[00:00:00] Speaker A: Every day, headlines warn us of climate catastrophes, mass extinction and ecological collapse, leaving many of us feeling overwhelmed and powerless in the face of environmental crisis.
What if there was a different story to tell? One where nature's resilience and humanity's dedication could transform our planet's future.
Welcome to Rewildology, the nature podcast that explores the human side of conservation, travel, and rewilding the planet. I am your host, Brooke Mitchell, conservation biologist and adventure traveler.
Today, we're diving deep into the world of the global rewilding movement with Alister Scott, Ph.D. director of communications at the Global Rewilding Alliance. In case you haven't heard of it, the GRA is at the forefront of the worldwide movement to restore and heal our planet's ecosystems. As their communications director, Alastair has helped grow their network from 140 to over 200 partners, building a powerful coalition of organizations and individuals committed to rewilding our world. But beyond the impressive numbers lies a deep personal story of transformation, resilience, and hope. In this conversation, Alister and I explore his remarkable path from young environmentalist to a global, global change maker. We journey through his early work protecting Antarctica to becoming a coach for environmental leaders. We then transition to the work he's doing today and explore the four pillars driving the Global Rewilding Alliance. By the end of the conversation, you'll have a firm understanding of how rewilding functions and that it isn't just about restoring ecosystems. It's also about reconnecting humanity with nature and creating opportunities for local communities, all in the hope of a healthier future.
Before we dive in, if you're loving what you're hearing, hit that subscribe button, leave a rating and review and share this episode with a friend. Every listen helps spread the message of rewilding and hope.
All right, let's journey into the world of global rewilding with Alastair.
[00:02:30] Speaker B: Well, hi, Alister. I am so excited to chat with you today and go through your incredible story and all of the leadership you've gained, the knowledge you have, and being the forefront of this very exciting movement in conservation that I am a big supporter of. So I can't wait to get into all of that. But first, your childhood really shaped. I feel like it set the foundation for pretty much everything you've done since then. So could you talk a little bit more about that? What was your childhood like in Ireland and how did it set the path forward for you?
[00:03:09] Speaker C: So we moved back to Ireland when I was about six. My father was in the British Army. And I was born in Brunei, near to where orangutans live and, you know, the immensely biodiverse, biodiverse richness of the Indonesian rainforest and some of the biggest cave systems in the world in Sarawak places. So ever since I sort of heard that from an early age, I've had a fascination with wild places and a sense of sort of deep personal connection with that. And I've always sort of tracked the story of Borneo, the island of Borneo and Brunei and so on. But we lived in Canada and then Germany for four years, and then we moved back to Northern Ireland, to the west of Northern Ireland.
And yes, it was a pretty wild childhood. You know, the west of Ireland is quite a wild place. And I mean, like a lot of European countries, it's had a lot of its biodiversity stripped out by modern agriculture. But I was very lucky. When my dad left the army, he became involved in outdoor education.
And I learned how to sail. And we went sailing all over these amazing lakes over there. People don't realize that Lochone is 50 miles long and it's got dozens of islands you can camp on. And, you know, this, it's, it's, It's a really amazing place. Yeah, it's a really amazing place. Very overlooked, you know. And so when I was 13, my dad would take me along as an assistant sailing instructor and get me teaching other kids how to sail and that sort of thing. And by the time I was 16, I was thoroughly involved in outdoor education centers, in Fermano in particular.
But at the same time, I had this sort of.
I had this wake up experience, this epiphany when a local bird called the corncrake became extinct, locally extinct.
So the corn crake arrives every springtime, and its Latin name is crex crex, because the male, when he's calling for a mate, he will hide in long grass and he'll sing. Crex, crex, crex, crex, crex, crex, crex, crex. Crags. Cracks, cracks, cracks. Gregs all night long to the point where it drives you nuts and you have to shut the windows. So this is in sort of April, May, each springtime.
But they're ground nesting birds and they like nesting in long grass. And When I was 15, silage making arrived in Ireland as a grass cutting technology. And within two years, the concrete was locally extinct, pushed right to the edges of Ireland. There are only now maybe 100 pairs left in the whole island of Ireland.
And so this was my epiphany. You know, it was a mundane technology like grass cutting on A collision course with nature and nature is losing out. And the farmers were just literally, they wouldn't even bother mowing from the inside of the field out to give the birds a chance to run away. You know, they'd sort of come from the outside in and the birds wouldn't know how to cope with this and just literally get hoovered up in the silage. So it's really brutal. And that was a real wake up call for me. It was, wow. You know, in geography at school, I'm learning about deforestation in the tropics, but here I'm seeing it on my doorstep. And so at that point, I sort of asked myself, well, how can I be? I mean, we're in big trouble here because if we treat nature like this, and that's the foundation for everything, then the human race is not going to survive, survive long if we carry on like this. So how can I be useful? And so I set off on this journey to try and make myself useful, and 40 years later, here I am.
[00:07:18] Speaker A: So is this when you decided to.
[00:07:19] Speaker B: Pursue your PhD or when did that all come into play?
[00:07:23] Speaker C: No, so that was much later. So I went and did an environmental degree and then I got into campaigning. I helped to get protection for Antarctica for 50 years as a world park. In 1991, we're just over halfway through that. So what that means is that Antarctica has never had any industrial exploitation for minerals or oil or any of these kind of polluting activities.
So that was a real amazing moment. You know, I was a year out of university, I joined Friends of the Earth, and the campaigns director said, you know, do you want to lead on this, on this Antarctic campaign? And we managed to change the UK government's position on it. And because they were chairing the Antarctic Treaty Conference, they carried the motion through to create this wild park. So. And that took us about six weeks. And I just thought, wow, you know, small groups of people can actually make a big difference.
And so that, again, turned the positive light bulb on for me. It's like, well, if we can do that in six weeks, what else can we do? And then I set off in this journey of trying to discover different things where I could be influential.
So I helped to persuade the UK's third largest pension fund to adopt an active, socially responsible investment policy.
That fund is now worth about £80 billion. Oh, my gosh.
[00:08:55] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:08:56] Speaker C: So it's a lot of money, you know, and you're getting them to think about things like climate change as a risk management challenge for institutional investors, and that Set a real precedent in the City of London. So then you get campaign groups specifically on that coming emerging. And then, so then after Friends of the Earth, I went back into the university sector because an old professor of mine had become director of an environmental research program, a national research program, and he needed a right hand person who knew about kind of organizing and communicating and getting influence. And so we took this from a standing start and then by the end we were influencing government policy on things like climate change and renewable energy and so on.
