"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 mill...
"I'm very happy, last week we brought beavers to France and that was my 1000th beaver I had exported either myself or through the organisation. And that was not just to bring back the beaver, but also to bring back the benefits of the beaver." One man is responsible more than any other for bringing beavers back to Europe; German ecologist, Gerhard Schwab.There were probably two to three million beavers across Eurasia, reduced to maybe a thousand in 1900. Gerhard persuaded one state after the ...
"If you look at restoring the whole Andes, the entire Andean mountain range, you can't just go at it by planting trees. There are so many other things that you need to do to holistically permit nature to actually come back."In this episode Ben Goldsmith talks with inspirational Earthshot Prizewinner, Florent Kaiser. Florent is leading an effort to restore the high altitude forests of the Andes, stretching all the way from Venezuela down to Patagonia. Accion Andina is a truly earth changing in...
"We just put together a project in Indonesia on restoring mangroves and it's 2000 hectares, and over 40 years the local communities will get in excess of 100 million dollars."People are pretty much sold on the idea that we need to restore nature at scale. David Attenborough said it himself, we need to ‘rewild the world’ but the question is how do you pay for it? What if there was a way, a market mechanism, for getting the world's largest companies to do just that? In this episode Ben Goldsmit...
"Coming to terms with the wolf in Britain would be one of the biggest and bravest things we've ever done. But we desperately need to start a conversation about how we do this and when we do this and start to make progress towards attaining it as a real goal." Beavers are the ultimate ecosystem engineers. Derek Gow is a farmer turned conservationist and played a major role in reintroducing the Eurasion beaver to England.In this episode Ben Goldsmith speaks to Derek about how he led the charge ...
"If you want to save any species on Earth, there's really only one species you have to fully understand, and thats homo sapiens, because are the cause and therefore we are the solution to just about every rewilding or biodiversity or climate concern."This time on Rewilding the World, Ben Golsmith talks to Brett Jenks, CEO of Rare.org. They discuss how the St. Lucian parrot was saved - in part - by a rebrand and how changing the attitudes of ordinary people can have transformatively positive i...
"I remember genuinely thinking, 'we don't need insects. What's the point of them?' Little did I know!"Welcome to a new series of Rewilding the World with Ben Goldsmith. In this first episode Ben is joined by Stephen Fry.As well as being a national treasure, and one of the funniest people in England, Stephen has long championed nature projects both in the UK and abroad.Ben talks to Stephen about where his love of nature comes from, and how he thinks we can go about bringing even more people to...
"Over a period of 10 years we were able to rear in captivity 331 Kestrels that we released back into nature." In the latest episode of Rewilding the World Ben Goldsmith speaks with legendary conservationist Carl Jones about the island of Mauritius. Carl famously led efforts to save a variety of species. These included the Mauritius kestrel which was on the brink of going the way of the dodo, as well as a bunch of landscape-scale rewilding projects in Mauritius and its surrounding islets.Carl ...
"El Carmen Nature Reserve is a very good example of a success of conservation, with the interaction of several actors from the private sector and government agencies from both sides of the border."In this episode Ben Goldsmith is joined by Alejandro Espinosa Treviño who - on behalf of Cemex - is overseeing restoration of a great swathe of grassland, forest and mountain on Mexico’s northern border with the US.Alejandro and his team have recently reintroduced bison to the El Carmen Nature Reser...
"We have started to get a few things right, why can't we just watch the things we have done right and do more of them?"In the latest episode of Rewilding the World Ben Goldsmith speaks with legendary author and oceans campaigner Charles Clover who also co-founded the Blue Marine Foundation. Charles' seminal book, The End of the Line, marked a turning point in our understanding of the collapse of marine wildlife when it was released two decades ago. Finally now, meaningful efforts are underway...
"Our dream is quite simple and that is to achieve co-existence between people and nature."This episode focuses on one of the grandest, most vast rewilding efforts anywhere on the planet.Join Ben Goldsmith as he speaks with Werner Myburgh of Peace Parks, an organisation dedicated to establishing immense trans frontier protected areas across southern Africa. The rehabilitation of these vast landscapes, liberated from fencing, species restored, poaching driven out, is dramatic and uplifting. Ben...
