My 2024 rewilding year

There are many highlights, and most of those are because of you, yes YOU, the countless amazing people fervently engaged in nature recovery efforts around the world. It's been both genuinely humbling and supremely inspiring to see what you do with relentless passion and unceasing stamina. The natural world is, today, in a better place because of you.

My 2024 has given me numerous blessings. For one, I got to head off into the early retirement sunset ...

... and that in turn gave me the time to focus all the more on rewilding, and creating the Rewilder Weekly newsletter. This started out as an experiment in April, with my expectation that maybe a few hundred people would eventually subscribe. Well, more than 30 editions later, the Rewilder Weekly has over 4'000 subscribers - thank YOU.

A constant rush of rewilding hope

Curating the Rewilder Weekly editions has meant (and continues to mean) scouring the world wild webs for rewilding stories. Invariably I get to discover more people and more places and more projects where nature recovery takes precedence to profit at all costs. In the first 31 editions of the Rewilder Weekly I've covered over 200 stories, rewilding efforts from across the globe, from Finland to Portugal, from the Ukraine to Italy, and from the UK to the US and Asia. With everything I see happening, I also see the challenges, and I also see the financial need to ramp up and scale to new heights. We're far from where we need to be - but we're a lot further than we were - again, thanks to YOU.

In addition to your stories, I've also shared my own. I don't even want to contemplate the number of posts written over the course of this year - must be a ridiculous amount. But occasionally I also take the time to go a bit deeper with articles. Invariably, as I research more, I learn more. What I chose to write about ranges wide and far - whatever grabs my attention. If you're up for a few excursions - here is a selection of 12 articles I wrote in 2024:

1) A way to gauge how disconnected we are from nature

2) A closer look at the horrors of pangolin trafficking

3) A book review about a hopeful professor's latest work

4) Do you know where the term 'rewilding' comes from?

5) The term 'conservation' is no longer fit for purpose

6) Is bringing back extinct animals really a good idea?

7) A wild idea to change transhumance in the Alps

8) How on Earth are grouse shooting estates still a thing?

9) A very different way of thinking about the wolf

10) How those in charge of protecting nature made the beaver disappear

11) Downsizing meat and dairy industries would change it all

12) And finally, a very personal post about a long-distance hike

I've written more, of course (among the many things also a next novel - if you want to read it, don't feel you need to buy it. Just let me know and I'll gladly send you the manuscript in pdf form). Plans for next year? Writing, writing and more writing, of course! And a lot of that will be rewilding-focused, as you might imagine (got an idea for a book and, who knows, I may just get it started in the new year!).

That's it for this year (but no worries, the Rewilder Weekly will come your way as usual this coming Tuesday). Greatly looking forward to a 2025 that'll hopefully see rewilding taking another leap forward (30x30 is just 5 years away, after all!). So please keep on doing what you're doing and know that your rewilding efforts don't just restore nature's land and seascapes - and they don't just bring back rich biodiversity in both flora and fauna - they also give hope and lift hearts and spirits of people near and far you. And so let me end by simply saying

Happy holidays to you and your loved ones and thank you for being you.