So then that gave me experience of creating influence in policy and the media.
But I was, by that stage I was at the University of Sussex in a thing called the Science Policy Research Unit, which looks at how science influences policy and what's the relationship between technology, science, policy and business.
And I sort of looked out and that's when I got the idea for my PhD, which is basically how come when you give a bunch of academics some money and say we want you to do active, interdisciplinary, engaged research that's looking for answers to some of society's biggest, most urgent problems, how come when you give them money on that basis, you never hear from 50% of them again? You know, I'd be like, it was my job to ring them up and say, would you come to a meeting in parliament or wherever? And quite a lot of them wouldn't, wouldn't bother a climb. So I wanted to explain this to myself. So that's what my, my doctorate was. I went back all the way back to sort of Aristotle and then came back through the history of science and tried to explain this thing about relevance. How do you get experts to be relevant to today's most pressing problems? And so that was my sort of obsession for six or seven years.
Yeah. And then got into, I finished in the public sector, became self employed and set up a company called the Knowledge Bridge, which is all about helping expert organizations to communicate better.
Yeah. And so that's sort of part of my journey. So as you can see, I sort of wiggled left and right trying to pursue the thing that I thought was most interesting and useful in that moment.
[00:11:35] Speaker B: So what led you to start your company?
Did you just see a gap in like the conservation or leadership sector or what did that? Because I mean, that seems, I mean, I know it's all related to where we're going later in your story, but this seems to be such a pivotal moment for you.
Why did you decide to start that? And then I guess could you have a couple examples of some of the leadership things that you've Coached or go through? Because a lot of people listening, like we're tackling these really big questions and sometimes, I mean, I feel like I'm just flying by the seat of my pants. So, like, we all do, honey, we all do.
From your perspective. Yeah, Talk a little bit more about that because I want to learn more.
[00:12:25] Speaker C: Right. So the former director of Friends of the Earth was amazing guy called David Gee, and he had moved to the European Environment Agency, which is an official body of the European Commission.
And they advised the European institutions on environmental matters. And he knew that I was doing this research on experts and how they communicate and what makes them relevant and engaged and not. So he commissioned me in 1999 to write a report on how do we effectively communicate environmental research.
And that was my first commission as a self employed person. So it's this key moment. You always need one person to have faith in you and to say, there's a couple of thousand quid and will you write me a report? So I sat down and kind of downloaded everything that I'd learned into this report, which is still available online 24 years later. And he invited me to Copenhagen where they're based, and spoke at various conferences. And that sort of gave me the faith to make this jump into self employment. And I ended up advising the European Commission, the British government during its presidency of the eu, and a number of universities, a lot of the top universities in the UK. And I built up to employing five or six people until 2007 when two things happened simultaneously. A friend of mine had asked me, are you coaching these experts? Is that what you're doing? And I sort of thought, oh, well, maybe I am. I should probably go and get trained as a coach. So I signed up to get trained as a coach and that was the year I turned 40. And then in that year, while I was training as a coach, my wife was diagnosed with breast cancer.
And so we had this terrible moment in our lives where I had to make some big decisions. And my first decision in 2008 was I need to just go back to being me.
And so I laid off my staff. I'd taken seven years to build it up. I just had to grasp the nettle and say, I'm sorry, I just need to simplify everything.
And that was a terrible moment because there was a lot of, you know, they were good people. And it was a lot of work to build it to that point. But it was also a release to be there with Sarah, looking after Sarah and our two children while she went through pretty awful Treatment, you know, with chemo and operations and stuff.
So that also was a time when I then went, okay, so I'm training as a coach. I've done all this communication stuff, but there's this moment when I've got this breathing space to sort of sit quietly and think, what is it I really want to do? And when I looked back through the preceding two decades, the golden thread through the bits when I was at my best were all to do with making big change happen.
And I realized, actually, it's not helping experts communicate that I'm really passionate about. It's actually making change happen. So just sort of same thing, but slightly twisted through sort of 45 degrees, if you like.
So then I met my wonderful colleague and friend Neil Scotten, and we decided to set up a business together, which we did in 2011, called the One Leadership Project. And the whole focus of the One Leadership Project was on supporting people that we call catalysts, those who are making big change happen. And we did that for 14 years. From 2009. It must have been 2009. Yeah. So we did that for 14 years together.
That sort of came to a natural conclusion a couple of years ago. But we wrote a book together, for example, called A Little Book of Making Big Change Happen, which you can see on screen.
So this is another way of trying to learn all. Share all of the lessons that we had learned working with these amazing people.
So we built up our coaching practice. We were supporting their teams, but the focus was very much on if you're in an organization and you're trying to make big change happen, your leadership will be tested both on a personal level and in your. All your relationships. Intellectually, you'll be tested. Organizationally, you'll be tested. So you need the best people around you who can help support that process, help you accelerate your learning and your leadership. So that was the focus of our. Of our business. And we had the great honor and privilege of working with a great number of incredible catalysts.
For example, Julia Lalla Maharaj, who is a really a global campaigner against female genital cutting, which is a practice that's practiced in quite large parts of Africa and parts of Asia as well. And she had been a volunteer in Ethiopia, and she come across this practice and set up an organization. She went back to the UK and said, well, who's working on this? And nobody would touch it because it's too kind of too difficult.
And so she set up a wonderful organization, which she then led for 10 years. But she needed some support. She needed support for her leadership. So I coached her through a number of years and then coached her as she then left the organization and went on to her next phase in her life. And that has become a theme in my coaching practice, is working with founders and with people who are making big change happen. So the last bit of the story which gets us to today is that when I heard about the global rewilding alliance and I could see what they were doing, I wrote to them and I said, look, this is what I do. I support people like you who are making big change happen. I thoroughly believe in your cause. How can I help?
And so I sent them a copy of my like. To my surprise and delight, I heard back from Magnus in Switzerland because, you know, in my time I'd written to plenty of catalysts and sort of offered my help, but very often didn't hear back. You know, he's sort of like, who is this crazy guy writing to me? You know?
So Magnus graciously wrote back. I sent them each a copy of the three founders, a copy of the book, and then because of COVID they hadn't seen each other for two years. So they asked me to organize a three day retreat in the Swiss Alps. So we walked and talked and strategized and it kind of turned into a three day job interview. And after that they sort of said, we think we need someone like you with sort of experience of making change happen and building movements, but also communication and all of that sort of stuff that was in my history.
