Interview with Craig Bennett, the new executive director of The Wildlife Trusts ('Insights', series 1 - episode 5)

The Green Alliance Podcast

Green Alliance

Environment, Uk, Farming, Green Alliance, News, Sustainability, Society & Culture, Government

4.9 • 34 Ratings

🗓️ 7 April 2020

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this podcast episode, our executive director Shaun Spiers interviews the incoming head of The Wildlife Trusts, Craig Bennett. We hear from Craig on the past achievements and future role of The Wildlife Trusts, and how it needs to get “gutsy”; how Covid-19 is affecting the environment sector; and the importance of connecting people with nature in solving both the nature and climate crises.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to the Green Alliance podcast.
0:07.0	My name is Sean Spears and I'm Green Alliance's director.
0:10.0	I'm really pleased to welcome you to the latest edition of our podcast.
0:14.0	What is an unsettling, uncertain time for us all, we want to use the podcast to keep people
0:18.0	informed of the latest news and developments in environmental
0:21.0	politics and policy. A Green Alliance, we'll be doing our best to connect people and foster
0:26.1	the conversations we need to be having, including through online events and this podcast series.
0:31.6	As ever, your suggestions and feedback will be very welcome.
0:40.3	Hello, everybody. We're delighted to welcome Craig Bennett to the Green Alliance podcast. Craig
0:45.1	was Friends of the Earth Chief Executive for five years, but has just joined as Chief
0:48.5	Executive of the Wildlife Trust. Welcome, Craig. Hello, Sean. Good to see you. I suppose the first
0:53.5	question is, is why
0:54.8	trade in the kind of radical front line of environmental politics at Friends of the Earth,
1:00.6	making everybody unhappy and stopping fracking and stopping Heathrow and generally being as awkward
1:07.1	as possible with government for the kind of cozy middle england life of the wildlife trusts well
1:12.9	i'm not sure it's sure it's going to be so cozy or middle england actually but i come on to that
1:17.6	i mean i in total i've been at fendz the earth over 18 years of my career and uh when i took on the job
1:24.7	of chief executive uh i said at the time certainly to the board and i think I ended up saying it's probably to too many staff as well, that I would only do the job for about five, six years, tops.
1:36.0	Friends of the Earth is a restless organisation, and it should be. I wouldn't want it any other way. That's how it should be. So I don't think it's necessarily great for someone to stick
1:44.4	around to the top job for too long, particularly if they've been there for many, many years
1:49.8	before that. And had a really good time at Friends of the Earth, very, very proud of what we
1:54.7	achieved over the last five years or so. And I've been thinking perhaps it was about time
	...

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