Rewilding the World with Ben Goldsmith

Rewilding back to the Ice Age with Nikita Zimov

Wed, 31 Dec 2025 04:00:00 +0000 · 38 min

"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 Wor

How to rewild your garden without walking away, with Tom Stuart-Smith

Wed, 29 Jul 2026 04:00:00 +0100 · 36 min

"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

Disagreeing agreeably on Rewilding with Rory Stewart

Wed, 28 Oct 2026 04:00:00 +0000 · 61 min

"We are facing a catastrophe. We are about to face the largest clearance of small family farms from the English landscape that has ever been experienced, and it is driven directly by the incentives connected to these environmental schemes.""I have no problem at all with people saying, 'We really want to do this; we believe in more trees, we believe in the biodiversity, we believe in the nature ben

Finding solace in nature with Dave Mountjoy

Wed, 28 Jan 2026 04:00:00 +0000 · 37 min

"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 trage

How nature became Ukraine's secret weapon with Jasper Humphreys

Wed, 26 Aug 2026 04:00:00 +0100 · 27 min

"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

Bringing back the lost wild of Europe with Marija Krnjajic

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 04:00:00 +0000 · 35 min

"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 Mounta

Fighting for America's largest blackwater swamp with Josh Marks

Wed, 25 Feb 2026 04:00:00 +0000 · 38 min

"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 mag

Showcasing Otter-ly amazing aquatic engineers with Chanel Hason

Wed, 24 Sep 2025 04:00:00 +0100 · 35 min

"Sea otters are the best long term solution for the health of the ecosystem and resiliency off of the coast as a keystone species." The release of this episode of Rewilding the World coincides with Sea Otter Awareness Week. Ben Goldsmith talks with Chanel Hason of Elakha Alliance, working to reintroduce vital sea otters to their former Pacific north-west range. Sea Otter Awareness Week is organise

Why Africa must lead its conservation future with Kaddu Sebunya

Wed, 23 Sep 2026 04:00:00 +0100 · 35 min

"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

Renaturing small spaces with James Canton

Wed, 22 Oct 2025 04:00:00 +0100 · 36 min

"Something like 27 million people in Britain consider themselves gardeners. If you can harness those people, if you can get them thinking about their relationship with the natural world; with wildlife, with invertebrates, with bugs, with biodiversity, you're getting quite a big chunk of Britain heading in the right direction." In this episode of Rewilding the World Ben Goldsmith talks to Dr. James

The cougar comeback with Renee Seacor and Emily Carrollo

Wed, 22 Apr 2026 04:00:00 +0100 · 36 min

"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,

Could the wolf return to Japan? With Ryo Sakurai

Wed, 21 Oct 2026 04:00:00 +0100 · 38 min

"While people consider deer, wild boars, macaque as crop raiding pests, wolves were considered as good animals, benign animals, because they were considered to protect agricultural fields from such crop raiding pests. In fact, in many parts of Japan wolves were worshipped as gods."Japan's last wolves disappeared more than a century ago, and today its forests are overrun with deer. Might the wolf o

Dams, pollution and the collapse of the European eel with Joe Pecorelli

Wed, 20 May 2026 04:00:00 +0100 · 35 min

"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

Restoring Britain's wildest coast with Sandy Luk

Wed, 19 Nov 2025 03:00:00 +0000 · 30 min

"Our seas around the UK are so busy. There are so many different activities that happen on it, from fishing to offshore wind, to cabling, to shipping... so looking after and building space for restoration and regeneration and reseeding the sea is so important."On this episode of Rewilding the World Ben Goldsmith is joined by Sandy Luk about the Marine Conservation Society's ambitious Wild Atlantic

Resetting our relationship with nature with Tim Christophersen

Wed, 17 Jun 2026 04:00:00 +0100 · 40 min

"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 U

The crisis facing the curlew with Mary Colwell

Wed, 17 Dec 2025 04:00:00 +0000 · 36 min

"If it quacked like a Duck, to be honest I don't think we’d be that excited about it but because it sings like an angel and it looks so beautiful and it lives in liminal spaces - these wetland areas where we don’t really feel at home - all those things add together to make the Curlew a very mysterious and very loved bird."In this episode Ben Goldsmith is joined by Mary Colwell, Director of Curlew

A vision for rewilding at Emblehope with Benedict MacDonald and Gil Martin

Wed, 15 Jul 2026 04:00:00 +0100 · 39 min

"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 th

Managing England's forests for nature with Bev Nichols

Wed, 14 Jan 2026 04:00:00 +0000 · 39 min

"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 E

Hope for a wilder Britain with George Monbiot

Wed, 12 Aug 2026 04:00:00 +0100 · 37 min

"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 potentia

A bold vision to rewild South America with Deli Saavedra

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 04:00:00 +0000 · 39 min

"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 th

The rewilding powerhouse of Europe with Wouter Helmer

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 03:00:00 +0000 · 37 min

"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 Netherla

Europe is burning, here's what could stop it with Frans Schepers

Wed, 09 Sep 2026 04:00:00 +0100 · 32 min

"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 her

Protecting the new forests of New England with Shelby Perry

Wed, 08 Oct 2025 04:00:00 +0100 · 36 min

"What we really need to do, and what we're really trying to do with our work, is bring back that old forest condition and the main ingredient for that is time - we're buying these forests time." In this episode of Rewilding the World Ben Goldsmith talks with Shelby Perry from the Northeast Wilderness Trust. New England's vast and majestic forests have recovered greatly in the last century. Shelby

Saving songbirds from slaughter in the Mediterranean with Lloyd Scott

Wed, 08 Apr 2026 04:00:00 +0100 · 34 min

"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 ec

Reclaiming our dark skies with Megan Eaves-Egenes

Wed, 07 Oct 2026 04:00:00 +0100 · 34 min

"Eighty percent of the world’s population lives underneath a light polluted sky of some kind. When you look specifically at Europe and North America that statistic rises to ninety nine percent. So basically almost nobody can see the Milky Way, or can see a truly dark night’s sky." Most of us in Britain can no longer see the Milky Way from our homes, and we have barely noticed the loss. My guest on

Translocating two thousand giants across Africa with Donovan Jooste

Wed, 06 May 2026 04:00:00 +0100 · 38 min

"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 A

Why coexistence with wolves is vital with range-rider Daniel Curry

Wed, 05 Nov 2025 03:00:00 +0000 · 39 min

"They don't hate wolves, they just hate the idea of losing their livelihood. So for me, if we can prevent the conflict, and we can empower rural areas and rural land owners and ranchers to be the best stewards of the land that we can, that's the best way to keep conservation alive in the West."In the latest episode of Rewilding the World Ben Goldsmith talks to range-rider Daniel Curry who works wi

Wild land for everyone: The Rothbury Estate campaign with Craig Bennett

Wed, 03 Jun 2026 04:00:00 +0100 · 46 min

"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

Liberating Michigan's mighty Boardman-Ottaway river with Frank Dituri and Brett Fessel

Wed, 03 Dec 2025 03:00:00 +0000 · 36 min

"We thought the project was over... We would lose the trust of the public and they were sceptical to begin with. We stuck together."Michigan's mighty Boardman-Ottaway River has been liberated by the removal of four huge concrete dams, thanks to decades of hard work by Frank Dituri and Brett Fessell. In this episode you'll hear all about this staggering story of restoration.Ben Goldsmith is a Briti

The battle for the American Prairie with Alison Fox

Wed, 01 Jul 2026 04:00:00 +0100 · 35 min

"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 an