And so then I said, yeah, I'd love to join and be the fourth musketeer. And so I joined as sort of co director for communications and outreach. And I've been with the alliance for two years, so that's the kind of the story to hear. It's a very winding path, but, you know, I've always tried to follow my purpose and be useful and get as close to making big change happen as I could. And each time I got involved in different forms of making big change happen, you know, I learned stuff and learned stuff about what people need to lead in those circumstances. And actually how people who come from very humble beginnings, no signs that they were destined to be a leader, could forge themselves in the heat of action into these amazing people who just would go and do stuff. I mean, Julia, for example, she submitted a video which she made with a friend to the Davos Summit, the global Summit in Davos in Switzerland. And she won this competition, which meant that she got to go and show her film in front of all these world leaders, and a year after being in Ethiopia, she found herself running down a corridor in Davos chasing Bill Clinton and shaking his hand and saying, I'm getting involved in this. Would you help us? And he said, yes. And oh my gosh, I mean, she's this amazing. You know, this is what people.
People are incredible. They just like, if they get a clear purpose beyond self, what I call a clear, inspiring, shared purpose beyond self, that really inspires them, they'll do almost anything and. And it pulls the best out of people and it's a really inspiring thing. So, yeah, I've worked with lots of these people in the last 20 years and it's been an amazing journey.
[00:21:33] Speaker B: Sounds like it.
[00:21:34] Speaker A: And before we dive too far in.
[00:21:36] Speaker B: The Global Rewilding alliance, because that's the bulk of the rest of the conversation is going to be, did you have top questions that you would have your clients, these amazing thinkers, think through to maybe work through whatever it was to help them get to the next place? Because I'm thinking of anybody listening right now if they're tackling a big passion. We're all passionate. That's the only reason why all of us are here. I mean, yes, really is no other reason to keep going other than passion. What are some of the questions that we should be thinking about to help us maybe shift our mindset or get to that next big phase of that big thing we're tackling?
[00:22:18] Speaker C: Yep. Okay, so first of all, you've got purpose.
So are you doing something that you truly believe in?
And the six words, the six word formula is a clear, inspiring, shared purpose beyond self.
So each of those six words is significant. So it needs to be clear. It can't be, oh, I sort of like wildlife. You know, it's like, okay, fine, you like wildlife, but what's your purpose? You know, get clearer, get more specific. So it's got to be clear, it's got to be inspiring. Will it get you out of bed in the morning? So so many people, they struggle to get out of bed in the morning. Why? Because they don't really believe in what they're doing. And I believe it's an absolute travesty that millions of people go to work every day, kind of working for Exploitation Incorporated, you know, ripping the earth to shreds, not believing in it, but nevertheless giving their life to this thing, this monster. So if you, if you don't believe in what you, what you're doing, then get out and do something that you believe in. It's going to be a Struggle very often, you know, to do something purposeful is really going to test you. It's going to. It's going to find all your edges. But it's worthwhile in the end because you live your life really believing in what you're doing, and every day counts. So clear, inspiring, shared purpose. Don't be on your own.
And my bits of sort of career advice for young people are always do something you believe in. So this is the purpose thing that we're talking about. And then be around the best people you possibly can.
So find people who share your purpose. The wonderful thing about the Internet is it allows us now to find the need in the haystack. You know, when I was growing up in the west of Ireland, like, how would I find people who are also interested in trying to save the planet? I mean, it was impossible. I had to go to London. I mean, this is what I did. You know, I went to London. That's how I did it. Whereas now you can sit a thousand miles from anywhere and find your tribe. You know, listen to the podcasts, be in touch with people, ask them, how can I help? This is the most wonderful thing. How can I help? You know, if you got somebody inspiring, if you lack confidence to go and lead something, don't worry about it. Get involved in something else that somebody you believe in, who you find inspiring is doing, and just ask them, how can I help? And they will absolutely love you. Because when you're trying to change things, you know, there's lots to do. So. And we all have a piece of the puzzle, you know, so it's a shared purpose. Clear, inspiring, shared purpose beyond self. So beyond sel. Why do I say that? It's because if you're just trying to get by, if you're just thinking of me and kind of like submitting yourself to this very individualistic way of living that a lot of people have allowed themselves to get cornered in. I truly think you're not going to get the best out of life or yourself. So beyond self is this idea of if I get out of bed in the morning and I. And I'm committed to helping to rewild the world and bring nature back.
That is so inspiring. That's so sort of, you know, it. Actually there's a paradox that by. By thinking about and committing to something beyond self, you get more of yourself.
It helps you to find more in yourself because you. It demands so much of you that you find new abilities and it helps you overcome fears and so on. So that I think there are Two bits there really purpose and people. So I would always focus on those first. And if you haven't got the right people around you, try and find them.
Does that answer your question?
[00:26:13] Speaker B: Yes. That is fantastic advice and I hope everybody you're taking notes or you wound backwards five minutes and listen to that again or as many times as you need to. Where is your tribe?
And I can say with full confidence that this group of people, this field, this industry, is full of some of the best people on this planet. I fully agree.
I. It's amazing. I've met people now all over the world, and I'm just like, we. It doesn't matter where we grew up, how we grew up, our background, we are all connected for this love of our planet. And that love and that passion, it just permeates through, you know, and we're all so connected.
[00:26:54] Speaker C: It's so true, Brooke. And, you know, we have these onboarding calls with new organizations that are joining the alliance we're now at. I'm proud to say today we're 202 organizations. You reached 200.
[00:27:06] Speaker B: Oh, my goodness.
[00:27:09] Speaker C: The onboarding team have been doing a virtual jump up and down, you know, around the world in our different places in Maine and Amsterdam and Italy and all over.
So, yes, people come on these calls. It's the first time we've met them, and they'll be in South Africa or Cameroon or India or Indonesia or whatever. And we're talking to these amazing people and almost all of them just say, we ask them, what would you like from the alliance? And almost all of them just say, you know, it's just so wonderful to feel part of something bigger. We're here, we're on the ground. We're doing our utmost best to bring nature back. And sometimes it just feels so lonely and difficult. And it's just wonderful to be part of this network of just amazing stories and individuals and groups who are essentially doing the same as we are, just in a different place. And to feel part of that bigger network, it just gives so much courage and encouragement. And so, yes, I completely agree with what you said.
[00:28:21] Speaker B: Absolutely. Yes. I felt the exact same way since meeting you all when I randomly reached out, just like you did.
[00:28:27] Speaker A: You reached out to the founders.
[00:28:29] Speaker B: I randomly reached out to the gra.
[00:28:31] Speaker C: Exactly.
[00:28:31] Speaker B: A lot of people probably don't even know what the global Rewilding Alliance.
