"When you’re going on the street and ask people: “What do you think about wetlands?”, people would say: “No, that’s too risky, that’s dirty. I don’t want to get sick!” – says in the podcast Dr. Jean-Yves Georges, a biologist and ecologist from Institut Pluridisciplinaire Hubert Curien (IPHC), who is the leader of the international EMYS-R project. Is this a true picture of wetlands? Why do we need to protect them? Why is social science so important in studying and solving environmental problems? We invite you to listen to this special episode in our Civitas on Air series! The EMYS-R project is a 3-year international research project focused on participatory activities in the field of nature protection, based on the most important theories in the field of humanities, social and natural sciences. The aim of the project is to test the hypothesis that a higher degree of wetland restoration can compensate for the limited capacity of the captive Emys orbicularis pond turtle to settle in the wild, and to answer the question of how such conservation measures can benefit society by bringing people closer together and the nature. The project website: https://emysr.cnrs.fr/project/summary/ Emys-R is funded through the 2020-2021 Biodiversa & Water JPI joint call for research proposals, under the BiodivRestore ERA-Net COFUND programme, and with the funding organisations Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR, France), Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (BMBF, Germany), State Education Development Agency (VIAA, Latvia), and National Science Center (NSC, Poland).