For many years, the story of nature in Europe has been framed in terms of decline. Across the continent, landscapes have been reshaped by intensive land use, rivers have been straightened and confined, wetlands drained, and natural habitats broken into smaller and more isolated fragments. At sea, warming waters have placed additional pressure on ecosystems that were already under strain from overfishing and pollution.
These trends are well understood. What has been less clear is what it takes to reverse them at scale, in ways that last.
In 2018, the Endangered Landscapes & Seascapes Programme was established to help reverse these trends. Backed by Arcadia, it was built around an ambitious approach from the outset: restoring ecosystems across whole landscapes and seascapes, grounded in science and shaped in partnership with the people who depend on them.
The first projects began in 2019, across seven very different places in Europe. Each began in a different context, shaped by past land use, changing economies and the pressures that have driven ecological decline. Together, they are now showing how large-scale restoration can work in practice.
What restoration looks like
More than five years on, these projects are showing what large-scale restoration can achieve.
Across these landscapes and seascapes, the shift from ecosystem degradation to nature recovery is beginning to take form in different ways. In the Scottish Highlands, partners are reducing the number of grazing deer to create the conditions for native woodland to expand, while restoring peatlands and reconnecting rivers with their floodplains. In Romania’s Făgăraș Mountains, European bison and beaver have been reintroduced to help restore ecological processes across forests and waterways.
In Ukraine, Romania and Moldova, the Danube Delta project team is reopening channels and removing barriers so water can move more freely again, helping to restore the seasonal rhythms that sustain wetlands and fisheries. In Ukrainian Polesia, partners are expanding and strengthening protected areas across one of Europe’s largest wetland regions, helping to safeguard ecological connectivity at scale.
Along the Mediterranean coast of Türkiye, no-fishing zones developed with fishing cooperatives and supported by regular patrols are reducing pressure on marine ecosystems, with fish populations increasing and species such as sandbar sharks and Mediterranean monk seals returning to the area.
In Georgia’s Iori River Valley, restoration is being carried out in partnership with pastoralists, reshaping grazing patterns through rotational systems and improved water management. By easing pressure on sensitive areas, this approach is allowing steppe and floodplain habitats to recover. In Portugal’s Greater Côa Valley, the reintroduction of large herbivores is helping to restructure vegetation and reduce the build-up of fuel that can drive wildfires.
These changes are often slow, and they do not advance in a straight line. But they are increasingly visible. Water moves differently through restored wetlands. Young trees establish where they once could not. Fish stocks respond where pressure has been reduced. In each case, the shift is not about a single outcome or endpoint, but about changing the trajectory of land use, habitat management, local economies, and nature’s recovery.
Evidence over assumption
Understanding those changes has been central to the Programme from the beginning. Each project was designed with monitoring in place from the outset, tracking ecological, social and economic indicators over time. This has created a growing body of evidence showing how systems respond once pressures are eased.
In practice, this has meant adapting approaches as new information emerges. Some interventions have delivered expected results, while others have required refinement. Across the Programme, trials have been used to explore these uncertainties, testing how grazing, habitat management or protection measures influence ecosystems under real conditions.
Working with people
These landscapes and seascapes are shaped by those who live within them, and their involvement has been central from the start. Across the Programme, restoration has involved communities, land managers and resource users in different ways, from working with farmers and pastoralists to adapt land use, to engaging fishers in marine protection and management.
In the Danube Delta, that connection between people and place takes on another dimension. In 2025, a programme brought Ukrainian war veterans and their families into restored parts of the delta, offering time in a landscape that is itself in recovery.
Across these contexts, restoration is not something applied to a landscape, but something that takes shape within it.
A longer journey
After more than five years, the scale of what is being achieved is becoming clear. Forests are expanding into areas where regeneration had long been suppressed. Wetlands are reconnecting and beginning to function more naturally. In parts of the sea, ecosystems are stabilising where pressure has been reduced, and species are returning.
These are not final outcomes, but they are real and measurable changes, taking shape across very different landscapes and seascapes.
The seven projects that began in 2019 are now reaching the end of this initial phase of support. None of them are complete, and many will continue for decades. What they show, however, is that large-scale restoration can move from ambition into practice, with results that are already visible.
Over the coming months, the Restoration Works campaign will explore these landscapes and seascapes in more detail, drawing on the experience, evidence and outcomes that have emerged.
At a time when the pressures on nature continue to intensify, these projects offer something tangible. Across Europe, landscapes and seascapes are beginning to recover, shaped by sustained effort, growing evidence, and the dedication of people working to restore them.
To find out more, visit the Restoration Works page.
