World Rewilding Day on March 20 celebrates human efforts to rewild and restore degraded areas. Rewilding can focus on a single species, a city park, or even an entire island, and Mongabay has reported on such efforts from around the word. Rewilding in France’s Dauphiné Alps France’s largest rewilding project is underway in the Dauphiné Alps, in the south of the country. In the 18th century, much of the region was cleared for agriculture. But with the advent of the Industrial Revolution, many people abandoned farms and moved to cities. Left undisturbed, native trees and wildlife slowly began coming back. “It allows us to build on what’s been done already,” Olivier Raynaud, director of Rewilding France and leader of the Dauphiné Alps project, told Mongabay. “We’re not starting from scratch.” Four species of vultures have already been reintroduced, following successful breeding in captivity. They’re crucial for ridding the area of disease-spreading carrion and have become a tourist attraction. Next, the project plans to bring back large herbivores, including Polish konik ponies and Scottish Galloway cattle, which are expected to spread seeds that will eventually grow into a forest. Project leaders also hope to bring back the locally endangered Eurasian lynx and eventually wolves — though the wolf plan has so far faced pushback from locals who see the predators as a threat to livestock. Rewilding the world’s largest volcanic lake Lake Toba, on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, is the largest volcanic lake in the world and historically home to…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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