Frans Schepers Email & Phone Number

Frans Schepers is a co-founder and Executive Director of Rewilding Europe. He started loving nature as a teenager, was always out in the field and decided to embark a career in conservation. He graduated in forestry, land– and water management after which he took various positions in nature conservation, starting in Dutch government. He became responsible for the design of one of the largest river restoration projects in the country, reshaping 50 km of the transboundary river Meuse. From 2000-2014 he worked at WWF Netherlands, responsible for international conservation programmes. During his professional career, which now spans over 30 years, he specialised in rewilding large landscapes (in particular in Europe, Africa and Central Asia), where wild nature and wildlife bounces back and where people can enjoy and benefit. Many of the experiences he build up from across the world have been used to design and develop Rewilding Europe to what it is today.As the Executive Director of Rewilding Europe since 2011, he is leading a central team of now over 30 people based in seven European countries. Currently, ten large landscapes are becoming rewilding icons for Europe, where wild nature with abundant wildlife provide new socio-economic opportunities at landscape scale. Together with the Rewilding Europe central team, they form a distributed network of rewilding organisations working together to deliver on the Rewilding Europe Strategy towards 2030.Starting from scratch in 2011, Rewilding Europe has now become a well respected initiative, using an entrepreneurial approach delivering practical rewilding at scale, in a coalition with dedicated rewilding entities and parters across Europe. Under his leadership, Rewilding Europe has become a frontrunner and pioneer initiative, taking both a demonstrating and a catalysing role on rewilding as a new conservation narrative for Europe. A number of innovative tools were developed to roll out and scale up rewilding. Frans Schepers is a keen birdwatcher, has travelled numerous countries around the world and participated in various ornithological expeditions, in particular to the Mediterranean, Middle East and West Africa. Having travelled in Africa a lot, he is still very connected to Zambia, a country he loves and where he is a Trustee of the Zambian Carnivore Programme. In 2010, he wrote a book with travel stories about his work at WWF, called 'Van Doejong tot Argali' (in Dutch).

Listed skills include Biodiversity, Conservation Issues, Ecology, Environmental Awareness, and 20 others.

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  Hogeschool Van Hall Larenstein Velp

  Ecology, Forestry, Land- And Water Management