Rewilding the World with Ben Goldsmith

Epizode

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  Why Africa must lead its conservation future with Kaddu Sebunya 23.09.2026 35min

  "Come to Africa, find who should be responsible to carry out conservation and support that. Don’t take away the responsibility of Africans, because that hasn’t given us the results we need, and it’s very expensive. Find those government institutions, community institutions, those households that must carry out this work, and support them to do that." For too long the story of conservation in Africa has been told by outsiders. In the latest episode of the Rewilding the World podcast Ben ...
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  Europe is burning, here's what could stop it with Frans Schepers 09.09.2026 32min

  "Nature would like to change all the time, and that's guided by those landscape architects like large herbivores, but also other processes; wind, storm, disease, fire, flooding - you name it. Anything can change a landscape if we allow it." According to the European Commission as of 7 September, 650,458 hectares of land has burnt since the start of 2026, the worst year on record. Restoring big herds of wild herbivores such as bison and wild horses is one the keys to managing wildf...
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  How nature became Ukraine's secret weapon with Jasper Humphreys 26.08.2026 27min

  "This is a natural progression of how to protect your borders. And the other advantage is that it's cheaper; it's already there. So I can see that as demands on the defence budgets go up and up and up, that warWilding will become more and more prominent because it's a cash win-win situation for the beleaguered defence budgets." Ben's latest guest is Jasper Humphreys, director of programmes for the Marjan Study Group in the department of war studies at King’s College London who has coine...
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  Hope for a wilder Britain with George Monbiot 12.08.2026 37min

  "For me, the driver has always been love. It's been a love of thriving nature, it's been a love of rich and interesting landscapes and it's been this despair at seeing so few of them in our own country." Reading George Monbiot's book 'Feral' a decade ago opened Ben Goldsmith's eyes to the truly dire state of nature in Britain, and to the notion that rewilding is the big idea which has the potential to turn things round. George is a truly brilliant and articulate nature campaigner. He em...
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  How to rewild your garden without walking away, with Tom Stuart-Smith 29.07.2026 36min

  "This was very much an aesthetic concept in renaissance Italy; the three natures. The sort of ornamented nature, the cultivated nature and then the wild. So I've always thought about that as a fairly key principle. There comes a point where you've just got to sort of let up on the tiller a bit, and that it's lovely to grow dahlias and tulips outside your door but for God's sake there comes a point where you've just got to stop!" Legendary garden designer Tom Stuart-Smith is Ben Goldsmith's la...
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  A vision for rewilding at Emblehope with Benedict MacDonald and Gil Martin 15.07.2026 39min

  "Our aim is to re-create that sort of biosphere level peat land on a massive scale and unsurprisingly everything begins with water. And we need flowers and of course with flowers we’ll build insects so really straight and extraordinary complex botany on site and that’s gonna be really very difficult." "The aim in any rewetting project that we might do, and Emblehope is one of them, is to restore the dynamism and a natural function of that landscape." A big announcement on Rewilding the World!...
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  The battle for the American Prairie with Alison Fox 01.07.2026 35min

  "The bison will stay, no matter what happens here, and we will pursue all legal remedies for appealing this decision... but we will continue to manage a herd of bison, we will continue to open these lands to the public, we will continue to grow American Prairie." Ben Goldsmith is joined once again by Alison Fox, CEO of American Prairie, the ambitious conservation organisation working to protect and restore one of the world's great remaining wilderness landscapes across the Northern Grea...
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  Resetting our relationship with nature with Tim Christophersen 17.06.2026 40min

  "We are in an abusive relationship with nature and we all know what abusive relationships look like. They are when one part always takes, takes, takes and never gives anything back. That is the relationship we have with nature right now and that will not end well - for us - so it has to change." In the latest episode of Rewilding the World Ben Goldsmith is joined by Tim Christophersen, the former UN Environment leader who pioneered the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration. Now the Vice Pr...
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  Wild land for everyone: The Rothbury Estate campaign with Craig Bennett 03.06.2026 46min

  "Our dream is that children growing up in Newcastle should be able to stand on those terraces, look out and see this wonderful sort of wild landscape, and be able to go to it and spend time in it and see how food is produced naturally and be part of all that. Why would anyone want to deny that future for children in Britain?" In this episode of Rewilding the World, Ben Goldsmith is joined by Craig Bennett, chief executive of the iconic Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts. Under Craig’s leadershi...
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  Dams, pollution and the collapse of the European eel with Joe Pecorelli 20.05.2026 35min

  "The work that I'm involved with is more at catchment, at river basin scale. So it's trying to do the best we can - for us it's within the Thames - to hold as many eels in it as possible within that can grow up and migrate back to the Sargasso." The European eel is a truly fascinating creature, spending its life in freshwater rivers, streams, and even ponds, before turning silvery blue and swimming all the way to Bermuda’s Sargasso Sea to breed. Eels are disappearing fast. In this episo...
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  Translocating two thousand giants across Africa with Donovan Jooste 06.05.2026 38min

