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PODCAST

The Nature Recovery Podcast

The Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery

The Nature Recovery Podcast looks at some of the major challenges we face to global biodiversity. It takes a look at the various ways we are trying to halt the decline in biodiversity and the challenges inherent in these approaches. We also talk to a number of leading figures in the field of Nature Recovery and find out more about their work.

science earth sciences

All Episodes

64:17

Lee White: Befriending Chimpanzees, Saving Forests,...

The Nature Recovery Podcast ·

2026/04/08

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of the Nature Recovery Podcast, Stephen Thomas speaks with Lee White about a remarkable life working across science, conservation, and government in central Africa. Lee reflects on growing up in Uganda, studying rainforest ecosystems in West Africa and Gabon, and how his scientific work led him into national park creation, forest policy, and international climate negotiations. The conversation explores why the gap between scientific evidence and political acti...

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34:15

Guy Shrubsole: The Lie of the Land. Is Stewardship a...

The Nature Recovery Podcast ·

2026/03/25

Send us Fan Mail Hosted by Wallerand Bazin, a DPhil researcher in Geography and the Environment at Oxford whose work focuses on the political ecologies of climate and conservation in heritage landscapes. In this episode of the Nature Recovery Podcast, Stephen Thomas and Wallerand Bazin speak with Guy Shrubsole about land ownership, stewardship, and the politics of nature recovery in Britain. Shrubsole traces the ideas behind Who Owns England?, The Lost Rainforest of Britain, and The Lie...

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47:10

Green Infrastructure: Why It Matters and Why It’s...

The Nature Recovery Podcast ·

2026/03/25

Send us Fan Mail Professor Ian Mell discusses how green infrastructure has moved from the margins of planning into mainstream conversation. He explains the political, economic and cultural barriers to delivery in the UK, cautions about uncritical reliance on markets and offsets, and highlights lessons from Asian cities where ambitious, large-scale projects and data-driven delivery have driven visible change. The episode explores equity, climate adaptation, placemaking and how to combine techn...

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32:17

Reimagining Nature Finance with Alice Stuart and...

The Nature Recovery Podcast ·

2026/03/18

Send a text Nature finance is often presented as a solution to biodiversity loss but what does it actually mean? In this episode of the Nature Recovery Podcast, David Goodman speaks with Dr. Alice Stuart, a postdoctoral researcher at Oxford’s School of Geography and the Environment. Alice’s research maps and analyses public, private, and philanthropic finance flows into conservation across the UK. They explore: Why most conservation funding still comes from public sourcesThe role of philanthr...

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43:02

Wytham Woods: Tales from the a long-studied woodland...

The Nature Recovery Podcast ·

2026/03/04

Send a text In this episode we talk to Dr Keith Kirby MBE about Wytham Woods, a Thames Valley hill of limestone, ancient woodland and one of the most intensively studied woodland sites in the world. Keith traces the site’s deep history (a coral reef 150 million years ago), the human influence on the landscape over centuries, and the key decisions that shaped the wood we see today: enclosure and planting by estate owners, the university bequest in the 1940s, and the later tussles between fores...

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26:15

From Surviving to Thriving: Inside the IUCN Green...

The Nature Recovery Podcast ·

2025/12/17

Send us a text In this episode Elizabeth Bock speaks with Dr Molly Grace (University of Oxford), co-chair of the IUCN Green Status of Species working group. The conversation explains how the Green Status complements the Red List by measuring species recovery, not just extinction risk. Molly unpacks the three components of recovery (distribution, viability, functionality), explains how the assessment quantifies the impact of conservation actions, and outlines how the Green Status can be used f...

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41:03

Wasps! What are they good for? Absolutely Everything,...

The Nature Recovery Podcast ·

2025/12/10

Send us a text In this episode of the Nature Recovery Podcast, Stephen Thomas speaks with Professor Seirian Sumner, one of the world’s leading experts on social insects and a passionate advocate for rethinking our relationship with wasps. Seirian reveals how a reluctant PhD choice turned into a 25-year research career uncovering the remarkable societies, behaviours and ecological roles of these misunderstood insects. Together, they explore how social evolution unfolds inside a wasp colony, wh...

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36:11

Living in 'The What Ought to Be' with David Farrier

The Nature Recovery Podcast ·

2025/12/03

Send us a text Professor David Farrier (University of Edinburgh) discusses his 2025 book Nature’s Genius: Evolution’s Lessons for a Changing Planet and explores how rapid, human-driven evolutionary pressures reveal both the fragility and inventive resilience of life. We cover urban evolution (birds and snails), domestication and self-domestication, collective and distributed forms of intelligence across living systems, and how rethinking time can help us reconnect with the natural world. The ...

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30:43

Talking Forests: Cristina Banks-Leite on Restoring...

The Nature Recovery Podcast ·

2025/11/26

Send us a text Professor Cristina Banks-Leite (Imperial College London) discusses the realities of tropical forest restoration: from large-scale reforestation projects and the practical challenges of seedlings, land tenure and finance, to why measured “success” can look counter-intuitive. She explains why current biodiversity metrics often miss the point, and how novel tools (like acoustic monitoring and AI) could transform how we listen to and protect ecosystems. A thoughtful conversation ab...

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38:01

Urban Nature Recovery with The Cloud Gardener: Small...

The Nature Recovery Podcast ·

2025/11/19

Send us a text In this episode, Jason Williams , better known as The Cloud Gardener, shares how a lockdown balcony became a haven for biodiversity and wellbeing, leading him to the Chelsea Flower Show and a Churchill Fellowship exploring greener cities around the world. Later, researchers Martha Crockatt and Mattia Troiano talk to Raphaella Mascia and discuss their Oxford-based work on equity of access to green space, and how social, economic and spatial inequalities shape who benefits from u...

