"The wolf is the devil in hundreds and hundreds of years of storytelling. If you're talking about the devil's right hand it's very difficult to talk about proper population sizes or quotas; you just want to get rid of him." Imagine the reaction if the headlines proclaimed that Sri Lanka was to kill half its leopards, or Costa Rica half its jaguars. Well, here in Europe, Sweden is doing just that – downgrading or removing protections for vital, iconic species such as wolves, brown bears and ly...
"These tortoises are absolutely the ecosystem engineers. They are incredible grazers, they are nutrient cyclers, they are seed dispersers, also just mechanically they are the largest creatures on these islands." In the latest episode of Rewilding the World Ben Goldsmith talks with Aldabra tortoise champion Celina Chien. The islands of the Indian Ocean once teemed with giant tortoises but European sailors harvested them nearly to extinction. Now the Indian Ocean Tortoise Alliance i...
"I think what we need now is a new landmark Act of Parliament to set the vision for the coming 50 to 100 years; truly visionary in restoring nature at scale, but doing that in a way which is going to help the country to thrive in terms of public health, our resilience to climate change and to be able to secure our water and food security long into the future." In this episode of Rewilding the World Ben Goldsmith speaks with Tony Juniper, Chair of Natural England, and a lifelong campaigner for...
"We're essentially trying to create an AI powered research assistant to accelerate the rate of discovery and support biologists understanding even more and help the biologists come up with new hypotheses from their own data." Imagine if we could decipher the language of other animals such as whales, monkeys or crows? How would that change our relationship with them? In this episode Ben Goldsmith talks with Katie Zacarian of Earth Species, which is using artificial intelligence to do just this...
"Our herd is north of 5,000 so I think it's the largest conservation herd in the country and it may be the largest herd period, even amongst non conservation." North America's iconic bison are recovering from the brink of extinction. Millions of bison once populated the North American landscape but by the turn of the 20th century, fewer than 1,000 remained. In this episode of Rewilding the World Ben Goldsmith talks with Canadian bison champion Tom Olson about the return of this ma...
"I saw everything that was missing from the sea of my childhood." If you haven’t seen the latest David Attenborough film Ocean yet, you must. It’s a masterpiece. In the latest episode of Rewilding the World Ben Goldsmith speaks with one of the key people behind it, Enric Sala, from National Geographic‘s Pristine Seas campaign. It has secured protection from industrial fishing for millions of square kilometres of seas around the world. Enric is a true conservation hero. Ben Goldsmi...
"We have to make this crime type too risky and lower the reward. We need to seize all the assets that they gain from their criminal enterprise... it's something I'm very committed to." The illegal trade in wildlife and the body parts of wild animals is driving many creatures towards extinction; yet governments put little effort into busting the culprits and closing down this vile trade. In the latest episode of Rewilding the World, Ben Goldsmith talks to Olivia Swaak-Goldman, formerly of the ...
"Go for it. Go into any kind of career even if you don't have that ecological education and change the culture from within. That's just such a powerful moment." How can rewilding and traditional pastoral farming systems go hand-in-hand? The grazing, browsing and movement of livestock has shaped our landscapes across millennia. In the latest episode of rewilding the world Ben Goldsmith speaks to landscape ecologist Toby Diggens to discuss how the rich agro-ecological history of Britain informs...
"Oyster reefs do this really special thing; they become a refuge for finfish species, for crabs, for all types of really important species and so it's really critical for all of those species to interact together and oyster reefs make that habitat." New York’s Billion Oyster Project is one of the most exciting urban rewilding projects ever. In this episode of Rewilding the World, Ben talks to Katie Mosher about the once vast abundance of oysters in New York and along the whole Ea...
“You’re going to invest in a fund but this fund is going to own peatlands, sphagnum moss, re-wiggled rivers. It's going to restore farmland, it's going to own oyster reefs.” How are we going to find the funding needed to restore nature at scale? Protecting communities and infrastructure from flooding, and drought, by rewilding river systems may hold the key. In this episode of Rewilding the World, Ben Goldsmith is joined by Rob Gardner of Rebalance Earth, a new initiative which aims to ...
