The intersection of human development and the wild has rarely been captured with such striking juxtaposition as it is in this year’s winner of the Rewilding Europe Award. Polish photographer Jan Wieczorek has claimed the top prize in the prestigious annual competition for his evocative black-and-white image, “Urban Beavers,” which documents a family of rodents thriving in the heart of the Polish city of Olsztyn.
The annual Rewilding Europe photography contest is presented by Rewilding Europe in partnership with the German Society for Nature Photography (GDT) and the European Wildlife Photographer of the Year contest. The competition is designed to celebrate photography captured across the European continent that illustrates what organizers describe as “rewilding in motion.”
Rewilding itself is a progressive and increasingly vital approach to environmental conservation. Rather than managing every aspect of an ecosystem, rewilding works to enable nature and natural processes to occur again, actively restoring and repairing the profound ecological damage caused by centuries of human activities. As Rewilding Europe frequently emphasizes, nature often knows best when it comes to survival, resilience, and self-governance.
According to contest judge Jon A. Juarez, rewilding across Europe does not have one single, uniform face. It can mean successfully bringing back a native species that completely disappeared from a region, restoring complex natural hydrological processes, or simply giving nature enough space and time to recover on its own terms. Increasingly, however, rewilding is also about learning how humans can successfully and harmoniously share landscapes with wild animals.
Rewilding Europe Award Winner Shows a Family of Beavers Thriving In a Polish City
Award-winning photographs like the one captured by Wieczorek serve as powerful documentation of that rewilding process as it unfolds in the real world. In Olsztyn, a family of beavers has found a way to not only survive but truly flourish amid the backdrop of modern urban expansion, demonstrating a remarkable capacity for human-wildlife coexistence.
Even as local power lines are maintained, railways are utilized, and new homes continue to be built, the local beaver population thrives, aided by the active protection of municipal authorities and the human residents who live alongside them. Wieczorek has spent nearly 15 years observing this specific beaver family. He carefully and intentionally composed his winning photograph to visually capture the meeting of two entirely different worlds. In the foggy, city-lit background of the frame, viewers can spot a looming construction crane and a nearby active road. In stark contrast, the foreground highlights a trio of beavers busily engaged in their natural routines.
Reflecting on the deeper meaning of his work, Wieczorek notes that the story behind the photograph challenges the common misconception that nature only exists in remote wilderness areas far away from human civilization. Instead, he points out that wildlife can thrive right next to our homes, beneath our bridges, and deep within the centers of our cities. By intentionally framing the modern housing development right alongside the thriving wetland created by the beavers themselves, the photographer sought to demonstrate that it is entirely possible for humans and wildlife to share geographical space.
Contest judge Viktoria Pezzei adds that both the winning image and the commended selections capture the essential spirit of how humans and wildlife can live side by side. Photography of this caliber acts as a visual translator for the complex relationships between people and the natural world, ultimately helping the broader public understand these dynamics with greater clarity and empathy.
Runner-Up
While Wieczorek’s image showcases the success of a hands-off approach to urban wildlife, the competition’s runner-up earned high acclaim for a very different sort of ecological recovery story. Christoph Kaula submitted a compelling photograph featuring a small European hamster, an animal that has become the focus of an intensive scientific research project designed to rescue the threatened species from the brink of localized extinction.
European hamsters have suffered drastic population declines across the European continent as agricultural operations have expanded and intensified over the decades. In response to this crisis, researchers and conservationists have taken a much more hands-on, interventionist approach to keep the animals alive. Captive breeding programs, detailed genetic analysis, and active habitat management are all critical components of a multi-pronged strategy to secure the hamster’s future.
While the resilient urban beavers of Poland prove that sometimes leaving animals alone and giving them space is enough, the plight of the European hamster highlights that some species require immediate, intensive human intervention to get conservation efforts moving in the right direction.
Kaula emphasizes that bringing a struggling species back from the edge of disappearance is never the isolated work of a single organization or individual. Instead, it requires a genuinely collective effort, which must include raising public awareness and effectively communicating the vital importance of biodiversity conservation to a much wider audience.
Commended Photos
In addition to the top two awards, the judging panel extended special commendations to three other remarkable photographs that illustrate the diverse realities of modern conservation efforts across Europe.
Fabian Thorand’s commended photograph, titled “Peaceful European Bison,” captures two massive bison resting quietly in a scenic Polish meadow. These iconic animals were once completely extinct in the wild across Europe, but thanks to concerted international reintroduction programs, their populations have rebounded significantly, with numbers now exceeding 10,000 individuals roaming free. Thorand explains that he hopes his work demonstrates how beautiful and peaceful coexistence with animals can be, even when those animals are exceptionally large. He believes it is essential to view nature not merely as a surrounding human environment, but as the authentic natural habitat of wild animals that deserve robust protection, noting that bison play a crucial ecological role that modern human populations must learn to live alongside.
Another commended entry, Silke Hüttche’s “The Call of the Eagles,” focuses on a pair of majestic white-tailed eagles perched in an unusual and dramatic landscape in northeastern Germany known as Anklamer Stadtbruch. This sprawling 2,000-hectare area transformed organically into a vast wilderness zone following a massive storm surge in the 1990s that flooded the terrain and turned it into a thriving peatland. Today, the recovering ecosystem supports a rich diversity of wildlife, hosting white-tailed eagles in concentrations higher than anywhere else in Germany. Hüttche notes that witnessing the rapid boost in species abundance and diversity driven by natural processes in this area has underscored just how vital the creation of new wilderness areas truly is.
The final commended photograph, Lewis Jefferies’ “A New Generation,” turns its gaze toward the marine environment. The image captures a staff member at the National Lobster Hatchery carefully releasing young European lobsters into a tidal pool in Cornwall, England. The hatchery collaborates closely with scientists, local commercial fishermen, and regional restaurants to breed young lobsters in a controlled environment before releasing them back into the sea. The European lobster holds significant financial and cultural value for coastal communities, both for its meat and for its integral role in maintaining healthy local marine ecosystems. Jefferies expresses hope that his image will help spark renewed public interest in marine conservation and draw much-needed attention to the tireless work being done in Cornwall to safeguard vulnerable coastal species and their habitats.
Nature Can Survive if Given the Space and Time
Taken together, the diverse selection of images featured in the annual Rewilding Europe Award photo contest offers a hopeful message about the capacity of the natural world to recover when humans either step back to let natural processes take over or step forward to offer thoughtful, science-based assistance. Whether nature heals itself spontaneously in the heart of a city or requires active management and reintroduction in agricultural and coastal landscapes, the collective body of work demonstrates that people can and do make a profound, positive difference in the future of European wildlife.
