REWILDING EUROPE AWARD

EUROPEAN WILDLIFE PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR

Special prize in Cooperation with Rewilding Europe

Let's make Europe a wilder place! In cooperation with the renowned environmental initiative Rewilding Europe (www.rewildingeurope.com), a special new prize has been offered since 2022: the Rewilding Europe Award.

The aim of the GDT European Wildlife Photographer of the Year (GDT EWPY) competition has always been to showcase the finest nature photography from Europe and around the world. This allows us to promote the idea of nature conservation through the work of some of the best wildlife photographers around.
Impactful, high quality nature photos are also a cornerstone of Rewilding Europe's communications. In this context, our cooperation offers an excellent opportunity to promote Europe's wild nature and engage a large and diverse audience.

The concept of Rewilding is about allowing nature space and time to restore itself. By creating the right conditions for natural processes, nature itself can shape and revitalise landscapes. This includes the unrestricted flow of rivers, natural regeneration of forests, unimpaired food webs with their diverse predator-prey interactions, creation of open landscapes as a result of grazing by large herbivores and much more.

Rewilding can help to mitigate the scale and impact of global warming, safeguard and enhance biodiversity, and create new sources of sustainable, long-term revenue for businesses and communities. In addition, it offers a whole range of other benefits that are essential for human existence, such as clean air, fertile soil and uncontaminated drinking water.

Frans Schepers, Executive Director and co-founder of Rewilding Europe: “Rewilding breathes life back into our landscapes. It helps us reconnect with the wonders of Europe’s spectacular wild nature. Rewilding is our best hope for a future where people and nature not only co-exist but flourish.”

The huge potential of wild nature as a force to create something good gives us all hope for a greener, better future. Rewilding Europe therefore invites photographers to use their cameras to capture the essence of Rewilding, the mechanisms behind it and the benefits
it offers to people and the planet.

The photographs in this category should show one or more of the essential elements of Rewilding:

• the course and/or restoration of natural processes such as forest regeneration, dynamics of unobstructed watercourses, etc.
• the influence of wildlife on the landscape, e.g. impact of beavers on water dynamics or influence of large herbivores on vegetation and thus the landscape
• the return of wild animals as flagship species of rewilding to their original habitats in Europe (e.g. wolf, lynx, bear, bison, black stork, sturgeon, salmon, bearded vulture)
• predator-prey interactions as part of complete food webs
• examples of coexistence between humans and wildlife
• people actively involved in Rewilding, e.g. reintroduction of species, monitoring or regeneration of obstructed watercourses