[00:28:35] Speaker A: So could you have to talk a.
[00:28:36] Speaker B: Little bit more about what is this alliance?
[00:28:40] Speaker C: Yes. Great. So we've been going just about four years coming up for four years.
And it came out of the 11th World Wilderness Congress, which was held in Spain just before the pandemic. And there at that Congress. So as the name suggests, there have been a load of World Wilderness Congresses bringing together people who work on wilderness. But at the 11th Congress, there was a realization that rewilding was becoming a thing, that the term had been coined 20 years ago, but now it was having momentum. There were whole organizations doing incredible work in every continent, organizations with the name rewilding in their name, like Rewilding Chile, Rewilding Argentina, Rewilding Europe, Rewilding Britain, Rewilding Spain, Portugal. You know, there are organizations now all around the world using the word rewilding.
And yet there was no organizing body to help bring it all together and make it more than the sum of its parts. And so that is essentially what the Global Rewilding alliance was set up to do, was to. Was to help. And our mission now is to mainstream rewilding in science, policy and practice by 2030.
So I actually think we're some way ahead of the curve on that. I just think we're growing so quickly, and there's so much awareness and inspiration and, as you said earlier, like, creativity and amazing things happening around the world. So there are. So that's basically the history of the gra. It came out of the World Wilderness Congress.
It was established by three legends of the nature conservation movement. Vance Martin, who lives in Colorado, Magnus Sylvain, who's a Swede, who lives in Switzerland, and Carl Wagner, who lives near Virginia, Vienna, all of whom had done 50 years of service each, you know, in this. In this movement, and had seen over that, over that time, the decline of nature all around the world. Absolutely heartbreaking. But had not given up and have just kept going. And then this thing called rewilding comes along where we put nature in the driver's seat and let nature recover and bring nature back. And yes, we acknowledge the good work that's been done in nature conservation, protecting final areas, protecting species and habitats.
But now we're saying that's not enough. Now we need to bring nature back. Nature has declined so much, but, you know, by some estimates, 70% in the last 50 years alone, let alone the 200 years before that.
So that's. It's not enough just to have these little islands of nature apart from anything else. There's a kind of whole thing about genetic narrowing and so on, but we need to connect up these landscapes so that nature can move and interbreed and thrive on a bigger scale. So that's the idea of rewilding at its very basics. Now, I can describe a bit more about our work if you want.
[00:32:11] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:32:12] Speaker A: That was.
[00:32:12] Speaker B: That's where I was going to go next. So what is rewilding to the Global Rewilding Alliance? Like, what qualifies as, like, a rewilding project and what doesn't? And then. Yeah, because I know that you have these amazing four pillars also that you know, are essentially the flags of what you all believe in. But maybe go a little bit more into that, because I think that some people might not quite know the difference yet with.
[00:32:39] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:32:39] Speaker B: Emerging term of rewilding and what was previous, like conservation, restoration, all these other terms. So, yeah, what is rewilding to the GRA and what. Yeah, go from there.
[00:32:51] Speaker C: So our founding document is called the Global Charter for Rewilding the Earth, and you can find that on our website, which is GlobalRewding Earth. And in the Global Charter, we outlined 12 principles of rewilding.
And it is, of course, not a concept that can just be pinned down in a simple definition.
So it's more of a way of looking at how we restore nature.
And I've seen various definitions of rewilding and nature restoration.
So in some ways, nature conservation is preserving last wild places. So you might have a local wetland and it's threatened with having a road built through it and you want to keep it, you're conserving it, you're trying to keep it as it is.
And then you've got nature restoration, which is taking an idea of an area where, you know, there used to be certain, certain species and you're trying to bring them back. So you have an idea of your end point. We're trying to bring it back to what it was, say, 30 years ago. So there are five missing butterfly species, three missing mammals, and so we're going to try and bring those back. But you have a fixed endpoint and it's done in quite a controlled way because you know what your endpoint is and what you're trying to achieve. And in a lot of nature reserves, for example, here in the uk, the result of all of this is you see quite a lot of areas of land being managed in very particular ways. And what happens if you. If you flip over that, that relationship.
And Nate, in their book Rewilding, Kane Blythe and Paul Jepson define the difference between these two ways of looking at it as being nature conservation and nature restoration are human led, nature assisted, whereas rewilding is nature led and human assisted.
So in rewilding to the extent possible, we let nature do its thing.
And of course, if there are missing species, like in Spain, you want to bring back bison, but the nearest bison are in Poland. Yes. You're going to have to give them a bit of a help because they'll never get there on their own because of all their human infrastructure in the way. And it's a long way. So that's the distinction is you're trying to get. You're trying to get nature in the driving seat, nature leading. But in order to do that, you need bigger areas, you need these three Cs, the cores, the core areas and the corridors to match up, to connect up the core areas. And then you need the carnivores. And as you know, because we're talking about it, I have a fourth C, which is my, kind of, my little joke with the movement.
I think we're missing a C. I think we're missing the herbivores, but that begins with H. So I'm calling them chewers.
[00:36:01] Speaker B: Which is true, though.
[00:36:03] Speaker C: We are, yeah. Because, you know, in any, in any ecosystem you need your herbivores to do their work because without herbivores you can't have any carnivores. So, for example, if you look at the reintroduction of tigers recently into Kazakhstan, that's 10 years after they conceived doing this project. And why is it possible now? It's because they built back up the prey base, the Saiga antelope and various other species which, the, which the tigers can come in and will. And will support a population of tigers. So you need your chores, you need your. Your fourth sea.
Yeah.
[00:36:42] Speaker B: And.
[00:36:43] Speaker A: And then extending further.
[00:36:45] Speaker B: So that. Thank you. That was super helpful of understanding, like what rewilding is at its core.
One thing that I really love about this movement is there's a strong human element too, and the GRE focuses a lot on that too. So could you talk a little bit more about that as well? What is this human aspect that is commonly. I mean, it was before, just not talked about at all. Like wildlife is wildlife, humans are humans and they're separate, but that's not the case at all. Another reason why I love rewilding. So what are the other pillars then that encompass this and what do they actually mean?
[00:37:20] Speaker C: Yes. So if there's a bit of a dark history here, actually, where, if you look at the history of national parks in quite a number of different countries around the world, including in the US and in India, quite a few national parks, when they were established, any local human inhabitants were excluded, were taken out forcibly removed. And that's, you know, that's pretty harsh. And it also, it's created this, I think, association in people's minds that, you know, either we have nature or we have people, but we don't have both.
