Dauphiné Alps, southeastern France — including Vercors and Baronnies Provençales Regional Natural Parks
Ongoing implementation
Landscape level
A large-scale rewilding initiative in the Dauphiné Alps is responding to climate pressures on forests and rivers and to long-term rural depopulation by restoring natural processes. The programme focuses on protecting and improving forest structure, restoring river connectivity and floodplain function, and reintroducing semi-wild grazers to maintain biodiversity-rich, wildfire-resistant habitat mosaics.
The Dauphiné Alps contain extensive forests, semi-wooded scrubland, mountain meadows, cliffs, and some of France’s most important remaining braided river sections, alongside a long farming and rural cultural heritage. Since the nineteenth century, population decline and reduced hillside farming have allowed natural forest recovery, but these mixed-forest mosaics are increasingly stressed by climate change-driven heatwaves and droughts. River systems, including braided sections on the Drôme, Eygues, and Buech, are also affected by worsening heat and drought conditions. The area supports diverse wildlife, including deer, wild boar, chamois, Alpine ibex, wolves, beavers, otters, marmots, and all four European vulture species, creating both ecological opportunity and a need for long-term co-existence approaches.
The initiative applies a landscape-scale rewilding approach across approximately 480,000 hectares to restore key natural processes in forests, rivers, and open habitat mosaics. It establishes “old wood networks” and promotes closer-to-nature forestry to increase structural diversity and deadwood, supporting wildlife and climate resilience. It plans river restoration actions such as barrier removal and floodplain reconnection to improve hydrological function and resilience to floods and droughts. It also aims to reintroduce semi-wild horses and bovines to provide natural grazing that maintains biodiversity-rich mosaics and helps reduce wildfire risk.
Forest rewilding and protection is being advanced through the creation of “old wood networks”, combining forest areas left to develop without timber extraction, old-growth islands, and increased standing and fallen deadwood. Alongside this, closer-to-nature forest management is being used to shift forests towards more diverse stands with older and larger trees, with the stated aim of improving wildlife populations and climate resilience.
The programme also targets biodiversity and climate value improvements in younger forests that regenerated naturally after rural depopulation in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (“feral forests”). To secure long-term delivery, conservation easements are being established for communal forests via city councils and also with private landowners. River rewilding is planned through removal of unnecessary barriers, reconnection of riverbeds with floodplains, and restoration of headwaters, wetlands, and associated hydrological zones. These actions are intended to increase groundwater recharge and flood absorption, strengthening resilience to climate change and helping mitigate flood and drought impacts for residents and businesses. A key enabling strategy is coalition-building in favour of river restoration, including seeking certification of rivers under the Rivières Sauvage label. The programme also intends to demonstrate the ecological rationale for barrier removal (connectivity for fish and other wildlife) and to highlight co-existence practices with aquatic mammals such as beavers and otters, while also pointing to potential economic co-benefits such as sport fishing tourism. Natural grazing interventions aim to address low levels of large wild grazer pressure in habitat mosaics and feral forests, which can otherwise allow shrub encroachment.
The initiative plans reintroductions of semi-wild horses (including Konik horses) and bovines (including Tauros and Galloway cattle), particularly on land no longer used for agriculture. This grazing is intended to help maintain and restore biodiversity-rich habitat mosaics described as more wildfire-resistant, support climate resilience, and provide a cost-effective, nature-based option for landowners. The programme frames this as an approach that can simultaneously support biodiversity improvement and reduce wildfire risk in a context of increasing climate-driven extremes.
Information not available yet.
