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Breakfast on the Duoro River with Fly Camp.
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m a y 2 0 1 6 / t r a v e l a n d l e i s u r e a s i a . c o m
J o ã o R o m b a / c o u r t e s y o f m i l e s away
Throughout Europe, a tourism experiment is returning lands once occupied by humans to their undomesticated state. Darrell Hartman wanders the hills and valleys of eastern Portugal, where the first “rewilding” camps just opened.
f r o m t o p : A . M . B a p t i s ta / c o u r t e s y o f m i l e s away; A . D e L i m a / c o u r t e s y o f m i l e s away
As the 4 x 4 bounced along a rutted
dirt track, I gazed through swirling dust at an untamed landscape: cork trees, parched chaparral bushes, outcrops of golden rock. Fernando Romão, our guide and driver, pointed out short-toed eagles wheeling overhead as the vehicle lurched up a dry trough, engine roaring. In the front passenger seat, Simon Collier, a former safari guide from South Africa, wore a broad grin. “This is what Land Rovers are made for!” We were in eastern Portugal’s Côa Valley, a four-hour drive from Lisbon. It had taken only an hour to get from the medieval fortress town of Castelo Rodrigo, where I’d spent the morning, to the heart of the 890-hectare Faia Brava Nature Reserve. Having reached higher ground, we parked and strode across dirt strewn with bones: a feeding spot for vultures. On the periphery stood a small, camouflaged observation shelter. I spent a sweltering hour inside watching dozens of the scavengers circle, their two-meter wingspans silhouetted against the powder-blue sky. I was still under the spell of their slow, corkscrew loops when, a little
later, we came upon a group of wild Maronesa cattle. A massive bull, black as night, paused to glower at us before thrashing away into thorny underbrush. These undomesticated bovines couldn’t have been more different from the tranquil animals I grew up around in New England. Later, on our way back to the safaristyle tented camp where I was sleeping that night, we stopped to observe a herd of wild horses— unfenced, unfriendly, evidently belonging to no one—grazing in the late afternoon sun. I didn’t see another visitor in the park all day. When we think about the world’s wild places, our minds typically turn to the South American rain forest or the savannas of Africa; we don’t usually picture Europe. Faia Brava, which was established as a nature reserve in 2000, was working farmland for centuries, but a consortium of environmental activists believes it can become truly wild again. It is a laboratory for “rewilding,” an environmental philosophy that has gained traction in Europe over the past decade. Proponents believe that lands abandoned by humans because of Quinto Do Bom Retiro in Douro Valley.
Learn about ancient art at Côa Musuem.
shifts in population or agricultural practice should be returned to their natural, undomesticated state. George Monbiot, the British author of Feral, a manifesto on the subject, has argued for the reintroduction of vanished species to their former habitats across the continent. He often refers to the wolves of Yellowstone, which have restored ecological balance since being brought back to the American park in the 1990s. Iberian wolves, which have been spotted in the vicinity of Faia Brava, may soon become a regular part of life here, too. Even those who like the idea of rewilding—and many do not—are skeptical about its economic sustainability. This, says Collier, is where tourism comes in. He’s the wildlife tourism manager of Rewilding Europe, a Netherlandsbased nonprofit that manages restoration projects across the continent, while also financing and marketing wilderness lodges connected to those efforts. Its current ventures include reintroducing red deer and bison in Croatia’s Velebit Mountains and building a mobilecamp facility in Italy’s central Apennines, the last holdout of the brown bears that once prowled the outskirts of ancient Rome. Earning local support isn’t easy. Rewilding Europe’s conservation goals sometimes conflict with the hunting and animal husbandry traditions of nearby communities. But Collier believes that rewilding can also create opportunities for inns and tour companies. “Rather than just buying up land,” he told me, “we want to create entrepreneurs.” If the
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