We either have landscapes that are for people, which are agricultural and so on. And we. And in those landscapes, we can do what we want. We can exclude nature.
But of course, that's the majority of the landscape. So just think through the kind of, the negative implication of that, which is why landscapes across the world, where agriculture has come, especially the beef industry and so on, enormously destructive use of pesticides and herbicides and so on, eradicating wildlife from huge tracks of the landscape, and that's success. You know, this is what they set out to do.
So in national parks, very often people are excluded. Now, in the rewilding movement, I think we've learned in two respects.
I think we've learned that when you exclude people, it's brutal and it's wrong, and you just simply cannot do that anymore. You cannot imagine going to Ecuador or Brazil and going into an area and saying, right, we're setting up a national park. All of you indigenous people, you can leave. I mean, it's just not going to do it. You know, that's Yesterday's idea. That's 100 years ago and needs to stay there. Back there in history now, we've learned not only culturally in that way, but we've also learned, I think, from success and failure in the development area. So external development assistance in the poorest countries around the world, where people from outside have tried to come in and help alleviate poverty uniformly, it's been found that when you try to impose external. External solutions, it generally doesn't go well. So if you pipe, if you bring in Friesian cattle from the UK into an African community, within a year, they'll be dead. And people just, well, that was a stupid idea. You know, if you bring in tractors, you go back a year later and they're sitting rusting. Why? It's because you haven't involved local people in those decisions, in the design of those of those programs. And I think rewild. My experience anyway is rewilders everywhere have learned those lessons. And so one of the basic principles of rewilding is if we're trying to bring nature back, we have to work with local communities. So if you. And give local communities a very central role in setting up, running, governing, and doing everything to do with that project. So if you look at the history of rewilding Chile, for example, when they set up their first national park, they worked with local people for a couple of years before they did anything. And it was just lots and lots of conversations asking people, what do you need?
And what emerged from that conversation, for example, was that people did not have legal tenure on their land.
So they knew they owned the land, but they didn't have the piece of paper.
And so what Rewilding Chile did was they helped local people to achieve legal tenure on their land.
And in that way, they generated a load of good relationships. They generated understanding of what they were about. But they gen. You know, people genuinely felt, gosh, these people, they are actually really here to help. And so when they said, look, we've bought 100,000 hectares and we want to work with the government to set up a big national park and the government's going to put in a million hectares and so on, but you're safe because you've got your land tenure, so don't worry, you know, we're not coming for your land.
So that's just one example of just dozens. I could tell you about the ways in which rewilding organizations are working with local communities.
[00:42:04] Speaker B: And what would you say about the policy or advocacy side of rewilding?
[00:42:15] Speaker C: Where do I start and where do I finish? So, I mean, that can go from anything. From near where I live here in the uk, there's a city called Brighton and there was a municipally owned golf course that was losing money and a bunch of people stood up and basically said, why don't we rewild the golf course and save you a load of money and do a load of good for nature and give local people in the city a lovely place to go, you know, to walk and picnic and have nice time. And so that was a good example of a local advocacy leading to a rewilding project. And then you've got national level advocacy.
So organizations like, again, Rewilding Chile, where they have worked very closely with government, national government, to say, look, we've bought land that we would love to see rewilded, but you've got 10 times as much land. And as Chris Tompkins, you know, the founder of Rewilding Chile, says, you know, if there's one word you can apply to the word of Tompkins conservation, it's leverage. You know, where they have worked with through advocacy and by showing themselves to be decent and to have proper purposes with integrity. You know, when they first arrived in Chile, they were accused of being oil barons or trying to steal the water or having mining plans and whatever. And they had death threats and so on. And it was only after many years that they were able to show the integrity of their vision by working with national government and saying, we are going to give 100,000 hectares to the nation in return for you giving some public land to that national park. And then we create a national park with protection in national law. And so that's an example of advocacy, if you like. That's creating an amazing. And I think, you know, Chileans are now incredibly proud of their series of national parks. You've been there, so you know better than I do, you know, incredibly proud of these huge beautiful landscapes where now you're getting the condors coming back and the jaguars and the puma and the humaldeer and the guanacos and on it goes.
And so that's an example of national level advocacy. And we have that here in Britain and in many countries where, for example, in Spain there's an area the size of, it's about a million hectares between Madrid and Barcelona, which is largely depopulated. People have moved to the cities. It's a big empty landscape, there's not much happening there, but largely denuded of wildlife. And now they're working with the national and local government to bring back wildlife through rewilding and generating jobs and tourism and so on. So again, that's an example of a national level, national landscape kind of landscape scale rewilding, recovery. And then at the international scale advocacy, we're about to go to COP 16, the Conference of the parties of the Convention on Biological Diversity. And we will be advocating there for rewilding as an approach that creates the bridge between biodiversity restoration and the climate agenda. Because we have good evidence that shows that when you bring back wildlife, and particularly wild animals, you enable landscapes and seascapes to draw down huge amounts of carbon. So that's a sort of a global level bit of advocacy as well. And we can talk a bit more about the science behind that, if you wish.
[00:46:09] Speaker B: Yeah, go ahead. Absolutely.
[00:46:12] Speaker C: Great. Okay, so earlier you mentioned the four pillars of the, of the gra.
We have these four pillars of our work. Science, policy, building the movements and engaging the global public.
So the first one is science. A strategic decision was made before I was involved, right at the beginning of the life of the GRA nearly four years ago, to invest in science that shows the effect of bringing back wild animals.
And we now have a solid partnership with researchers at Yale University in the us but also around the world, a number of institutions working on this amazing, top quality researchers and we've published in the peer reviewed literature showing that when you bring back not just nine species, we had experts look at just nine species. They're things like whales, wildebeest, sea otters, ocean fish, sharks.
What are those big woolly things in the, in the Arctic? I always forget what they're called. Anyway, huge big animals. Musk oxen. That's the one, yes. And there are a couple more species, European bison, etc. And just looking at the numbers for these using peer reviewed data from landscapes where they are missing and where they are present, you can compare the ability of that land to draw down carbon.
And just these nine species, if reinstated to decent levels, would enable a huge amount of carbon to be drawn down.
An amount that equals or surpasses each of the IPCC's top five options for mitigating climate change. The IPCC being the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which is the world's scientific body that brings together all the evidence and they've got this list of five options for things that will reduce carbon emissions and help to draw down carbon. Rewilding is not mentioned.
And we've shown that just rewilding nine species will equal or beat each of your top five options, including a major push on solar, wind and batteries. So we're talking huge numbers here. I mean, gigatons of carbon being able to be drawn down just because you bring back wild animals.
