Forest restoration in practice – lessons learned from 12 demo sites

Gesche Schifferdecker on January 23, 2026

SUBERB demo sites

Restoring forests is as much a social, institutional, and economic endeavor as it is an ecological one. Across regions, landscapes, and governance contexts, restoration initiatives have generated a wealth of experience – what worked, what didn’t, and what must change to achieve lasting impact. This Lessons Learned booklet brings together insights from our 12 large-scale restoration sites, grounded in real-world practice rather than theory alone.

The lessons presented here are not prescriptive recipes. Instead, they highlight recurring patterns, critical success factors, and persistent bottlenecks encountered in forest restoration efforts. Together, they underline a central truth: successful restoration is a long-term process that depends on people, policies, and institutions working in concert with ecological systems.

By distilling these lessons, the booklet aims to support practitioners, decision-makers, and funders in designing restoration efforts that are durable, scalable, and context-sensitive – moving from isolated projects toward sustained landscape transformation.

Key Messages

  1. Forest restoration is a long-term commitment.
    Restoration cannot be achieved through one-off interventions; it requires sustained engagement, adaptive management, and long-term vision.
  2. Disturbance can be a catalyst for change.
    Catastrophic natural events – particularly in single-species monocultures – often expose structural vulnerabilities and can trigger more ambitious and transformative restoration efforts.
  3. Local communities are central to success.
    Communities are not only beneficiaries but essential partners in restoration. Meaningful involvement must begin early and be supported through continuous, trust-building processes.
  4. Finance and institutions matter – but gaps remain.
    Stable public funding and institutional support are fundamental. At present, voluntary private finance mechanisms fall short of delivering the scale and reliability needed for restoration.
  5. Demonstration sites accelerate learning.
    Practical demonstrations provide tested and transferable models, showing how restoration can work across diverse ecological and socio-economic contexts.
  6. Restoration costs are highly variable.
    Costs depend on landscape conditions, the intensity and complexity of measures, spatial fragmentation, and opportunity costs for land users.
  7. Scaling up requires policy alignment.
    Successful upscaling depends on aligning local practices and needs with broader policy frameworks and regulatory environments.
  8. Knowledge infrastructures ensure lasting impact.
    Systems for consolidating and sharing knowledge are essential to move beyond individual projects and to support institutions responsible for national restoration planning.

New SUPERB policy brief: forest restoration as a pillar of Europe’s climate and biodiversity action

Gesche Schifferdecker on December 17, 2025

SUBERB demo areas

Our newly released policy brief brings together scientific knowledge and hands-on experience from our 12 large-scale forest restoration initiatives across Europe, offering timely and practical guidance for policymakers, forest managers, and other key stakeholders.

The brief underlines that restoring forests is not a single action, but a long-term, multi-phase process. Effective restoration typically moves from assessing initial conditions and drivers of degradation, through planning and implementation, to long-term maintenance, monitoring, and evaluation. Success depends on flexibility, adaptive management, and strong engagement with multiple stakeholders, including forest owners, local communities, policymakers, and practitioners.

In the face of climate change, increasing disturbances, and shifting socio-economic demands, our policy brief stresses the need for future-oriented restoration targets. These should focus not only on biodiversity, but also on the ecosystem services forests provide – such as carbon storage, water regulation, and recreation – and the ecological processes that sustain them. Because the benefits of restoration often become visible only after decades, our brief highlights the critical importance of sustained funding for monitoring and adaptive management.

Drawing on insights from our 12 large-scale forest restoration demonstration areas across Europe, our experts identified shared challenges despite the diversity of forest types, ownership structures, and management traditions. Key issues include high ungulate browsing pressure that damages young trees and increases restoration costs, difficulties in engaging private forest owners – who manage around 60% of Europe’s forests – and constraints related to forest reproductive materials, such as shortages of climate-adapted seeds and seedlings.

To address these challenges, the brief puts forward clear and actionable recommendations. These include increasing flexibility in restoration objectives and timelines, adapting hunting and forest reproductive materials legislation, and strengthening monitoring of browsing impacts. Further recommendations suggest improving dialogue among forest managers, hunters, and communities, and supporting nurseries through long-term planning and investment. Our experts also call for contingency planning to cope with natural disturbances and for the strategic use of pioneer and climate-adapted species to build resilient mixed forests.

