and commercially important (e.g., cod and saithe) species.
The photograph shows an Iberian lynx (Lynx pardinus) with a freshly caught European rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus) in the Spanish Sierra de Andújar. The Iberian lynx joins a small number of species making a comeback in recent years. From a low of around 96 individuals worldwide (restricted to Spain), the population has grown to at least 2000 and expanded to Portugal.
Strict hunting regulations, a captive breeding programme, reintroductions, and promotion of large rabbit populations have all contributed to the lynx’s comeback. Wildlife crossings, particularly in the form of tunnels under roads, have significantly reduced traffic-related kills. This individual was photographed from a hide on a private estate on which lynx represent a business asset that secures jobs and income.