How does this work? So I'll talk about the otter.
So otters protect kelp.
Protect kelp ecosystems.
I know you know this, it's slightly embarrassing talking to you because you know so much, but basically what happens when you, what happens when you take, when you take otters out of ecosystems? So the American otter on the west coast of America was almost wiped out to the point where when ecologists got to California, they did not list the otter as a native species because the hunters had already got that first and they didn't see otters. So therefore they said, well, they're not a native species. It's only in the last year or two that they've been actually recognized officially as a native species of California. Isn't that amazing?
[00:49:38] Speaker B: Which is wild.
[00:49:39] Speaker C: It's wild. Okay, so now what happens when you eradicate the otters? The sea urchins don't have any predator. What do sea urchins eat? Sea urchins eat kelp. So then your kelp forests nearly disappear until you bring back your otters. The otters eat the sea urchins and lo and behold, the kelp forests Come back. So kelp forests with sea otters can draw down 10 times the amount of carbon than kelp forests without sea otters. So that gives you an idea. So if you reinstate that sea otter population right along the California coast and you bring back all those kelp ecosystems, amazing effect on the ability. And of course, they're also incredibly rich habitats. But you know, we're talking about the carbon. So that's the science, what we call reanimating the carbon cycle. That's very now well established. We have a model that can be applied prospectively to landscapes to say if you rewild it, it will enable X amount of carbon to be drawn down, which is very helpful for rewilding organizations because they can then go to their funders and say, look, you're not just helping nature, but you're also helping, you're also helping address the climate crisis. And what we're doing now in the next pillar is policy. We're going to CO op 16 and we're saying to governments, you need to understand this agenda because now we're showing that biodiversity restoration is not simply a dead cost. There's going to, you know, you have to have some nature areas over here and then we're going to have to deal with climate change over here. No, there's a bridge. If you do this, it will also contribute hugely to your, what's called, your nationally determined contributions, your ndc, which is the amount that governments have committed to under the Paris Climate Agreement to reduce in the next decades. So that's policy work. So we've got science, we have this solid foundation.
We're now working with our partners in countries around the world to go to your national government and say, look, this is a way of addressing both of these crises at the same time. So that's science and policy and then building the movement. As I say, we now have 202 member organizations around the world. And when I joined, I think it was about 140, so we have about one a week joining at the moment. And we are discovering huge organizations, you know, that are doing incredible stuff like the Blue marine Foundation influencing 4 million square kilometers of ocean. It's huge. You know, we recently welcomed Rapa Nui, Easter island to the alliance. They have a marine protected area that's 770,000 square kilometers.
Wow, it's, you know, that's right. That's huge. You know, that's bigger than France.
[00:52:43] Speaker B: So itself.
[00:52:45] Speaker C: Exactly. And you know, they say that they declared the marine protected area around their islands, excluding industrial fishing Five years ago. And last year was their best year for whale sightings in living memory.
Because the whales, the whales are coming back. They're realizing, ah, there's no danger here. You know, we can breed, we can feed.
So then that's very good for the tourist industry, etcetera, and also for the local artisanal fishing. So that's building the movement, is finding these incredible projects and welcome, welcoming them in and then connecting them up. So if you're working on rewilding grasslands in Kazakhstan or the Midwest, you fence, essentially, you're doing the same thing. So we'll try and connect you up if you're not connected already, and therefore we can learn quicker and so on. And then. So that's building the movement and then engaging the public. Our main set piece is called World Rewilding Day, which we run on the 20th of March each year. So put that in your calendar now. 20th of March, and that's the day when we get everybody talking about rewilding and we create a theme and we have events and there's book launches and local events and walks and tree planting and, you know, all sorts of things. So. Yeah. So those are the four pillars.
[00:54:08] Speaker B: Yes. I celebrated World Rewilding Day with all of you last year, which is super exciting. Carolina Morgado.
[00:54:15] Speaker C: Yes.
[00:54:15] Speaker B: Of Rewilding Chile. Talk about a special, special person. I still am so grateful that I.
[00:54:21] Speaker C: She's amazing.
[00:54:22] Speaker B: Got to sit down with her.
[00:54:23] Speaker C: Yeah. And she's a board member of the gra, so we're very, very lucky to be connected. Yes.
[00:54:29] Speaker B: Awesome. Yeah. Like a month later, I was in Chile and I even went to the Rewilding Chile headquarters and she was in the U.S. i'm like, what are the odds of this?
How can I be at your office and you're in the United States.
[00:54:44] Speaker A: This doesn't make any sense.
[00:54:45] Speaker C: Yeah. You crossed in the sky.
[00:54:50] Speaker B: So then what is the. As if anybody listening here, too is if they're like, oh, I wonder if, like, my project might be a good fit for this cool alliance that I didn't know existed. That obviously rewildology is a part of.
What is the, I guess, criteria that somebody must have in order to become an alliance member.
[00:55:14] Speaker C: That's a great question, Brooke. And I realized that I didn't really properly answer similar question on this earlier. So our basic philosophy is we like to be a big church. So if you're involved in rewilding nature restoration and you are doing stuff, you need to be doing stuff.
So the great majority of our members are Organizations that are rewilding, whether on land or in the oceans, coral reefs, whatever. But you need to be doing stuff. You need to be actually doing it. Not talking about it, but doing it.
And we have a pretty broad definition, so a pretty tolerant definition of what we mean by rewilding. And some areas are very small. You know, it could be five hectares, and then some are huge.
But essentially, if you're out there and you're rewilding and you're on your own and it does you good to join the alliance, you're very welcome to join. And we've told stories on all scales from tiny to huge. And that's great. You know, you can do urban rewilding. So we don't have this kind of exclusionary definition of, oh, you have to be this or you have to be that, or you have to be reintroducing your full panoply of carnivores. No, you know, we're not going to insist that, you know, people in London are reintroducing the wolf before they can join the gra. Of course not.
So we have this pretty open definition, and there's a good philosophical reason to do that, which is if there are arguments to be had about rewilding, we'd much rather have those arguments inside than for us to somehow be the arbiter or the judge and say, you're not really doing rewilding and you are, therefore you're excluding did. And then these people, well, how do they feel about that? That's not great. So we'd much rather people came in. For example, there's an argument about tree planting in rewilding. You know, in the main, we like trees to recover on their own. We like birds to bring in the bird seeds and the acorns and the whatever and plant them, and then the tree, you know, the forest will recover on its own. But we recognize equally that in certain circumstances there is no viable tree seed within miles and miles. So, for example, in the Scottish Highlands, they've been denuded for so long that there is no viable tree seed. Even if you brought back wild boar to turn the, you know, turn the earth over and so on, you wouldn't get trees growing and therefore, certain amount of judicious tree planting, for example, beside rivers, which is going to do the salmon good, which then helps the salmon to recover and all of the species that rely on the salmon.
