The Return of the Wild

Switzerland is an over-exploited country: too much human activity, too much poison in the luminous green. Thousands of animal and plant species are threatened with extinction. Yet there is another Switzerland: one where forests are growing into new wilderness.

Editorial team Wild beim Wild — 7 January 2018

Animals long since eradicated are returning: bear, wolf, bearded vulture, and perhaps soon even the largest mammal in Europe, the wisent.

Reno Sommerhalder on the trail of the wild

Reno Sommerhalder, the Swiss-Canadian bear man, seeks out unspoiled nature, travelling within Switzerland and elsewhere around the world to places where wilderness is stirring once again. His journey also takes him to the German shore of Lake Constance, where northern bald ibises from zoos are being taught to fly anew — 400 years after their extinction.

A deeply moving moment for Reno Sommerhalder: in his adopted Canadian home of Banff, bison are being reintroduced to the wild — 130 years after they were wiped out there. Perhaps the European bison, the wisent, will also settle once more in the Jura region of Solothurn. Concrete plans exist to bring this archaic animal back to the Jura forests.

In this film by Beat Bieri, Reno Sommerhalder travels to eastern Poland, to Białowieża, where in 1952 the first zoo-bred wisents were released into the wild and where 1’000 of these powerful animals now live once again — mostly well hidden — in Europe's largest primeval forest. They have since become a driving force for local nature tourism.

The bear returns to Switzerland

In 2016, the bear returned for the first time to the heart of Switzerland, to the canton of Uri — nearly 200 years after it had been eradicated there. It proved to be a turbulent year for wildlife ranger Fredy Arnold: how would the predator behave? Scepticism among the local population was considerable, until it became clear that the young male bear is extremely shy, almost invisible, and seeks no contact with humans.

New primeval forest in Switzerland

Every year, Switzerland's forests grow by an area equivalent to 8’500 football pitches. Ticino forestry engineer Roberto Buffi has been fighting for wild forests for decades, co-founding several forest reserves in Ticino where the woodland is left to its own devices, where a slowly emerging primeval forest develops a new, compelling magic. Modern people, especially those living in cities, often see wilderness as a place of longing — and yet wild nature also stirs unease, even fear, in people. "It is the fear of the irrational, the uncontrollable," says Buffi.

There are many alarming findings from nature. This film shows people who, through their work, push back a little. More on the topic at Environment and Nature Conservation.