"These tortoises are absolutely the ecosystem engineers. They are incredible grazers, they are nutrient cyclers, they are seed dispersers, also just mechanically they are the largest creatures on these islands."

"I think what we need now is a new landmark Act of Parliament to set the vision for the coming 50 to 100 years; truly visionary in restoring nature at scale, but doing that in a way which is going to help the country to thrive in terms of p...

"We're essentially trying to create an AI powered research assistant to accelerate the rate of discovery and support biologists understanding even more and help the biologists come up with new hypotheses from their own data."Ima...

"Our herd is north of 5,000 so I think it's the largest conservation herd in the country and it may be the largest herd period, even amongst non conservation." North America's iconic bison are recovering from the brink of extinction...

"I saw everything that was missing from the sea of my childhood."If you haven’t seen the latest David Attenborough film Ocean yet, you must. It’s a masterpiece. In the la...

"We have to make this crime type too risky and lower the reward. We need to seize all the assets that they gain from their criminal enterprise... it's something I'm very committed to."The illegal trade in wildlife and the body p...

"Go for it. Go into any kind of career even if you don't have that ecological education and change the culture from within. That's just such a powerful moment."How can rewilding and traditional pastoral farming systems go hand-i...

"Oyster reefs do this really special thing; they become a refuge for finfish species, for crabs, for all types of really important species and so it's really critical for all of those species to interact together and oyster reefs make that ...

“You’re going to invest in a fund but this fund is going to own peatlands, sphagnum moss, re-wiggled rivers. It's going to restore farmland, it's going to own oyster reefs.”How are we going to find the funding needed to restore ...

"We fill a law enforcement void that exists in the world's oceans and we'll continue to fill that void until government fills that vacuum. And then we'll hold government accountable."Sea Shepherd is a truly heroic organisation, with four...

“There absolutely is no substitute for just seeing it but also smelling it, feeling it, hearing it. You can read all the books and watch all the films you like but there is absolutely no substitute for seeing it in the flesh.”

"Part of restoring nature - a really important part - is making sure that everyone has equal access to it."The National Trust is now arguably one of Britain’s most ambitious and important nature charities. It now has plans for r...

“We don’t give nature enough credit. All mankind needs is to do is to move aside and let the natural system return.”Iraq is one of the five countries most touched by some effects of climate change, according to the United Nations. In thi...

"We are destroying these ecosystems at our peril, and if we take out these apex predators, like mountain lions or lynx we are messing with our own capacity to survive, not just wildlife." Did you know there are mountain lio...

"British saltmashes accumulate about 700,000 tonnes of carbon a year alone, and in the top 10cm of soil saltmarshes hold about 2.3 million tonnes of carbon."Ben Goldsmith is joined by Angus Garbutt, a coastal ecologist and world...

The smell of a dead animal, a carcase, an animal that's just been killed, is something you'll never ever forget and it's that that sticks with you. It's that that gives you the energy to continually try and do my best to put a hold and a st...

"Up in Oregon, sixty miles from that old dam site, adult Chinook salmon were swimming in the Klamath River. It happened in ten days, when our scientists were saying it might take ten years." The largest dam removals in history ...

"River restoration is essentially a violent act, what we do, but it's because it's undoing a violent act. It's essentially an equal and opposite violent act to what was done to the rivers in the first place."Rivers are meant to...

"Larger scale restoration projects mean better ecological outcomes, but they're also more efficient in terms of cost-per-acre." What can be seen as one of the most important things currently happening in rewilding is the openin...

"I'm very happy, last week we brought beavers to France and that was my 1000th beaver I had exported either myself or through the organisation. And that was not just to bring back the beaver, but also to bring back the benefits of the beave...

"If you look at restoring the whole Andes, the entire Andean mountain range, you can't just go at it by planting trees. There are so many other things that you need to do to holistically permit nature to actually come back."In ...

"We just put together a project in Indonesia on restoring mangroves and it's 2000 hectares, and over 40 years the local communities will get in excess of 100 million dollars."People are pretty much sold on the idea that we need...

"Coming to terms with the wolf in Britain would be one of the biggest and bravest things we've ever done. But we desperately need to start a conversation about how we do this and when we do this and start to make progress towards attaining ...

"If you want to save any species on Earth, there's really only one species you have to fully understand, and thats homo sapiens, because are the cause and therefore we are the solution to just about every rewilding or biodiversity or climate co...

"I remember genuinely thinking, 'we don't need insects. What's the point of them?' Little did I know!"Welcome to a new series of Rewilding the World with Ben Goldsmith. In this first episode Ben is joined by Stephen Fry.As well ...