I think we want that debate inside the movement. You know, what does good tree planting look like? Rather than saying, you're involved in tree planting. Sorry, that's not rewilding. So that's, it's a bit of a sort of personal take on the philosophy of that. But broadly speaking I think that's our philosophy is we want to be.
If you're actively involved in rewilding, you're definitely helping nature to recover in practical ways. Whether that's in mini forests, in cities, right up to huge landscapes in Tanzania and Malawi and places. Well, great, come on in, let's get to know you. Let's learn from each other and accelerate this movement.
[00:58:52] Speaker B: And so then what is the, is it an application process? Is it just reaching out? So how does someone like apply to have their organization be an alliance member?
[00:59:03] Speaker C: Yeah. So on our website there is a little very simple form just we ask you four or five questions and that just gives us a bit of background on you so that we can do a bit of research and find out about you before we come on a call. And then we set up a call that goes through to one of the onboarding team, they'll set up a call with you. We get to meet online, which is one of the most sort of joyful moments in the week. And we have a conversation and we get to know each other and we decide on both sides whether this is the right thing. It is free to join and we make it very un bureaucratic. And we have two documents that we send out. One is a one page partner agreement which sets out mostly the philosophy of what we're trying to do. So we want people to join the movement in a spirit of generosity, of helping each other, contributing, taking part, sharing your knowledge, sharing your successes and your failures so that others can learn and accelerate the process of rewilding around the world. So that one page agreement is really just setting out that philosophy. It's very simple. And then the second one is the Global Charter for Rewilding the earth with its 12 principles of rewilding. And that is an opportunity for a lot of organizations that you know, they instinctively they're a wilding but they haven't necessarily got a philosophical base or a set of principles to work to. And a lot of people, a lot of people come back to us and they say, well actually that was brilliant. You know we learned a lot from that and that's really helped us and that provides us with confidence as a foundation for our work and we sort of will hold our projects against those principles in future. And so it's really very simple. It's if you join the alliance, you agree to those two documents, that's it. And we just need an email from you and, you know, very simple. And then we write an announcement together, which is a story about some of the work that you're doing. We focus on successes. We focus on joyful, beautiful, positive stories of rewilding success.
Because we believe that, you know, people are already pretty aware of all the bad news. What they need. What they need is good news. And what we need to engage more people in our movement and in the environmental movement more generally is some hopeful, positive, practical. You can do this. We can do this.
This is happening. Come and be part of it. And so that is our style.
That's the story that we're trying to tell. Because I have a sort of a secret plan which is now not going to be so secret.
[01:01:50] Speaker B: What is that?
[01:01:52] Speaker C: Which is basically that if we can get people associating rewilding with hope, then we're halfway there.
And if you. I mean, I'm sure you talked to lots of people about rewilding.
Sometimes people react a little bit cautiously, but most people, their eyes light up and they just go, that just sounds so great. What does rewilding mean? Just the word. It's just like sending off little, nice little bombs in my head, you know, And I think that's the kind of the impact that we want to have. It's like, look, there's hope. It's practical hope. It's not lala. It's people on the ground doing really tricky stuff like moving whole herds of antelope and giraffes. And Peace Parks foundation, they've translocated 18,000 animals to different countries. I mean, how do you do that? How do you move a giraffe? You know, you avoid low bridges. You know, I mean, it's. It's bonkers. You know, this is real gritty, practical stuff. We got films of people putting rhinoceroses on trucks. You know, this is not easy, but it's beautiful and it's hopeful. So that's the movement. Come and join.
[01:03:10] Speaker B: Yes, absolutely. And then looking to the future, what do you hope bring? I would also bring this back to you as someone who you have seen so much in your career. You've gone through a lot, a lot of hardship, a lot of amazing, beautiful things. What excites you? Or this word that you keep using that I love is hope. What are you hopeful about? What do you hope to see with this movement in the next. Well, I guess by 2030, with this big goal of yours. But what gets you up every day and continue working on this?
[01:03:43] Speaker C: So we currently, we're doing a bit of an audit of the partners, the alliance partners, 202 as of today, and we're trying to find out from them. What area of land and sea are you influencing? Are you rewilding? And currently we've counted 2.48 million square kilometres on land and about 4.8 million square kilometers at sea.
[01:04:13] Speaker B: Wow.
[01:04:14] Speaker C: And you bear in mind that France, I think, is about 600,000 square kilometers. So we're talking about 5, Francis on land and Bowers, and I can't do the math, 8 or something on Etsy. So our aim, our current aim is to double that area in the next six years.
I think we're going to do that. I think we're going to do that pretty easily just by, excuse me, just by finding existing organizations that are already doing stuff. We think we found most of the big ones. We're aware of a couple of big ones that haven't yet joined the alliance and we're kind of like working on that.
But we also then we want to see through policy, governments and international treaties getting to grips with this. So if we implement 30 by 30, if we protect 30% of the world's oceans, that will be, I mean, a vast area. Absolutely. I mean, completely blow our numbers out of the water. So in the best possible way. I have to find them. You know, this is an interesting one, isn't it? It's about language, you know, listening to our metaphors. You know, that's a. That's a military metaphor and we need to find a kind of better, Better metaphor. It's interesting as communicators, you know, like killing two birds with one stone. It's a violent metaphor.
[01:05:47] Speaker B: You know, that is a violent metaphor and I use it all the time. And I'm like, well aware. I'm like, the last thing I want to do is kill one bird, let alone two. But this is the only metaphor I know for the situation.
[01:05:58] Speaker C: So somebody recently said, feeding two birds with one seed.
[01:06:05] Speaker A: That'S beautiful.
[01:06:06] Speaker C: So we recreate our language to do this.
So coming back to the point, we want to see governments getting to grips with this. We want to see them committing to the High SEAS treaty, protecting 30% of the oceans, getting the industrial fishing out of places like Antarctica to make sure that we preserve these wildernesses, which are also, by the way, helping to stabilize the global climate.
And so we, you know, we desperately need this for our own survival. And this is not. This is not about saving Planet Earth. Planet Earth will be fine. This is about saving species, Homo sapiens or less sapiens than they otherwise think they are. You know, we're not as wise as we sometimes think we are. And so we need governments to be signing up to this. We need corporates to be signing up to this. There is an enormous amount that organizations can do to help this agenda, to build this agenda through their corporate commitments on nature and climate.
