How can rewilding help combat climate change?
The Inquiry
BBC
4.6 • 1.7K Ratings
🗓️ 17 March 2026
⏱️ 24 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Rewilding, or letting nature take care of itself, can restore stability to damaged ecosystem components which support life on earth, like fungi, bacteria, vegetation, insects and animals.
But there's now a wider discussion to discover what it’s capable of on a wider scale.
International agreements for reducing the impact of climate change tend to set global targets.
However, individual governments decide how to work towards meeting those goals at a national level.
Some rewilding initiatives improve biodiversity, but it can have negative impacts too.
This week on The Inquiry, we’re asking ‘How can rewilding help combat climate change?’
Contributors: Carolina Soto-Navarro, head of Wilder Nature at Rewilding Europe Brendan Fisher, professor in the Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources, at University of Vermont, US David Nogues Bravo, professor in biodiversity, University of Copenhagen, Denmark Steve Carver, professor of rewilding and wilderness science, University of Leeds, UK
Presenter: Charmaine Cozier Producers: Jill Collins and Daniel Rosney Researcher: Evie Yabsley Editor: Tom Bigwood Technical Producer: Cameron Ward Production Management: Phoebe Lomas and Liam Morrey
(Photo: Galapagos giant tortoise. Credit: Anadolu/Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:05.6 | Welcome to the inquiry from the BBC World Service. I'm Charmaine Cozier. Each week, one question, four expert witnesses and an answer. |
| 0:16.4 | February, 26. The Galapagos group of islands are a province of Ecuador and one of the most |
| 0:23.1 | biodiverse locations in the world. A team of park rangers trek across one of those islands, |
| 0:30.2 | Floriana. They have large grey plastic crates trapped to their backs. Inside are giant tortoises. |
| 0:41.4 | It's been more than 180 years since the native tortoise species became extinct there. Now 158 hybrid descendants raised in a breeding program |
| 0:49.2 | are released into the wild. They crawl around, breaking up dense ground, clearing paths, and spreading seeds and |
| 0:56.7 | nutrients from the plants they graze on. Re-wilding or letting nature take care of itself can restore |
| 1:03.1 | stability to damaged ecosystem components which support life on earth, like fungi, bacteria, |
| 1:09.5 | vegetation, insects and animals. So what is it capable of |
| 1:13.9 | on a wider scale? This week we're asking, how can rewilding help combat climate change? |
| 1:21.6 | Part 1. Cause corridors and carnivores. Rewilding is an approach to nature recovery, |
| 1:28.7 | where we put nature itself back at the driving seat |
| 1:32.2 | to allow the ecosystems to recover by themselves, |
| 1:34.9 | to self-regulate and to thrive with minimal human intervention. |
| 1:40.6 | Carolina Soto Novaro is head of wilder nature at Rewilding Europe, |
| 1:45.0 | a pan-European environmental conservation organisation. |
| 1:48.7 | She's based in Spain. |
| 1:50.8 | We can consider rewilding as a relatively young concept. |
| 1:56.0 | Rewilding emerged in the 90s in the US with the idea of the famous three seas of rewilding, which are |
| 2:02.7 | cores, corridors and carnivores. |
| 2:06.5 | Those three key features are core, so large protected areas like national parks or nature |
... |
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