“Affric Highlands is an area of landscape between Loch Ness and the west coast of Scotland, looking over to the Isle of Skye. It’s about 500,000 acres so it’s like a small country.” Scotland’s fabled highlands are not what we think they are. Once upon a time the great Caledonian forests stretched from coast to coast, famed for its wildness and size. It teemed with wildlife and large animals like wolves, bears and lynx. Now, so much of what was once there has gone. In this episode Ben...

“When I see things like the crossing that’s just going in north of Los Angeles for mountain lions, bobcats and other species it’s a sign to me that humanity finally gets that it’s impacting nature and, essentially, impacting us.” The shorthand definition of rewilding is the ‘Three Cs’; Core areas, Carnivores, and Corridors. Jodi Hilty is president and chief scientist of Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative, one of the largest wildlife corridor creating projects in the world. Jodi...

“As Kazakhstan became part of the Soviet Union a whole series of very large transformations took place. 45 million hectares of land within Kazakhstan was simply ploughed under the Virgin Lands campaign.” Mark Day is from the RSPB and part of the team delivering a project covering 180 million acres in Kazakhstan and Central Asia. The Altyn Dala, an area the size of France and Germany combined, is a huge grassland that once may have rivalled the Serengeti. The Altyn Dala Conservation...

“We call it rooting your identity. That really brings people close to the ground and feeling powerful and connected.” In this episode Ben Goldsmith speaks to Astrid Vargas from Inspiration 4 Action. Astrid has been part of a plan to save one of the rarest big cats from extinction; the Iberian lynx. It was previously thought there were only 90 individuals left. Thanks to the efforts of Astrid and others, a captive breeding programme has succeeded in boosting the numbers of this...

“If you combine all of these reserves together they constitute an area of about 200,000 square kilometres... it’s probably one of the world’s largest terrestrial protected areas.” Saudi Arabia is huge - almost ten times the size of Britain - and is well known for its deserts. However, once upon a time it had savannahs akin to those in East Africa, where once lived ostriches and striped hyenas and large predators like leopards and cheaters. A lot of that habitat has now gone following the...

“We really are focused on prioritising those species that are about to blink out. We must make sure that on our watch that doesn’t happen.” Welcome to a new series of Rewilding the World with Ben Goldsmith. In this first episode Ben speaks to Penny Becker, Vice President of Island Conservation. Island Conservation works to remove invasive invertebrate species from island ecosystems. Overwhelmingly, the majority of extinctions that have taken place over the last few centuries have occurred...

“We belong here. The challenge is can we be here without impacting detrimentally on the rest of the ecosystem. And the simple answer is yes we can; we know what to do and we know how to do it.” In this special episode join Ben Goldsmith as he speaks to conservationist and author Isabella Tree and Director of Rewilding Britain, Alistair Driver, about the concept of rewilding. Rewilding as a term means different things to different people, and can sometimes be viewed negatively. In this...

“If we can restore large scale damaged ecosystems then why don’t we do it?”  Sometimes it’s said that the environmental and rewilding movement is not ambitious enough. Ben speaks to Ties van der Hoeven, co-founder of The Weather Makers, who is working on probably the most exciting and ambitious rewilding idea you have ever heard of. Drawing inspiration from landscape restoration taking place in China and elsewhere, Ties has an idea to regreen the Sinai peninsula, a triangle of desert that...

“I thought well I can die tomorrow, it’s fine, they are back.” Kristine Tompkins is founder of Tompkins Conservation and former chief executive of the outdoor-apparel company Patagonia. She and her late husband Douglas have been pioneers of rewilding since the beginning of the movement. The couple purchased millions of acres of land across Chile and Argentina to restore to wilderness. Kristine speaks to Ben Goldsmith about her rewilding journey spanning the past three decades, including the...

“I think people are afraid that we want to remove all the dams in the world.” Dams can effectively act as concrete straight jackets. Weirs and dams and other obstructions cause all kinds of harm, some of which we understand and much of which we don’t.  More than one million barriers are thought to exist in Europe’s rivers, with many of them over 100 years old. Some are old and obsolete, serving no economic or environmental purpose.  Spain is leading the way in the number of structures being...

“If there is tens of thousands of hectares on the market then you might as well use them for conservation.” Christoph Promberger, along with his wife Barbara and their team, is rewilding an enormous woodland across Transylvania, Carpathia and Romania. He joins Ben Goldsmith from his home at the foot of the Carpathian mountains, a range which stretches through seven countries and home to some of Europe’s rarest large mammals including brown bears, lynx and wolves.  Over the last few decades...

“Wild areas where you are going to be walking for two days completely alone, there is no one else.” No country in western Europe has as much diversity and abundance of wildlife and landscapes as Spain. Ben Goldsmith speaks to Deli Saavedra from Rewilding Europe about the exciting things which are happening there on scale.  Deli is leading a project in the Iberian Highlands, the name given to an area of land stretching from Madrid and Barcelona of almost one million hectares. There, entire...

“This is where they have been for millions of years and they deserve a home on the Northern Great Plains.” The great American Prairies were once one of the greatest ecosystems in the world. We have all seen images and heard stories of great herds of bison roaming vast swathes of endless grasslands, but a lot of that landscape is now gone.  But all is not lost. Alison Fox from American Prairie Reserve joins Ben Goldsmith to talk about plans to pull off a dramatic restoration project in...

Join Ben Goldsmith for this brand new podcast as he speaks to some of the most influential people behind the most exciting and dramatic rewilding projects across the globe.