Rewilding advocate, financier and host of the popular podcast Rewilding the World, Ben Goldsmith, joins Mongabay’s podcast to discuss nature restoration in his home country of England, where a significant cultural change is taking hold toward reviving biodiversity, such as beavers. Once seen as a nuisance there, many farmers and planners now embrace the rebound of the huge rodent, thanks to its impressive ability to mitigate flooding events that the island nation now experiences with regularity, due to climate change.

“If you stop a random person on the street now, in the city or in the countryside, they know that beavers are back, that [they] are native species, that they play a vital role in managing our rivers,” he says.

However, he argues that while there has been some rewilding momentum in England, it’s not happening fast enough, particularly for larger carnivores like wolves.

“The idea of reintroducing them is considered madness. Even though there are news reports of swelling populations of deer and growing incidents of Lyme disease and road traffic collisions and a disequilibrium in our forests,” Goldsmith says.

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Image Credit: Chrome Hill in Yorkshire, England. Image by Tim Hill via Pixabay (Pixabay free content license).

Timecodes

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(00:00) “We don’t have wildlife here”

(11:46) England’s rewilding comeback

(15:05) Cultural and economic shifts

(25:24) Changing environment policy

(30:52) Nitrogen and pollinators

(37:43) Getting along with ‘difficult’ wildlife

(47:51) Rewilding the World