And yeah, I mean, I just.
It's a wild ride, you know, just keeping up. Just keeping up is. It's wild. And there's a real feeling of being very close to a takeoff point. This exponential inversion where you work. You know, it's like the line is like this for a long, long time and then at a certain point it just starts building.
And then with anything exponential once you get to 1% and it doubles, you get to 2%, double again, 4%, 8%, 1632. For me, there's no reason why we shouldn't reach 30 by 30 through exponential processes. But most people think linear and most of us have had the exponential beaten out of us at school where we're taught to think uncreatively and straight line, you know, and be a good girl and be a good boy and get good marks and 70%.
But actually a lot of life happens like this.
And that's what's happening in with solar, wind and batteries. It's coming so fast, people are hardly seeing it. You know, the coal industry is going to die on its feet. Fossil fuel industry is starting to creak at the edges. And I can see the same thing happening in rewilding, where huge areas of land will suddenly become available for rewilding. And that would be an amazing thing.
[01:08:48] Speaker B: Yep. And we will be here to help share those stories. Right?
[01:08:51] Speaker C: We will, we will. We'll watch it all the way in.
[01:08:55] Speaker B: Oh, Alastair, this has been such a phenomenal conversation and it's just making me just so excited for just everything. The future, 20, 25, 26 and on. So if anybody wants to learn more about the gra, maybe get in touch with you or the team, what are some of the best ways that somebody could do that?
[01:09:16] Speaker C: Okay, so GlobalRewelding Earth is our website. We've got a lot there. If you're interested in reanimating the carbon cycle and the science around that, we've just launched a new website which is Animatingcarbon Earth. And there we have 60 publications with summaries and resources for scientists, for policymakers, for journalists, and for ordinary punters, as it were, like you and me.
Then if you want to get more actively involved I'd say two things. I would say, firstly, if you want to be involved on the ground, go and find a local organization. And if you can't find one, find the nearest that you can and kind of find out how you can create one or how you can get involved. And as I said earlier, all of us have got a piece of the puzzle. You know, if it's. If you just want to be in the back office, there's sure to be a role for you. There's absolutely tons to do. If you want to be out there with your wellies on, you know, counting species or, you know, whatever, there's. There's bound to be work for you. So I would say.
I would say that. And then if you want to volunteer for a rewilding organization, you can go onto our website and on the people section there is a form that you can fill in. And we have about 10 volunteers working at the Global Rewilding Alliance. Amazing bunch of people. It's a really fun team. We're all over the world, and it's great what we're doing. You can get involved in onboarding, you can get involved in communications, and there's policy work coming up and then particular research projects as well. So if you've got particular skills, the one piece of advice I would say is be as specific as you can be. So we have quite a lot of people coming on saying, oh, I love rewilding. I'll do anything. And, you know, that doesn't really help us to narrow our search. Whereas if you come on and say, I'm passionate about howler monkeys in Brazil, then I can connect you exactly with the right person who's working on howler monkeys in Brazil.
So I would say be precise and specific as you can. And we now have this thing called our talent pool document, where for people who don't end up volunteering with us at the Global Rewilding alliance, we put you on the talent pool with your permission. And then organizations around the world are coming into that document and looking for volunteers. And we've already connected up somebody in the Netherlands with somebody in Brazil, and they're going to be going and volunteering in a project in country. Amazing. That happened within two weeks. Yeah. Happened within two weeks of us publishing that document. Yeah, yeah. So that's our global talent pool document, which is like a spreadsheet, and we can put you on that. And that sort of then connects you up with other organizations. We have strong flow in that, like everything.
One of our biggest problems is just managing the Flow, because there's so much interest at the moment where, you know, we're really.
We're really up to our eyes. I mean, a couple of other things connect with us on socials, like Global rewilding alliance, Instagram, LinkedIn X, Facebook. We're there.
Every single person who likes a post or who comments on a post or who especially reposts a post is really helping us to reach new people, to draw more people into the hopeful story that is the rewilding movement. And honestly, I cannot overstate how simple that is and how powerful it is. So we have posts now that are being reposted dozens of times, sometimes hundreds of times, and it's meaning that we're reaching loads of people. I mean, for example, if you go on our LinkedIn, I really recently reposted a thing that just says that indigenous people in the South Pacific have given Wales legal rights, legal recognition as a legal entity.
And people have absolutely loved that post, and they've reposted it dozens of times and so on. So we can share this good news, you know, and even if you do, nothing else, doing something like that can really help us get the message out.
[01:13:55] Speaker B: Yes, I can definitely vouch for the gra. You guys post incredible things. I've now talked to lots of your communication team that you're head of. So I love the organization and everything that you are all doing, and I am so honored to sit down with you today.
[01:14:10] Speaker C: Thank you. Thank you.
[01:14:12] Speaker B: And we're going to have a lot of conversations to come, I think.
[01:14:16] Speaker C: So.
[01:14:16] Speaker B: Last one at all?
[01:14:18] Speaker C: No, I know you're going.
[01:14:19] Speaker B: Thank you.
[01:14:20] Speaker C: It's been a huge pleasure, Brooke. And, you know, you're a great host. You ask fantastic questions. And the reach of your podcast, I mean, it's actually a source of frustration for me. I look and I see all the episodes and I think, when am I going to listen to them all? And then another one comes out and I know, no, I just haven't got enough hours in the day. So it's. But then, you know, that's part of the reward I call my rewilding education. Is there so much to learn? And just as you said, you know, one of the beautiful things about the rewilding movement is it's so creative and there are so many brilliant people doing beautiful things. And what you're doing is you're capturing that. And I just love that, you know, it's a huge resource for all of us to get inspired, but also to learn from all these brilliant people. So big respect to you. For doing it.
[01:15:07] Speaker B: Oh thank you Alastair. Thank you for coming on, supporting me, supporting all of us around the world and I can't not wait to get your story out.
[01:15:17] Speaker C: Yeah, great. Look forward to it. Thanks again.
[01:15:23] Speaker A: Thank you for joining me on this wild adventure today. I hope you've been inside inspired by the incredible stories, insights and knowledge shared in this episode. To learn more about what you heard, be sure to check out the show
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[01:16:49] Speaker B: A big thank you to the guests.
[01:16:50] Speaker A: That come onto the show and share their knowledge with all of us and to all of you Rewild Algae listeners for making the show everything it is today. This is Brooke signing off. Remember, together we will rewild the planet.
