Host Ben Goldsmith complained that British red tape makes wildlife reintroductions absurdly expensive compared with other countries. Stewart pushes back, arguing that the same rules that slow rewilders are the ones they use against projects they dislike.
…really subjects them to scrutiny because it seems unpleasant to do so. Nobody in the environmental movement wants to be the grumpy person saying, well, you know, is this tree planting really going to make a difference to the flooding in Keswick if the water comes down as it tends to in the winter?
…conservation breeding and reintroduction program of Iberian Lynx, a much larger and more complicated species than a wildcat. But I think we make it very hard to do these things. And the same applies across society. We're building other things as well, that the money gets unnecessarily spent.
Ben, but look, can I interrupt, Ben? Because this is partly about being a mature democracy. I mean, one of the reasons why African parks can move animals around is that it's very, very difficult for people living in extreme poverty in sub-Saharan Africa to object. They will have very strong objections. They just don't have the democratic and legal mechanisms to mount those objections. And you will be using all those same objections if people started building things that you thought were environmentally destructive in Britain. The very same people who are complaining about the regulations when they want to impose beavers are the very same people using regulations to stop people building data centers. So this is about a very mature, highly legalistic British democracy. And in a sense, it's a tribute to the democracy because those same laws that are getting in your way when you want to do what you want to do are the same laws that are protecting you against people doing things that you don't want to do.
Sure, but those two examples you used, I don't think, fit in a way because overwhelmingly the public wants these things back. Maureen Common did some polling for the National Trust that showed that in excess of 80% of voters across the political spectrum want these things back.
These are not people where they are, Ben. The question is not: does somebody living in London want a wildcat back in Ballet? The question is, does somebody in Balletta want the wildcat back? I mean, it doesn't cost anything if you're living in Hoxton to say, I want a wildcat back in Ballet. In the…
No, but when there is a law that says we're going to restore nature and species, there's an international commitment. There's polling nationally, but also locally. Remember, only 2% to 3% of rural residents in Balater or in any other rural landscape are in fact farmers. You've got 96, 97% of people…