By translating lessons learned from real-world restoration efforts into policy-relevant recommendations, this policy brief provides a valuable roadmap for scaling up forest restoration across Europe. At a time when resilient forests are more important than ever, it offers concrete guidance to help turn ambitious restoration commitments into lasting outcomes.

Reference: Filipek, S., Jacobs, S., Nabuurs, GJ., Barnkob Lehrmann, M., Bílek, L., Campana, F., Cotten, L., de Dios, J., de Graaf, M., de Guerry, B., Đodan, M., Galić, Z., Gallego, R., García, R., Gómez Fernández, M., Granberg, Å., Hoch, T., Jactel, H., Janzen, L., Lastra González, D., Lindner, M., Locatelli, T., Marušák, R., Mijatović, L., Nicoll, B., Oleagordia, Í., Olsen, H., Orazio, C., Olrik, D. C., Raats, L., Saini, M., Schmidt, C., Svoboda, M., Svensson, J., Tognetti, R., Vacchiano, G., Zorić, M., Zotta, M., Schatzdorfer, E. (2025): Common challenges in implementing forest restoration: Experiences from 12 large-scale demonstration areas across Europe. Policy brief. https://doi.org/10.36333/rs15

How Europe’s restoration projects are shaping national plans

Daria Kononenko on May 8, 2025

Across Europe, there are 71 restoration sites — from Ireland’s peatlands to Romania’s forests. Since 2021, SUPERB and its sister projects MERLIN, REST-COAST and WaterLANDS have been working on the ground to restore forests, wetlands, rivers, and coasts, all funded under the Green Deal. 

Now the projects’ findings are helping countries draft National Restoration Plans (NRPs) — a key requirement under the EU’s new Nature Restoration Regulation. 

To support this process, over 100 experts — scientists, policymakers, and local stakeholders — met at the European Commission on 10 March 2025. The meeting focused on what has worked in practice, where challenges remain, and how field-based experience can help Member States design effective NRPs. 

The report Supporting the Development of National Restoration Plans brings together what’s been learned so far — practical tools, examples, and ideas that can help shape national restoration plans, including from SUPERB’s side: 

  • A soon-to-launch Forest Knowledge Gateway with guides on tree selection, funding, and more. 
  • Case studies from SUPERB’s 12 demonstration sites. 
  • Policy maps showing where national laws align or clash with restoration goals. 

With draft NRPs due by September 2026, SUPERB’s work aims at helping national partners to implement these tools — from policy alignment frameworks to site-specific restoration strategies tested across its demonstration area network. 

Read on the full report here

Photo: Anat art / Adobe Stock

Rethinking Nature Restoration: Listening to Communities for Lasting Change

Rina Tsubaki, Gabriele Colombo, Gesche Schifferdecker on March 17, 2025

Restoration Story by Rina Tsubaki, Gabriele Colombo and Gesche Schifferdecker

If you’re working on nature restoration projects within a public authority, you’ve probably encountered this scenario: A well-intended initiative rolls out, yet local communities push back, reluctant to support your nature-positive solution. Policymakers scratch their heads, wondering why citizens aren’t happy to support the initiatives. Then, they turn to a quick fix, spending a lot of money on communication campaigns. The result? These campaigns face a lot of backlash, being criticized as manipulative or ineffective.

Many of these tensions stem from a disconnect, a failure to pay enough attention to the historical context and power relations that public authorities have built with communities. As the gap widens, meaningful collaboration becomes even more difficult.

So, how do we bridge this divide? One place to start is by listening to the conversations within the community. One approach is to go into the field and engage directly. Another way is to dive into the ocean of narratives shared on social media. Under SUPERB, we have done much of this work, looking into online platforms to see what themes are being brought up by whom and exchanging ideas and opinions with local partners implementing forest restoration actions. But for the first time, we have presented public narratives from online platforms to both policy implementers and stakeholders to examine and reconstruct public debates and perceptions. 

