Photo: Stephen Garnett

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.

The Rewilding Continuum (Steve Carver)

These and more were just some of the topics talked about in the latest podcast in the ‘What is Rewilding Anyway?” series, which you can listen to in the audio file below.

Welcome to the first installment of a new podcast series, What is Rewilding anyway? While much discussion and early stages of practice of the concept now abounds, the key to settle on a definition perhaps holds a lot of its potential back.

This podcast will speak with not only practicioners on the ground, but proponents and critics of the idea from different walks of life. All to talk through the complexities and source what their definition of rewilding may be.

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.

Some of Derek’s white storks – coming soon to a countryside near you?