The Rewild Podcast – Details, episodes & analysis

Whilst the vast forests of Swedish Lapland might look like a wilderness from the air, get in and amongst the trees and they're anything but. Forestry plantations dominate the map, where trees are planted in dense rows and light on the forest floor is a rare sight.  The rivers didn't escape the booming timber industry either, historically engineered beyond recognition to float logs downstream to awaiting sawmills. Boulders were ripped from the riverbeds, woody debris was removed and flooring was brought in to simplify the route as much as possible. The team at Rewilding Sweden is now busy restoring these ecosystems, where the forest and rivers are treated not as separate entities, but entwined waterscapes.

Swedish Lapland is one of ten inspirational rewilding landscapes, brought together by Rewilding Europe  to drive forwards the large scale recovery of nature across the continent.

The Oder Delta is an important river catchment in the borderlands of Poland and Germany. Here, intricate waterways meander through hay meadows, alluvial forest, marshlands and lagoon, before heading out to the Baltic Sea.

This landscape feels rich in life, but it could still be so much more. Pollution events have killed off huge quantities of fish and many of the waterways have been manipulated for milling, agriculture, hydro schemes and transport.

Rewilding work is now focused on returning the rivers to a more natural state, and with it, the diverse bounty of life that rely on them.

 

The Meuse Valley River Park is a pioneering partnership in the southern tip of the Netherlands. Here, an unlikely collaboration between miners & ecologists is working hard to rewild a river.

The different stakeholders have come together to pave a new way for gravel extraction, nature restoration and flood protection to work side by side. Where a historically modified landscape recently sat, a dynamic ecosystem is now progressing.

A large stretch of river is being released from its shackles and being given the space to act more freely.

The Meuse Valley River Park is a member of the European Rewilding Network, a collection of groundbreaking initiatives across the continent, brought together by Rewilding Europe as part of a broader rewilding movement.

 

Knepp Wildland has become one of the most important areas in Britain for breeding birds. It's brimming with butterflies and humming with crickets. It's bucking the trend of biodiversity declines across the board.

Why?

Because the team here has allowed in the untidy. They've welcomed a tangle of scrub and a knot of thorns.

The most inspiring thing about this is the speed of change. Just 15 years ago, this was an intensive farm.

Knepp Wildland is a member of the European Rewilding Network, a collection of groundbreaking initiatives across the continent, brought together by Rewilding Europe as part of a broader rewilding movement.

Grote Netewoud is a rewilding area in the heart of one of Europe's most densely populated countries. Here, Belgium's largest nature organisation, Natuurpunt, is restoring the natural flow of water to allow the return of alluvial forest. This special ecosystem is a tangle of willow and alder, where beavers work their magic & an eruption of dragonflies & damselflies dance above the standing water. But can rewilding still work at a smaller scale & alongside all the complications human infrastructure brings to the table? Grote Netewoud is a member of the European Rewilding Network, a collection of groundbreaking initiatives across the continent, brought together by Rewilding Europe as part of a broader rewilding movement.

The Greater Côa Valley is a 120,000-hectare watershed where rewilding is helping create a healthy, natural corridor for some of the country's most iconic species.

The Rewilding Portugal team is working to improve co-existence between predators and rural communities whilst creating more natural ecosystems that are resilient to fire.

The Greater Côa Valley is one of ten pioneering, large-scale landscapes created by Rewilding Europe to demonstrate the benefits of wilder nature.

Join James Shooter as he discovers this awe-inspiring location, home to Iberian wolves, Egyptian vultures and dung beetles.

Tour du Valat is a private research institute that owns and manages land on the French Camargue. These Mediterranean wetlands are rich in life thanks to a patchwork of habitats created by river, tide, wind and wave.

From the iconic Greater Flamingo, to the wonderfully weird European Eel, a wealth of wildlife can be found here. But even so, these are habitats under stress, and this low-lying ecosystem is at the sharp end of a changing climate.

Can rewilding safeguard this important landscape for the future? 

Tour du Valat is a member of the European Rewilding Network, a collection of groundbreaking initiatives across the continent, brought together by Rewilding Europe as part of a broader rewilding movement.

 

 

Iberian Highlands is 850,000 hectares of some of Spain's best-kept wild space. It hosts as-far-as-the-eye-can-see forests, towering geological wonders and strangely flat Mediterranean steppe.

There are, however, some important levels of the trophic chain completely missing. Learn how Rewilding Spain is working to change this, whilst improving the lives of rural communities that are suffering from an ongoing trend of rural depopulation.

Iberian Highlands is the tenth large, pioneering landscape created by Rewilding Europe to demonstrate the benefits of wilder nature.

On the west coast of Scotland, by the shores of Loch Craignish, a community has come together to help restore their marine environment. 

When deciding on how to put something back, they identified two priority marine features they could do something about. This is a story about carbon capturing seagrass, water filtering oysters & the passionate people tirelessly working to restore both. Seawilding is a member of the European Rewilding Network, a collection of groundbreaking initiatives across the continent, brought together by Rewilding Europe as part of a broader rewilding movement.

 

 

Whilst many visitors come to Scotland for romantic notions of wildness, the truth is, ecologically speaking, it's a massively nature-depleted nation. The Caledonian Forest, Scotland’s native pinewoods, once stretched over much of the land but has now dwindled to just a handful of sites. The remaining trees are aging, and without help, they will struggle to reproduce and disperse, leaving only isolated fragments across the landscape.

So where have they gone? Why haven’t they come back? And how do you go about regrowing a forest lost from the memory of modern-day Scotland?
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The efforts by Trees for Life in Glen Affric contribute to and continue the decades of work of Forestry and Land Scotland who own and manage large areas of woodland in Glen Affric and across all of the Highlands.