A look at Eurowild’s first year running and what’s next for 2026

At the beginning of 2025, a new EU funded project was launched called European Oiled Wildlife response Life-long learning Development (EUROWILD). To start off the new year, we want to look back at the main successes over the last year and look forward to exciting new developments for 2026.
What is EUROWILD?
EUROWILD is a 2-year project co-funded by the EU Erasmus+ Programme launched at the beginning of 2025 and is the latest EUROWA connected project. The project aims to expand the work of the EUROWA network with new training courses, technical meetings for the network and engaging with authorities on preparedness. The partners are ProBird in Germany, Submon in Spain, WWF Finland, Wildlife Rescue Centre Ostende (WRCO) in Belgium and Sea Alarm as the coordinator.
Updates from 2025
In April, ProBird organised the first ever EUROWA Specialist Field: Search and Rescue course in Germany, with collaboration of technical experts from the Royal Society of Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA) and WRCO. The course included theory lessons and an extensive field exercise where, divided in 3 different groups, participants assessed 3 different beach areas and organised a search and rescue operation including personnel, equipment, PPE and setting up Beach Collection Points.
In October, the adaptation and development of the theory module of the BASIC course into an online training platform based on Moodle was finished. Several technical experts were involved and it is now ready to be rolled out amongst the EUROWA network members’ staff, volunteers or citizens that want to help as an oiled wildlife responder who needs that first training to get involved. The course has been designed to be completed during 3-4h at one’s own pace, takes you through different modules with videos and interactive activities (exercises, quizzes, information boxes, etc.) and provides you the first step for a full EUROWA BASIC qualification. The qualification is fully given after completing the practical exercises.
In November, we held an in-person network meeting in Spain, which included the first discussions on a new EUROWA Assessment Course and Manual for oiled wildlife incidents, as well as a new WildX serious game for the course led by Sea Alarm. The other deliverables for the EUROWILD project were also discussed, which you can read more about here. The funding also allowed for the network to hold their Annual General Assembly in person.
What’s in the pipeline for 2026
In February, there will be a workshop organised by WWF Finland with Sea Alarm aimed at strengthening cooperation between oiled wildlife authorities and NGOs with a focus on the Baltic region, via the platform of the HELCOM Wildlife Expert Group. It will bring the wildlife responders and authorities who would oversee their support into a focused dialogue on how they can best work together.
WRCO will develop a new Post-wash Care Specialist course, with input from experts from De Fûgelhelling wildlife centre in the Netherlands. The course is due to be organised in April.
A new Train-the-Trainer course is also being developed led by Submon in collaboration with Sea Alarm and with some input from experienced trainers from WRCO and the RSPCA. The course will help EUROWA trainers improve their abilities to transmit knowledge and to inspire course trainees. This one-day course will be delivered online in September.
With so many developments in the pipeline, 2026 is set to be another exciting year for the EUROWILD project and its partners.