Turning our focus to ‘people’ for nature

On 31 January 2025, the Italian SUPERB demo partners and EFI co-organised a Public Engagement Workshop with research colleagues from Politecnico di Milano’s Density Design. The primary goal was to gain insight into how citizens in Milan perceive and discuss different nature restoration projects implemented by the local public authorities. 

Ten public authority representatives, media influencers, and communication and stakeholder engagement experts gathered at Parco Nord Milano to explore and delve deep into the narratives surrounding Forestami (a local project that supports tree planting and distributes information regarding the benefits derived from urban forestry) and the grass-cutting initiative launched by the local authorities. The goal was to understand and reflect on what people in Milan see, feel, care about, and worry about.  

Photo: Gesche Schifferdecker

Gabriele Colombo and Alessandra Facchin from Density Design kicked off the workshop by sharing their research on social media conversations around urban biodiversity and forest restoration projects in Milan. The workshop then shifted into action with a “talking back to the map” exercise. Participants paired up to analyze real social media comments about Milan’s reforestation initiatives, working with a specially designed deck of cards. Each card featured a different perspective – from practical concerns about park maintenance to broader questions about green space ownership in the city. 

Image: Gabriele Colombo, Density Design

Their task was straightforward but powerful: respond to these comments while identifying information gaps and key themes that should be included in future communication strategies. This exercise helped reveal the complex layers of public perception surrounding initiatives like Forestami and park maintenance, touching on concerns ranging from allergies and mosquitoes to the urban center-periphery divide. 

Photo: Gesche Schifferdecker

Moving from knowing to acting 

This collaborative social media reading demonstrated that effective public engagement isn’t just about pushing out information – it’s about understanding and addressing the everyday concerns that shape how communities perceive and interact with restoration projects. Resistance often stems from practical concerns about urban life rather than opposition to nature itself.

Participants with communication backgrounds shared practical solutions to improve public authorities’ communication and public engagement actions. 

Mattia Iannantuoni, a climate content creator who collaborates with the main digital magazines in Italy, e.g. with Will Media (main digital-first information, 1.7mln on IG) and LifeGate (main sustainability outlet, 677k on IG), emphasized the need to move away from a narrative that just tells us tree planting is good. One way is to use more active wording like “Let’s save ourselves in the summer (from heat)” or “Let’s make the city fresher” to show the direct link between tree planting and residents. For that, public authorities need to “communicate in the way people understand why it is important to them”. 

One effective way we started to see at the cafeterias is to present vegetarian and vegan options, not as vegans and vegetarians but as “fresh from our garden” or “from the farm”. So forest restoration actions should not just focus on communicating about trees. Instead, we need to think of the target groups first to get a better sense of where they are coming from and what is important to them. “Many people come from different layers of society (…) As a communicator, it’s important to have the time to bring that piece on the table useful for the conversation.” 

Another participant, Sophia Pasotto, a climate activist and EU Climate Pact Ambassador with almost 70K followers on TikTok, echoed the need to explore different points of view. She highlighted the importance of involving and representing diverse perspectives to make long-lasting societal changes. “I think this kind of workshop helps to brainstorm and put together different people with different ideas for solutions”, said the social media influencer. 

Poet and social activist Demetrio Marra pointed out the inseparable link between nature conservation and the economy, that the debates need to address foundational issues that are deeply interwoven in our economic and social systems.  “When we talk about ecology and sustainability, we must talk about the systematic (aspects of) economy. The problem with acceptance around the reintroduction of forests is linked with the fear people have around life outside capitalism”, said Demetrio. In today’s capitalist world, forests are not just wilderness. The protection of nature often means a loss of economic opportunity. Demetrio stated that when people are confronted with something they don’t know or feel is too big, they tend to avoid thinking about it. This could be the fundamental issue that makes some of us overlook details. 

Michel Saini, the SUPERB demo project manager in Italy, said, “The workshop was a superb opportunity also for the local demo: for starters, it was a good way to refresh the bonds between stakeholders, and second, it was a good way to connect directly with media actors who have a comprehensive understanding of the project. Since the devil is often in the details in communication, facilitating the information exchange between technicians and media is effective. Also, we collected valuable input from the participants in both presentations.”