"We fill a law enforcement void that exists in the world's oceans and we'll continue to fill that void until government fills that vacuum. And then we'll hold government accountable." Sea Shepherd is a truly heroic organisation, with four ships, brave crews and volunteers who hunt down the world’s worst ocean abusers: illegal fishing vessels, and whalers are amongst the word offenders. Captain Peter Hammerstedt joins Ben Goldsmith to share some white-knuckle stories of environmental heroism o...
“There absolutely is no substitute for just seeing it but also smelling it, feeling it, hearing it. You can read all the books and watch all the films you like but there is absolutely no substitute for seeing it in the flesh.” The mysterious appearance of seemingly tame lynx in the Highlands of Scotland raised questions about who released them and why. Scotland’s native Eurasian lynx are believed to have suffered extinction more than 500 years ago. In this episode Ben Goldsmith is joine...
"Part of restoring nature - a really important part - is making sure that everyone has equal access to it." The National Trust is now arguably one of Britain’s most ambitious and important nature charities. It now has plans for restoring nature on an area larger than Greater London. In this episode Ben Goldsmith is joined by the Chair of the National Trust, Rene Olivieri, who has been huge voice for nature in the organisation. Ben Goldsmith is a British financier and rewilding enthusias...
“We don’t give nature enough credit. All mankind needs is to do is to move aside and let the natural system return.” Iraq is one of the five countries most touched by some effects of climate change, according to the United Nations. In this episode of Rewilding the World Ben Goldsmith talks with Azzam Alwash, founder of Nature Iraq, about the fabled Mesopotamian marshes. This great wetland is considered to have been the original Garden of Eden. Destroyed by Saddam Hussein, and now coming back ...
"We are destroying these ecosystems at our peril, and if we take out these apex predators, like mountain lions or lynx we are messing with our own capacity to survive, not just wildlife." Did you know there are mountain lions living in the very centre of Los Angeles? Some cougars have even gained celebrity status. In the latest episode of Rewilding World Ben Goldsmith is joined by wildlife celebrity Beth Pratt, whose job it is to foster harmonious coexistence between wildlife and people...
"British saltmashes accumulate about 700,000 tonnes of carbon a year alone, and in the top 10cm of soil saltmarshes hold about 2.3 million tonnes of carbon." Ben Goldsmith is joined by Angus Garbutt, a coastal ecologist and world expert on saltmarshes. In this episode Ben and Angus discuss why these mysterious, alien places are absolutely vital. So much saltmarsh habitat in Britain and around the world has been destroyed, but now ambitious efforts are underway to restore it. Ben Goldsmith is ...
The smell of a dead animal, a carcase, an animal that's just been killed, is something you'll never ever forget and it's that that sticks with you. It's that that gives you the energy to continually try and do my best to put a hold and a stop to what is still happening out in South Africa. In this episode of Rewilding the World Ben Goldsmith talks to England cricket legend Kevin Pietersen. Kevin is now devoting his considerable energy and lifelong love of nature to saving Africa’s rhinos fr...
"Up in Oregon, sixty miles from that old dam site, adult Chinook salmon were swimming in the Klamath River. It happened in ten days, when our scientists were saying it might take ten years." The largest dam removals in history just took place on California’s Klamath River. In the latest episode of Rewilding the World Ben Goldsmith talks with Chuck Bonham, Director of California Fish and Wildlife, about this iconic moment, and about the recovery of salmon, beavers, wolves and other wildlife ...
"River restoration is essentially a violent act, what we do, but it's because it's undoing a violent act. It's essentially an equal and opposite violent act to what was done to the rivers in the first place." Rivers are meant to be wild things but we have tamed them out of all recognition in the UK. Our rivers and streams have been straightened, buried underground, encased in concrete and are nothing like their natural incarnations. But there is a widespread river restoration movement takin...
"Larger scale restoration projects mean better ecological outcomes, but they're also more efficient in terms of cost-per-acre." What can be seen as one of the most important things currently happening in rewilding is the opening up of private investor capital for the purpose of restoring nature. This has never happened before; it’s always been a charitable endeavour. However, that model is changing, and very fast. Adam Davis, a cofounder of Ecosystem Investment Partners is deploying m...