Rewilding the World with Ben Goldsmith

"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 benefits'. But you will have driven up Loch Lomond, past the Cameron House Hotel which is hundred of bedrooms, thousands of visitors, on the side of a Loch Lomond that would not have met any of your requirements, and it's unbelievably popular and it brings a lot of money in to the economy."

"Is the response to me, or to the Cumbrian farmer, 'Well, I'm afraid you're the victim of this, suck it up because it's much better for the whole world that beavers exist and Rory, you can just spend a couple of days in your septic tank'?"

On this special extended episode of Rewilding the World, Ben Goldsmith is joined by Rory Stewart, academic, former politician and diplomat, and a host of The Rest is Politics podcast. 

Rory has been a rewilding sceptic for some time, especially when it comes to the uplands where he argues farming is facing a crisis due to certain rewilding initiatives. 

This conversation - where the two mostly disagree agreeably - covers wildcats, beavers, government subsidies, and whether we should have sheep or native cattle in our uplands.  

Ben Goldsmith is a British financier and rewilding enthusiast. Join him for each new episode as he speaks to people from all over the world who champion nature and are helping to restore habitats and wildlife to some of the most nature depleted parts of our planet.

This podcast is produced by The Podcast Coach.

Text Rewilding the World here. Let us know what you think of the podcast and if there are any rewilding projects you would love Ben to feature in future episodes.

The Devon Environment Foundation (DEF) is on a mission to accelerate nature restoration across Devon.

Devon’s beautiful natural landscapes are under growing pressure from farming, housing development, and sewage, plastic, and other pollution.

Grassroots nature restoration offers an inspiring, cost-effective response.

We raise money from people and businesses who love Devon, directing it where it delivers the greatest benefit for local nature.

We'd love to know what you think of the podcast. Do you have suggestions for guests, stories or topics you'd like to hear more about? To help us develop the show please consider taking a couple of minutes to complete our listener survey. Thank you very much if you've already done so, it's much appreciated. 

"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 one day return? 

In this episode of Rewilding the World Ben Goldsmith speaks to Ryo Sakurai, who has spent years studying how Japanese people feel about that idea. The answers are surprising.

Ben Goldsmith is a British financier and rewilding enthusiast. Join him as he speaks to people from all over the world who champion nature and are helping to restore habitats and wildlife to some of the most nature depleted parts of our planet.

This podcast is produced by The Podcast Coach.

Text Rewilding the World here. Let us know what you think of the podcast and if there are any rewilding projects you would love Ben to feature in future episodes.

The Devon Environment Foundation (DEF) is on a mission to accelerate nature restoration across Devon.

Devon’s beautiful natural landscapes are under growing pressure from farming, housing development, and sewage, plastic, and other pollution.

Grassroots nature restoration offers an inspiring, cost-effective response.

We raise money from people and businesses who love Devon, directing it where it delivers the greatest benefit for local nature.

We'd love to know what you think of the podcast. Do you have suggestions for guests, stories or topics you'd like to hear more about? To help us develop the show please consider taking a couple of minutes to complete our listener survey. Thank you very much if you've already done so, it's much appreciated. 

"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 this edition of the Rewilding the World podcast is Megan Eaves-Egenes, author of the wonderful new book Nightfaring: In Search of the Disappearing Darkness.

Megan explains why darkness matters so much to wildlife and to us, and how easily we could bring it back.

Ben Goldsmith is a British financier and rewilding enthusiast. Join him as he speaks to people from all over the world who champion nature and are helping to restore habitats and wildlife to some of the most nature depleted parts of our planet.

This podcast is produced by The Podcast Coach.

Text Rewilding the World here. Let us know what you think of the podcast and if there are any rewilding projects you would love Ben to feature in future episodes.

The Devon Environment Foundation (DEF) is on a mission to accelerate nature restoration across Devon.

Devon’s beautiful natural landscapes are under growing pressure from farming, housing development, and sewage, plastic, and other pollution.

Grassroots nature restoration offers an inspiring, cost-effective response.

We raise money from people and businesses who love Devon, directing it where it delivers the greatest benefit for local nature.

We'd love to know what you think of the podcast. Do you have suggestions for guests, stories or topics you'd like to hear more about? To help us develop the show please consider taking a couple of minutes to complete our listener survey. Thank you very much if you've already done so, it's much appreciated. 

"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 has been told by outsiders. In the latest episode of the Rewilding the World podcast Ben Goldsmith talks to Kaddu Sebunya of the African Wildlife Foundation. Kaddu argues brilliantly that the future of Africa's magnificent wildlife depends on Africans leading the way. 

Ben Goldsmith is a British financier and rewilding enthusiast. Join him as he speaks to people from all over the world who champion nature and are helping to restore habitats and wildlife to some of the most nature depleted parts of our planet.

This podcast is produced by The Podcast Coach.

Text Rewilding the World here. Let us know what you think of the podcast and if there are any rewilding projects you would love Ben to feature in future episodes.

We'd love to know what you think of the podcast. Do you have suggestions for guests, stories or topics you'd like to hear more about? To help us develop the show please consider taking a couple of minutes to complete our listener survey. Thank you very much if you've already done so, it's much appreciated. 

"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 herds of wild herbivores such as bison and wild horses is one the keys to managing wildfire in Europe. 

