Rewilding the World with Ben Goldsmith

Feb 25 2025 46 ep. 33 mins 122

Rewilding the World with Ben Goldsmith Podcast artwork

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

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Living alongside mountain lions in LA with Beth Pratt

Feb 25 2025 35 mins

"We are destroying these ecosystems at our peril, and if we take out these apex predators, like mountain lions or lynx we are messing with our own capacity to survive, not just wildlife." Did you know there are mountain lions living in the very centre of Los Angeles? Some cougars have even gained celebrity status. In the latest episode of Rewilding World Ben Goldsmith is joined by

Between land and sea - the importance of saltmarshes with Angus Garbutt

Feb 11 2025 31 mins

"British saltmashes accumulate about 700,000 tonnes of carbon a year alone, and in the top 10cm of soil saltmarshes hold about 2.3 million tonnes of carbon." Ben Goldsmith is joined by Angus Garbutt, a coastal ecologist and world expert on saltmarshes. In this episode Ben and Angus discuss why these mysterious, alien places are absolutely vital. So much saltmarsh habitat in Britain

Saving Africa's rhinos with Kevin Pietersen

Jan 28 2025 34 mins

The smell of a dead animal, a carcase, an animal that's just been killed, is something you'll never ever forget and it's that that sticks with you. It's that that gives you the energy to continually try and do my best to put a hold and a stop to what is still happening out in South Africa. In this episode of Rewilding the World Ben Goldsmith talks to England cricket legend Kevin Pi

Restoring California's Klamath River with Chuck Bonham

Jan 14 2025 36 mins

"Up in Oregon, sixty miles from that old dam site, adult Chinook salmon were swimming in the Klamath River. It happened in ten days, when our scientists were saying it might take ten years." The largest dam removals in history just took place on California’s Klamath River. In the latest episode of Rewilding the World Ben Goldsmith talks with Chuck Bonham, Director of California F

Repairing and restoring Britain's rivers with Mike Blackmore

Dec 31 2024 31 mins

"River restoration is essentially a violent act, what we do, but it's because it's undoing a violent act. It's essentially an equal and opposite violent act to what was done to the rivers in the first place." Rivers are meant to be wild things but we have tamed them out of all recognition in the UK. Our rivers and streams have been straightened, buried underground, encased in concr

Persuading investors to pay for rewilding projects with Adam Davis

Dec 17 2024 39 mins

"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, tha

Meet the Pablo Escobar of beavers, Gerhard Schwab

Dec 03 2024 34 mins

"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

High altitude forest restoration in the Andes with Florent Kaiser

Nov 19 2024 34 mins

"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

Who will pay to rewild the world with Tim Coles

Nov 05 2024 35 mins

"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

Reintroducing species to Britain with The Beaver King, Derek Gow

Oct 22 2024 38 mins

"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 reintr