A Eurasian beaver that was reintroduced in Devon, UK Nature Picture Library/Alamy
Between 1990 and 2014, forests in Europe expanded by 13 million hectares, an area roughly equivalent to the size of Greece – but that came with a cost. Crops consumed in the European Union had to be grown somewhere, so, in other countries – mainly tropical nations – around 11 million hectares of forest was chopped down to make up for the drop in EU production.
Such biodiversity “leakage” is a major problem with conservation and rewilding projects, particularly schemes in higher-income, industrialised countries that tend to have lower biodiversity, says …