Future workshops could be based on considering these underlying barriers. Overall, social media has ignited engaging exchanges between public authorities and communication experts.  

For more information about the research projects implemented by Density Design, see Forestami and High grass.

10 Things We Can All Learn from the Evolution of Forest Restoration Initiatives in Europe 

Shan Gao on December 19, 2024

By Maitane Erdozain Ibarra, CTFC & Rina Tsubaki, EFI.

Forest restoration is far more than a modern buzzword—its history runs deeper than most realize. Yet, despite decades of effort, the lack of proper documentation of successes and failures has prevented us from truly learning from the past.  

Today, the global push for forest restoration is stronger than at any point in history. Initiatives like the European Nature Restoration Law are sparking hope and action. Now, more than ever, we need to look back and reflect on how forest restoration efforts have evolved, what sparked change, and what lessons past and present initiatives can offer. That will empower us to make forest restoration efforts more effective, impactful, and grounded — both now and in the future. 

A Europe-wide Study to Explore Trends, Patterns and Drivers of Forest Restoration 

Led by Maitane Erdozain and Sergio de Miguel from the Science and Technology Centre of Catalonia (CTFC) and the University of Lleida (UDL), we published a study that examined narratives from 32 forest restoration experts in 18 European countries to uncover the history of forest restoration in Europe. The study asked experts to delve into six key areas—social, economic, political, technical, environmental and legal— to understand different drivers that shaped forest restoration across Europe. 

The analysis revealed fascinating trends and patterns. Early restoration efforts in central and southern Europe often arose in response to crises like natural disasters and timber shortages. While these initiatives were effective for erosion control and timber production, they often relied on monocultures and short rotations, limiting ecological benefits. The geopolitical upheavals of the 20th century pushed timber production to the forefront, with centralized management that usually favored productivity over biodiversity. Since the 1990s, however, we have started to see a shift: restoration now strives to balance environmental, social, and economic goals, driven by a growing appreciation for the multifunctionality of forests. 

Lessons from Successes and Failures in the Past and Present 

So, what are the drivers that shaped the development of forest restoration in Europe that we can learn from both the past and present?  

Here are 10 lessons we learned: 

  1. Natural disasters as catalysts: Major natural disturbances (floods, shifting sands etc.) triggered early restoration efforts in many countries. Over the past decades, environmental crises (climatic, biodiversity, water etc.) have also influenced the type of restoration that is conducted. 
  1. Geopolitical turmoil forces change: Wars greatly contributed to forest degradation through direct destruction and overexploitation, but they also prompted large-scale afforestation campaigns to address timber shortages. These initiatives shaped today’s forests, showing how crises can simultaneously hinder and drive restoration progress. 
  1. Forest ownership and governance: Centralized forest governance often enabled large-scale restoration success, while fragmented ownership often slowed down restoration progress. Innovative governance mechanisms are needed to address the issue of fragmentation, where many small landowners hold land rights.
  1. Funding mechanisms: Lack of funding has been a longstanding obstacle, but there are examples of strong and stable funding mechanisms throughout history.  Although EU funding has been instrumental in shifting the types of restoration implemented, there is an urgent need for innovative funding sources (e.g., private) and mechanisms that are long-term and resilient to political and market fluctuations. 
  1. Market fluctuations: Shifts in demand for products like timber and fuelwood significantly shaped restoration strategies. Future efforts should integrate marketable benefits from different ecosystem services to sustain landowner engagement and secure lasting outcomes. 
  1. The role of sociodemographics and social values: Rural abandonment tends to reduce land-use conflicts but can lead to new challenges like unmanaged forests. Increasing environmental awareness and recreational demands from society have diversified restoration objectives. These findings underscore the need for active rural engagement and public education to balance priorities. 
  1. Policies as guiding forces: Strict yet balanced national policies that integrate ecological protection with socioeconomic benefits, alongside ambitious international policies and the creation of institutions specialized in restoration, have been pivotal in driving progress and inspiring coordinated restoration strategies. 
  1. Converging drivers accelerate change: Restoration succeeds when environmental, social, economic and political factors align. Historical examples show that isolated drivers rarely catalyze change; a multidimensional approach is essential to create transformative impacts. 
  1. Conflicts hinder progress: Competing objectives, such as agriculture versus forest land uses, or timber production versus conservation, remain major obstacles. Addressing conflicts—both among stakeholders and policies—requires a holistic landscape approach that simultaneously addresses many challenges that society faces. 
  1. Short-term fixes, long-term risks: Lastly, the historical accounts demonstrate that restoration efforts with a short-term vision often create future vulnerabilities. Long-term thinking that acknowledges the interconnectedness of our systems is crucial for successful forest restoration that benefits ecosystems and communities.  
Infographic by Shanqing Gao, EFI

