What Is Rewilding Anyway?

In the third episode of the podcast, I speak to Neil Heseltine, a farmer based at Hill Top Farm in Malham, the Yorkshire Dales. Neil is already diversifying his farm for the benefit of wildlife, moving away from sheep to Belted Galloway cattle. Much of the talk around rewilding centres on the uplands in Britain, but what could or does this mean for the rural communities that already live and work there? Neil shares his views of this and more in the interview.

In this month’s episode, I went to the University of Leeds to speak to academic and director of the Wildland Research Institute, Dr Steve Carver. I have had several prior conversations with Steve on Twitter, and have always been interested to hear his thoughts on what we can really define as wild, how we could intergrate rewilding in Britain, and in particular the idea of rewilding as a ‘spectrum’, as illustrated below.

In this first episode, I interview Derek Gow – a reintroductions specialist who I’ve known and worked for over the last few years. Recently I also shared his ambitious advice to young conservationists on his behalf here.