Rewilding Europe is working with its local partners to shape the Côa Valley through the development of a 120,000-hectare wildlife corridor – the Greater Côa Valley – that connects the Malcata mountain range in the south with the larger Douro Valley in the north. Innovative land-use models will be applied in a region with one of the highest land abandonment levels in Europe, transforming threats of landscape degradation, rural depopulation and economic downturn into new opportunities based on rewilding principles.

To reach this goal we are focused on securing strategically located core areas purchasing them and connecting them by signing land-use agreements with landowners and hunting associations, and on restoring natural processes such as herbivory, carnivory and scavenging in the zones between them. By allowing species such as the red deer, wolf and Iberian lynx to make a comeback, this will hopefully boost biodiversity significantly and underpin a burgeoning nature-based economy that serves as a regional role model. Once a more natural state has been reached, the Côa Valley has the potential to become one of the main migration routes for wildlife in this part of the Iberian Peninsula.