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39:22

Cull of the Wild — Hugh Warwick on the Ethics of...

The Nature Recovery Podcast ·

2025/11/12

Send us a text How should we think about killing, introductions and “invasives” in a world we’ve already changed? In this episode we talk to Hugh Warwick — ecologist, writer and hedgehog champion — about his award-winning book Cull of the Wild and the uncomfortable question at its heart: can killing ever be conservation? From hedgehogs on the Hebrides to rats on South Georgia, Hugh explores what happens when good intentions meet ecological complexity. We discuss the power of names, the moral ...

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29:37

More than Human Rights with César Rodríguez-Garavito

The Nature Recovery Podcast ·

2025/10/09

Send us a text This episode of the Nature Recovery Podcast discusses legal personhood of nature, also known as rights of nature or more-than-human rights. Hosts Stephen Thomas, Hannah Wilson, and Diana Gusta sit down with lawyer and professor Cesar Rodriguez-Garavito, the founding director of the More-than-Human Life (MOTH) Collective. The discussion covers the following key points: The historical context of the movement: While Western legal frameworks have only recently begun adopting rights...

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46:42

A Developer, an Ecologist and a Social Scientist Walk...

The Nature Recovery Podcast ·

2025/06/23

Send us a text Guests Natalie Duffus (DPhil student, Dept. of Biology) https://naturerecovery.ox.ac.uk/people/natalie-duffus/Matti Troiano (Research Assistant, School of Geography and the Environment) https://naturerecovery.ox.ac.uk/people/mattia-troiano/Host: Stephen Thomas (Centre Manager, Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery) In this illuminating episode, we tackle the increasingly tangled web of Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) and get an update on what is happening with its current imp...

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36:41

Nature Finance – Opportunities, Challenges, and What...

The Nature Recovery Podcast ·

2025/04/29

Send us a text Nature Finance – Opportunities, Challenges, and What Comes Next In this episode, we delve into the fast-evolving world of nature finance — with a focus on schemes emerging in England, and insights relevant to the global shift toward blended finance for nature recovery. As governments increasingly look to private investment to complement public funding, what’s working, what’s not, and where is this movement headed? We explore the key challenges facing nature finance today, from ...

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59:43

Uncovering Ohio Nature Recovery: Part 2

The Nature Recovery Podcast ·

2025/04/28

Send us a text Discussing Ohio's beautiful forests and northern Ohio nature recovery efforts with Jessica Miller Mecaskey, Consulting Forester at Holden Forests and Gardens, one of the U.S.'s largest and foremost arboretums. Bio: Jessica Miller Mecaskey was born and raised in Northeast Ohio and is a forestry and natural resource professional with specialization in woodland ecosystems, experienced in forest management from every part of the management cycle. She currently assists landown...

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46:33

Uncovering Ohio Nature Recovery: Part 1

The Nature Recovery Podcast ·

2025/04/16

Send us a text This podcast covers topics including current environmental threats to Ohio's habitats and species, nature recovery work being undertaken in urban and rural areas, as well as ways people can become involved in Ohio nature recovery. In Part 1 of our Ohio Nature Recovery series, we will be talking with Anna Zaremba, the Nature-based Solutions Sustainability Manager for the City of Cleveland, Ohio as well as Dr. Lara Roketenetz, Biological Field Station Director for the University ...

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25:44

Leading From The Front: the role of the public sector...

The Nature Recovery Podcast ·

2024/12/03

Send us a textThis week I'm joined by Andrew Allen, the lead policy advocate on land use for the woodland trust. We will be discussing their new report out on the 3rd of December and how it attempts to encourage more debate as to how we go about recovering nature.You can find a link to the report here:https://www.naturerecovery.ox.ac.uk/projects/exploring-the-role-of-the-state-in-achieving-nature-recovery/The Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery is interested in promoting a wide variety of v...

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44:48

Stakeholder engagement for landscape-scale recovery

The Nature Recovery Podcast ·

2024/10/30

Send us a textThis month sees the publication of The Nattergal Report on Stakeholder Engagement Best Practice for Landscape-scale Nature Recovery Projects. Developed for the Boothby Wildland Landscape Recovery project, and funded via the DEFRA Landscape Recovery Development Phase, the report was led by the Countryside and Community Research Institute (CCRI) at the University of Gloucestershire and the Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery and Agile Initiative projects at Oxford University, wi...

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47:32

Financing Community Nature Recovery with Christoph...

The Nature Recovery Podcast ·

2024/10/14

Send us a textWho pays is a challenging question in any nature recovery project. In this episode we chat with Christoph Warrack of Woodland Savers (https://woodlandsavers.org/) about how they use a mix of finance sources to enable community ownership of natural areas. Reports referenced:The Lawton Review - Making Space for Nature (2010), and The State of Natural Capital report (2024).The Leverhulme Centre for Nature Recovery is interested in promoting a wide variety of views and opinions on n...

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24:06

Social Justice, Conservation and Complexity with...

The Nature Recovery Podcast ·

2024/08/12

Send us a Text Message.Our guest this week is Professor Dame E.J. Milner-Gulland who is the Tasso Leventis Professor of Biodiversity at Oxford. She leads the Interdisciplinary Centre for Conservation Science, founded the Conservation Optimism organization and co-founded the Saiga Conservation Alliance. In June 2024 she published a perspectives piece entitled Now is the time for conservationists to stand up for social justicehttps://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal...

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