The Inquiry · BBC World Service

How can rewilding help combat climate change?

March 17, 2026·24 min·2 clips

How did releasing 158 hybrid tortoises after 180 years of extinction transform the Galapagos ecosystem?

February 2026 sets the scene. On Floriana, park rangers haul large grey plastic crates filled with giant tortoises into a place where the native species disappeared more than 180 years ago. The scene is practical, a little odd, and very alive: 158 hybrids crawling back through a damaged island ecosystem, grazing, breaking up dense ground, clearing paths, and spreading seeds and nutrients as they go. That is rewilding at dirt level. The host describes it as letting nature take care of itself, while an expert puts it as putting nature back in the driving seat so ecosystems can recover and self-regulate with less human control. Then the programme moves to the harder climate question. What happens when restored land, demand, and conservation pressure push against each other? One witness brings up leakage. Protect or restore one area, and the activity may move somewhere else. That means the climate value depends partly on what happens outside the protected boundary. Local planning can help. If a forest is protected, the witness suggests using nearby forest goods more efficiently instead of treating the saved land as sealed off from the rest of the economy. Another route is restoring degraded land that is not producing high-demand goods such as soy or palm oil. The awkward part is distance. Restoring degraded soy pastures in the United States could still ripple through to the Cerrado in Brazil, because the global economy is tangled. The effect is slow and hard to see. Conservationists have to think 10 years ahead while also trying to protect the wild nature that is left. The answer stays careful: rewilding can repair living systems, but its climate case depends on leakage, location, and honest accounting.

As heard by us

A grounded climate listen on rewilding's promise, sharpened by the harder economics of land use and leakage.

The Inquiry treats rewilding as climate politics with dirt under its nails. It opens on Floriana, where giant tortoises return more than 180 years after the native species disappeared, then broadens into a sharper question about damaged ecosystems, land use and global demand.

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Want a clear case for rewilding that goes beyond the usual nature story?

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