  "There's no silver bullet. It's a combination of efforts and it's a moving target. We constantly have to be adaptive, we constantly have to try and get ahead of the game and looking at it at a population level and not at an individual level is really, really important for the long term success here." African Parks made the astoundingly bold move of buying out a bankrupt white rhino farm in South Africa to rescue two thousand of these endangered giants. Now they’re busy translocati...
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  The cougar comeback with Renee Seacor and Emily Carrollo 22.04.2026 36min

  "It's very important to remember - for the same reasons we bought back many of these other species like beaver, river otter, fisher, bald eagle - that all these species have a role ecologically in these ecosystems. And so the same questions should be asked for species like large carnivores to help restore those ecological interactions and ecosystem services." America’s apex predator is the cougar, or mountain lion. They’re thriving in the West, but were wiped out two centuries ago in the East...
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  Saving songbirds from slaughter in the Mediterranean with Lloyd Scott 08.04.2026 34min

  "The amount of times I've been and just for a brief moment you almost sort of lose track and forget ... and you're just looking at this marvel on a really good migration day and the number of birds... and it's absolutely incredible and then the next thing you know, all of a sudden, you'll hear the gunshots start." The massacre of migrating birds each spring and autumn around the Mediterranean is ecocide. It’s done mostly for fun, status and selfies; sometimes for delicacies. Nightingales and ...
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  Bringing back the lost wild of Europe with Marija Krnjajic 25.03.2026 35min

  "I was driving once with my ranger - and we were in the car - and in front of us was a big, grey wolf. He was astonished. Both of us, we just stopped breathing." In the latest episode of Rewilding the World Ben Goldsmith interviews Croatian conservationist Marija Krnjajic of Rewilding Europe. Marija Is leading an effort to restore and protect one of Europe's greatest wild places, the Velebit Mountains. After speaking with Marija, Ben found himself longing to visit this magical place, an...
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  A bold vision to rewild South America with Deli Saavedra 11.03.2026 39min

  "This place went from zero percent possibilities to sight a jaguar in two or three days to 100 percent possibility to see jaguars. This change in perception of the people, because now 'the jaguar is not a problem' is an opportunity." Rewilding champion Deli Saavedra joins Ben Goldsmith again on Rewilding the World. Formerly Head of Landscapes at Rewilding Europe, Deli is now in Argentina leading the great Jaguar Rivers Initiative, one of the most ambitious rewilding initiatives in the w...
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  Fighting for America's largest blackwater swamp with Josh Marks 25.02.2026 37min

  "Myself and my colleagues were not fooled, we knew exactly what the were intending to do, and so we got the band back together and we rose up to build an army of activists and advocates to fight them over the last seven years." Last year, Ben Goldsmith was lucky enough to visit the great Okefenokee swamp in Georgia; the largest federally protected area east of the Mississippi. The place is pure magic, full of birds and fish, alligators and the singing of frogs; dark night skies like he'd rare...
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  The rewilding powerhouse of Europe with Wouter Helmer 11.02.2026 36min

  "If you give rivers more space to flood the lands, to bring sediment - sand, clay - they not only bring sediment, they also bring life!" In this episode of Rewilding the World, Ben Goldsmith interviews one of the most impactful architects of rewilding in Europe, Dutchman Wouter Helmer. Despite being the most densely populated, intensively farmed and heavily developed country in Europe, The Netherlands is a rewilding powerhouse. Wouter's key insight is simply that rewilding offers the mo...
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  Finding solace in nature with Dave Mountjoy 28.01.2026 37min

  "The animals are already existing in a mindful, non-thinking state and it's us who have to experience that moment where everything stops and you're just being, you're just experiencing in the most direct way the absolute beauty that the natural world contains." Like Ben Goldsmith, the latest guest on Rewilding the world, Dave Mountjoy, found deep solace in nature following an appalling family tragedy. Nestled in the foothills of the Pyrenees, Dave wrote a book about the profound connect...
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  Managing England's forests for nature with Bev Nichols 14.01.2026 39min

  "What are the things that really might just make a difference that take us out of a conventional nature conservation headspace and start to really push the boundaries of what can be done? And of course of one of the huge advantages we have is we've got the land to do it." In the latest episode of Rewilding the World Ben Goldsmith speaks to Bev Nichols, Forest Wilding Programme Manager at Forestry England, the largest landowner in Britain. Bev is overseeing a process of weaving wild natu...
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  Rewilding back to the Ice Age with Nikita Zimov 31.12.2025 38min

  "I don't want to make a zoo. I don't to take care of those animals for eternity, I want them to live on their own and in order to have a sustainable ecosystem it's extremely important to have all niches filled in this ecosystem." In the place of the vast Siberian tundras were once great grasslands teeming with wildlife, until early humans hunted them out. In the latest episode of Rewilding the World Nikita Zimov explains how his Pleistocene rewilding project in remotest Siberia is...