Frans Schepers

Background

About Frans Schepers

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 start a career in conservation. In 1985, 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 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 Africa, Europe and Central Asia), where wild nature and wildlife can bounce 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 35 people based in different European countries. Currently, 11 large landscapes are becoming rewilding icons for Europe, where wild nature with abundant wildlife provide new socio- economic opportunities at landscape scale. This distributed network of rewilding initiatives, where over 220 people are working in 17 different countries, is bound together by a joint vision, mission and strategy, based on a co-production model and overseen by a Network Executive Team. Under his leadership, and working with dedicated rewilding landscape partners across Europe, Rewilding Europe has now become a frontrunner and leading initiative, using an entrepreneurial approach delivering practical rewilding at scale. The organisation takes both a demonstrating and a catalysing role on rewilding as an innovative approach to large-scale nature recovery in Europe. Frans Schepers is a keen birdwatcher and has travelled numerous countries around the world and participated in various ornithological expeditions, in particular to the Mediterranean, Middle East and West Africa. He is also a board member of the Global Rewilding Alliance, the Zambian Carnivore Programme and Natura Africae. In 2010, he wrote a book with travel stories about his work for WWF, called ‘Van Doejong tot Argali’ (in Dutch).