In this episode of Rewilding the World Ben Goldsmith is joined by Frans Schepers, founder and chief executive of Europe’s most important rewilding organisation, Rewilding Europe. Frans is leading the transformation of vast tracts of Europe. 

Ben Goldsmith is a British financier and rewilding enthusiast. Join him as he speaks to people from all over the world who champion nature and are helping to restore habitats and wildlife to some of the most nature depleted parts of our planet.

This podcast is produced by The Podcast Coach.

Text Rewilding the World here. Let us know what you think of the podcast and if there are any rewilding projects you would love Ben to feature in future episodes.

We'd love to know what you think of the podcast. Do you have suggestions for guests, stories or topics you'd like to hear more about? To help us develop the show please consider taking a couple of minutes to complete our listener survey. Thank you very much if you've already done so, it's much appreciated. 

"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 Marjan Study Group in the department of war studies at King’s College London who has coined a new phrase: warWilding, “using nature in warfare”. 

In the early days of the Russia-Ukraine war the dying Irpin River was reflooded for the first time in more than 70 years. The rising water stopped the Russians literally in their tracks, leaving behind a trail of tanks and military hardware. 

In this episode find out how Jasper thinks that warWilding can be used by military departments at a time when budgets and resources appear thin. 

Ben Goldsmith is a British financier and rewilding enthusiast. Join him as he speaks to people from all over the world who champion nature and are helping to restore habitats and wildlife to some of the most nature depleted parts of our planet.

This podcast is produced by The Podcast Coach.

Text Rewilding the World here. Let us know what you think of the podcast and if there are any rewilding projects you would love Ben to feature in future episodes.

We'd love to know what you think of the podcast. Do you have suggestions for guests, stories or topics you'd like to hear more about? To help us develop the show please consider taking a couple of minutes to complete our listener survey. Thank you very much if you've already done so, it's much appreciated. 

"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 potential to turn things round.

George is a truly brilliant and articulate nature campaigner. He emphasises that many of the landscapes in the UK are pretty dire in ecological terms but that this damage can be reversed through rewilding. 

Ben Goldsmith is a British financier and rewilding enthusiast. Join him as he speaks to people from all over the world who champion nature and are helping to restore habitats and wildlife to some of the most nature depleted parts of our planet.

This podcast is produced by The Podcast Coach.

Text Rewilding the World here. Let us know what you think of the podcast and if there are any rewilding projects you would love Ben to feature in future episodes.

We'd love to know what you think of the podcast. Do you have suggestions for guests, stories or topics you'd like to hear more about? To help us develop the show please consider taking a couple of minutes to complete our listener survey. Thank you very much if you've already done so, it's much appreciated. 

"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 where you've just got to stop!"

Legendary garden designer Tom Stuart-Smith is Ben Goldsmith's latest guest on Rewilding the World. Tom and Ben debate the growing trend for wilder gardening, and opposition to it from the likes of Alan Titchmarsh and Monty Don. 

Ben Goldsmith is a British financier and rewilding enthusiast. Join him as he speaks to people from all over the world who champion nature and are helping to restore habitats and wildlife to some of the most nature depleted parts of our planet.

This podcast is produced by The Podcast Coach.

Text Rewilding the World here. Let us know what you think of the podcast and if there are any rewilding projects you would love Ben to feature in future episodes.

We'd love to know what you think of the podcast. Do you have suggestions for guests, stories or topics you'd like to hear more about? To help us develop the show please consider taking a couple of minutes to complete our listener survey. Thank you very much if you've already done so, it's much appreciated. 

"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 the dynamism and a natural function of that landscape."

A big announcement on Rewilding the World! In the latest episode, visionary nature writer Benedict MacDonald and experienced rewilder Gil Martin from Restore tell us about England's newest huge rewilding project. 

Ben Goldsmith is a British financier and rewilding enthusiast. Join him as he speaks to people from all over the world who champion nature and are helping to restore habitats and wildlife to some of the most nature depleted parts of our planet.

This podcast is produced by The Podcast Coach.

Text Rewilding the World here. Let us know what you think of the podcast and if there are any rewilding projects you would love Ben to feature in future episodes.

We'd love to know what you think of the podcast. Do you have suggestions for guests, stories or topics you'd like to hear more about? To help us develop the show please consider taking a couple of minutes to complete our listener survey. Thank you very much if you've already done so, it's much appreciated. 

"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 and restore one of the world's great remaining wilderness landscapes across the Northern Great Plains of Montana.

Since Alison's last appearance on the podcast, the ground has shifted dramatically. In a move that has sent shockwaves through the conservation world, the Bureau of Land Management has revoked American Prairie's grazing permits for their bison. A decision that strikes at the very heart of the organisation's rewilding mission.

This episode is a candid, urgent conversation about the realities of large-scale rewilding in the modern American West - where ranching culture, federal land politics, and a bold conservation vision are in direct collision.

Ben Goldsmith is a British financier and rewilding enthusiast. Join him as he speaks to people from all over the world who champion nature and are helping to restore habitats and wildlife to some of the most nature depleted parts of our planet.

This podcast is produced by The Podcast Coach.

Text Rewilding the World here. Let us know what you think of the podcast and if there are any rewilding projects you would love Ben to feature in future episodes.

We'd love to know what you think of the podcast. Do you have suggestions for guests, stories or topics you'd like to hear more about? To help us develop the show please consider taking a couple of minutes to complete our listener survey. Thank you very much if you've already done so, it's much appreciated.