Embracing the Past and Building a Better Future

From this study, we learned the importance of blending historical insights with contemporary strategies to guide more sustainable and impactful forest restoration. By learning from past successes and failures, policymakers and practitioners can avoid repeating mistakes and leverage effective solutions. We hope the lessons uncovered in this research will be crucial for implementing the new Nature Restoration Law to ensure its ambitions are translated into large-scale, real-world impact across Europe. 

Reference: Erdozain, M., Alberdi, I., Aszalos, R. et al. The Evolution of Forest Restoration in Europe: A Synthesis for a Step Forward Based on National Expert Knowledge. Curr. For. Rep. 11, 4 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/40725-024-00235-3

Read the full study here.

First-year anniversary at SUPERB’s Po Valley Demo  

superbadmin on March 12, 2024

Article written by Michel Saini

In the municipality of Legnano, the first restoration plot of SUPERB’s Po Valley Demo is celebrating its first-year anniversary. The team has divided the land here into 12 different stands to experiment with different densities of tree and plant cover (1500, 2000, and 2500 p/ha).  

Po Valley is one of Italy’s most important economic regions, in which agricultural and urban developments have gradually led to forest reduction and fragmentation. As biodiversity is increasingly under pressure, SUPERB aims to restore approximately 10 hectares of land in the administrative area of Lombardia. The aim here is to introduce biodiverse-rich, small patches of forest, as well as enhance ecological connectivity by planting trees, bushes, and hedges.  

Aside from this very first plot of land, the team has started to expand their restoration efforts across new municipalities: 

“It was close to impossible to find a continuous 7 ha patch so close to Milan, therefore, this year we will plant trees in 4 separated plots in 3 different municipalities”, says Michel Saini, project coordinator of the Po Valley Demo.

The restoration efforts were thus divided over the municipalities of Inveruno, Villa Cortese and Vittuone, with a total cover of 9 hectares of land. With plant species from Northern Italy, Central Italy and Southern Italy, the team is specifically dedicated to the study of genetic provenance, planting 3 different strands in each of the 4 areas. This means that they will actively explore how the different plant species, native to the above-mentioned regions, adapt to their new environmental conditions. 

In collaboration with the University of Trento, the team will also test the benefits of hydrogel for the survival of small saplings.  

“We will implement a layer of hydro-retentive gel at the bottom of the planting hole, with two main variables” explains Michel Saini, “one is control, irrigated by rain only, and the other is regularly irrigated saplings”.  

At the same time, the project focuses on several other studies, including: 

  • A focus on monitoring of zoonotic disease by monitoring and estimating the mosquitos and ticks’ population with traps. It’s a study in collaboration with Fondazione Edmund Mach

  • Studies on the effects of reforestation of former farmland on soil ecosystem services within Parco Nord Milano. The evaluation of reforestation effects is thus carried out through 3 indicators related to soil characteristics: Carbon stock, water regulation and soil biodiversity.

  • The monitoring of pollinators in the meadows close to the chrono sequences sites with the aim of studying the change in urban biodiversity after afforestation. This is a collaboration with the University of Milan – Bicocca 

  • The analysis of the contribution of vegetation in mitigating the urban “Heat Island Effect” with physical sensors. 

Stay tuned for more information! 

Engagement means listening first: SUPERB’s Po Valley Demo

superbadmin on January 24, 2024

stakeholder engagement workshop in Italy

Effective stakeholder engagement is key to long-term forest restoration success. Being aware of that, SUPERB’s  Po Valley Demo team, after considering the internal skillset (mainly academic and technical), chose to seek support on this task from experts in this field. 