"It's now been seven years since we removed the rats and goats and I just walk around with my mouth open, it is beautiful. There are so many trees on the island - when we started there was only two - now I can't count them."The Caribbean is a magical place; but it’s also one of the most ecologically degraded regions in the world. In this episode Ben Goldsmith speaks with Jenny Daltry who is leading rewilding efforts in Antigua and across the Caribbean.Ben Goldsmith is a British financier and ...
"Engaging with nature in that urban space can be so beneficial and if we scale those micro actions up to a macro level, imagine the change that would seed."More and more urban rewilding projects are engaging growing numbers of citizens in local nature restoration. In this episode of Rewilding the World Ben Goldsmith is joined by Elliot Newton of Citizen Zoo – an organisation which is bringing people together across London to restore habitats and reintroduce missing species such as water voles...
"All of us involved in the project are driven by the opportunity to make a real difference for this special part of the planet." Eradicating giant mice from South Africa's Marion Island, a vital haven for seabirds. The vast, wild Southern Ocean is home to albatrosses, petrels and other remarkable seabirds which wander for years on end in search of food. Only to breed do the seabirds of the Southern Ocean need land, of which there are just a handful of tiny specs. One of these is South Africa'...
"A lot of Costa Rica's success on forest cover hasn't been emulated in terms of active rewilding. That's what I'm trying to start the wheels turning in Costa Rica; when do we need to use more of an active approach?" In this episode Ben Goldsmith is joined by Andy Whitworth of Osa Conservation, an organisation which is busy rewilding Costa Rica's ever wilder Osa Peninsula.Liberated from low productivity, highly damaging cattle ranching, much of western Costa Rica is returning to forest. On the...
“I would be very excited if I found a grasshopper on the balcony and my parents would put it in a jar for me to observe.”In this episode Melpo Apostolidou from BirdLife Cyprus tells Ben Goldsmith about the remarkable ongoing effort to return the vital, majestic Griffon vulture to the skies of Cyprus, in the eastern Mediterranean.Melpo and her team have achieved this extraordinary feat against a backdrop of poisoning, ill-considered and unsustainable development and, worst of all, rampant ille...
This episode’s release coincides with World Rewilding Day 2024, with this year’s theme being Hope Into Action. A great example of this in practice is the work being carried out by Jonathan Thomson who has created the twenty-two acre wild paradise Underhill Nature Reserve on the border of Wiltshire and Dorset in southern England.A lot of people wonder how to go about rewilding smaller patches of land. The answer can be found in playing the role of the keystone species yourself! In this episode...
“We’re already starting to see dramatic habitat and water quality improvement across that Kissimmee valley.”The Everglades, North America’s largest and most vital wetland, is a place of extraordinary beauty but is facing enormous problems. The immense ‘river of grass’ has been desperately disfigured, principally by ill-considered hydrological engineering and heavily subsidised industrial sugar production.In this episode Ben Goldsmith is joined by Steve Davies, lead scientist of The Everglades...
“Feral cats are the primary driver of the decline of small mammals. We’ve lost more than 30 mammal species in Australia over the last couple of hundred years and the primary driver of that is cats.”Australia has a mammoth problem with invasive species brought by European settlers to the country which had been isolated from the rest of the world for millennia. Now, major efforts are underway to restore vast tracts of wild land and the wildlife that once inhabited it.In this episode Ben Goldsmi...
“Think globally, but act locally. We need to start putting some of that stuff back locally otherwise we don’t pass on anything great to our future generations.”The Scottish Highlands is one of Britain’s most beautiful and ecologically degraded landscapes. Change is in the air, however, as long lost keystone species such as wild boar, wildcats, white-tailed eagles and beavers are returning.In this episode Ben Goldsmith speaks with Highlander David Balharry, who leads the John Muir Trust, an or...