On April 22, 2023, the Polish NGO “Friends of the Ina and Gowienica Rivers” initiated a successful action to collect trash on the banks of the Ina River. This was the second time that a trash collection action was held on the riverbanks, which was coordinated and carried out by the Rewilding Oder Delta team. Notably, this year’s riverbank cleaning was scheduled to coincide with a significant event: Earth Day 2023. On this date, public actions are held worldwide to draw attention to the state of the environment and our landscapes.

For many years, the partner organisation Society of Friends of the Ina and Gowienica Rivers (TPRIiG) has been organising symbolic river clean-up events in the Oder Delta. Thanks to strong community involvement and support from other regional organisations and institutions, hundreds of bags of rubbish, which had lain on the banks and in the riverbeds, were collected.

Two juvenile Eurasian lynx – a one year-old female and a one-year old male – have been released into a natural forest area in Western Pomerania, north-western Poland, as part of a long-term reintroduction initiative. In February, a collaboration between the West Pomeranian Nature Society (ZTP) and Rewilding Oder Delta (ROD) saw three animals transported from a German animal park near Hamburg to Dzika Zagroda enclosure facility near Mirosławiec in Poland.

Nature and wildlife are the subject of many interests, from the state nature conservation and forestry administration to landowners and land users such as farmers and hunters, to conservation organisations and local people who love and want to preserve their environs. To find a consensus between the different concerns and to protect landscapes and wildlife together, cooperation between all stakeholders is crucial.  

European rivers have the highest fragmentation in the world, with only one-third in a ‘good ecological condition’. Similarly, rivers in the Oder Delta have also suffered from human intervention and have lost their natural character many a place. As the current dramatic situation on the Oder River shows, our rivers are under constant pression and their resilience is limited. Together with partners, we are therefore working on rewilding the watercourses in our region and welcome the support by the European Open Rivers Programme, a grant giving organisation dedicated to restoring rivers.

Joint press release of the “Action Alliance Living Oder” I Bund für Umwelt- und Naturschutz (BUND), WWF Deutschland, Deutsche Umwelthilfe (DUH), Deutscher Naturschutzring (DNR), Rewilding Oder Delta (ROD), Naturschutzbund Deutschland (NABU), EuroNatur, Heinz Sielmann Stiftung, Michael Succow Stiftung, Verein der Freunde des Deutsch-Polnischen Europa-Nationalparks Unteres Odertal

World Rewilding Day is about celebrating rewilding and inspiring people and organisations across the globe to become involved in nature recovery. Rewilding Oder Delta joins this year’s event and calls for the scaling up of rewilding as a nature-based climate solution.

The research project “REWILD_DE – Conservation of biodiversity and valorisation of ecosystem services through rewilding – learning from the Oder Delta”, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), started in November 2021. Scientists and practitioners are working together to explore the potential of rewilding for the restoration of biodiversity and the promotion of nature-based economic development in the model area of the Oder Delta in western Pomerania (north-eastern Germany). Furthermore, they will investigate to what extent the experiences and results gained during the project can be transferred beyond the project area and serve as a model for other regions. The project is coordinated at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ) with project 3 partners: the German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) / Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU), the Eberswalde University for Sustainable Development (HNEE) and the association Rewilding Oder Delta (ROD), a practitioner in the study area. 

On 23 September 2021, the second part of the German-Polish exchange between stakeholders from nature conservation, agriculture, forestry and science took place in Rothenklempenow in the Ueckermünde Heath. The meeting was organised by us within the framework of the Interreg Va project “Wildes (er)leben am Haff” (English: Wild life at the Lagoon) in order to showcase the long-standing experiences of the actors in our cross-border region and also to discuss wishes, concerns and ideas for the future of the area.