After a selection process in the private sector for a consulting association, the Po Valley Demo team joined forces with NGO Demetra Onlus, a social promotion and international solidarity organisation working on social engagement in different fields, including counseling on stakeholder inclusion in environmental projects, environmental education in schools, and children playground design for outdoor parks. 

As part of a recent stakeholder engagement workshop that took place in September 2023, at Parco Nord HQ in Milan, Demetra presented a 2-year long stakeholder engagement strategy as a three-fold approach with different focuses: 

  • First, raising school children’s perception and interaction with the area in concert with the growth of the plantation: environmental talks in local primary schools with visits to the plantation areas, with the idea that the plantation itself will grow together with that particular generation of citizens. First sessions with the students in Legnano (the first SUPERB planting site in the Po Valley area) were successfully carried out. And many teachers at the school asked to repeat the sessions in other classrooms! 
  • Second, a screening of NGOs, civil society actors, public institutions, dog lovers’ associations, bike riding groups, among other common actors that could actively use the area and include them in the strategy development and implementation by making their needs and preferences known to the Po Valley Demo team. 
  • Third, a scouting of the local businesses possibly interested in co-financing the plantation maintenance after the SUPERB project ends in 2025. At that point, synergies between private partners and public municipality could be a win-win situation for both, allowing for a reduction of the public maintenance costs for the municipality and a green marketing possibility for the private sector. 

Demetra, the SUPERB Po Valley team and the local stakeholders are now looking forward to seeing the trees, the environmental knowledge and the engagement grow. Some of this excitement is reflected in the outcomes of activities involving local stakeholders in previous meetings, including families, elderly groups, and sport-related associations, answering the question: How do we involve citizens in the new forest? 

How to build a forest restoration community 

Yulia Poskakukhina on January 16, 2024

Forest Restoration Festival

On November 20-22, 2023, our hybrid SUPERB Restoration Project Festival brought together 25 forest restoration experts in Milan in addition to a vibrant online community. Here we recap the key moments: 

Day 1 started with a deep dive into innovative funding and long-term continuity for forest restoration projects: 

  • Dr. Thomas Campagnaro from the Università degli Studi di Padova shared insights on upscaling approaches in forest biodiversity, including the BOTTOMS-UP project 
  • Antti Leinonen from the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry of Finland presented the Forest Biodiversity Programme METSO and its success in securing long-term funding. 
  • Dr. Giustino Mezzalira, forestry engineer and consultant, discussed innovative financing for large-scale forest restoration on the Marcesina plateau in Italy. 

Day 2 was all about collaboration and knowledge exchange: 

  • Participants took centre stage and shared best practices on boosting ecosystem resilience, reconciling conflicting goals and objectives, monitoring project successes and building partnership within their respective projects. 
  • The SUPERB Gateway – an upcoming public online database for tools on forest restoration practice, science, governance, and funding – was presented.  
  • Participants completed the SUPERB Practice Questionnaire which aims to bring valuable information from across European forestry projects to this community. Would you like to contribute? Please complete the survey here. 

On Day 3 we explored the impactful role of storytelling in fostering multistakeholder collaboration in restoration. In this workshop by the European Forest Institute, we drew examples from the SUPERB demonstrator area Vindeläven-Juhtatdahka Biosphere Reserve in Sweden. 

In Milan, the festival concluded with a guided visit led by SUPERB partner Fabio Campana to Parco Nord, the city’s largest urban forest and part of the SUPERB Po Valley demo area. 

The success of the festival was the achievement of our participants and owes much to our diverse speakers on days 2 and 3: 

Lastly, congratulations to Marijan Lozancic on winning the festival’s visual exhibition contest with a video on demining interventions in Bosnian forests! 

A heartfelt thanks to our project partners and speakers for their cooperation, and to all participants for joining us to share their invaluable perspectives and build future partnerships. 

The event was organised by SUPERB partner Prospex Institute. 

Guided visit to Paco Nord urban forest in Milan