James Shooter: the man behind Rewilding Europe's Rewild Podcast

After following him online for a long time, and in particular after listening to his Rewild Podcast as he journeyed across Europe, I felt that I kind of knew James Shooter. And so, when I met him for a many-weathered little hike in Scotland’s Cairngorms National Park, it really was like meeting an old pal.

James was the natural follow-up after my meeting with Pete Cairns the day before. Why? Because the story of SCOTLAND: The Big Picture is very much also James’ story. He was studying at the time he met Pete and then, just when he had won opportunity to join a research project in India, Pete offered him a position at SBP. He had to pick one or the other and didn’t hesitate. He joined SBP and was very much part of the core team that helped fashion the charity into what it is today.

He is a wildlife guide, photographer and filmmaker (a drone expert, too!), and with all of his storytelling skills, that makes James a prime nature science communicator. He worked with SBP until the end of 2022 when his wife suggested that they go travel across Europe to, in his words, “soak in as much nature as possible.” They sold the house, quit their jobs and bought an old motor home that would prove one of their slightly less than stellar ideas.

Luckily, for all of us, James wanted to make something more of that trip across Europe. He explored a few possibilities, then thought of podcasts - something he had never done before. Rewilding Europe has one of its flagship rewilding landscapes in the Scotland (the marvelous Affric Highlands) and so James went there, created a pilot podcast and pitched the idea. Rewilding Europe jumped at it and a wonderful collaboration was born - and one that would grow to become deeper and richer.

Some of Gemma Shooter's iconic artwork

For one, Gemma Shooter, James’ wife, is also a nature communicator - as well as an animal behaviorist and illustrator. Guess who did the iconic artwork for all of James’ podcast episodes? Brilliant work, right!? And for another, the collaboration with Rewilding Europe led to - fast forward to today - James working for them as a Communications Manager, with a special focus on visual storytelling. Sometimes, quite often in fact, when you just go with the flow, good things happen!

Now, most people wouldn’t sell their house, quit their jobs and buy an old motor home (yes, there would be trouble with that thing!) to spend a year journeying across Europe. That in itself makes James and Gemma pretty special in my eyes. But just so you know, they also had two little kids (the older one had just turned three) - and as if that wasn’t enough, a dog also joined them on their European adventure.

In the end, over the course of 18 months, they visited all of Rewilding Europe’s flagship landscapes - and quite a few more! In total there would be a 18 episodes, 16 countries, 48 contributors and nearly 150’000 downloads from listeners in 162 countries … now that’s impact. Do yourself a favor - if you haven’t yet - jump into the Rewild Podcast!

“When I set out to make the series, my ultimate aim was for it to be a hopeful place. By showcasing the actions of people engaged in nature recovery right across Europe – and giving them a platform to speak so passionately about rewilding and its benefits – I’d like to think these podcasts have given listeners hope that we can turn things around for wild nature. That message of hope really gets into people’s veins, as it does mine, which I believe is a major factor in how many times they’ve been listened to.” (James Shooter)

James and Gemma both have their jobs and, by now, a third child has joined the growing Shooter clan. I was all the more amazed when James said the he could make the time to catch up. I was up for anything and he suggested a little hike through Glenmore Forest in the heart of the Cairngorms National Park and so that’s where we met. It was the weekend and you could see that this really is a place people love to visit. We walked through the woods, listened to the birds, went past the Green Loch - called home of the fairies because of the emerald waters.

While rewilding was, of course, the focus of our conversation, hearing of a fairy lake instantly had me veering off into fantasy territory. I told James about the story of a giant that I had initially planned to set in Cairngorms (it became The Sweet-Maker of Connemara). But now that I know about the Green Loch - and I’ve also long known and read about the mysterious Big Grey Man of Cairngorms - I think there’s another novel that wants to be written in the coming years!

As we continued uphill, we left the woods behind us and came, to our great surprise, to see a group of about ten black grouse who, in mid-afternoon, were lekking. James was quite surprised because, he explained, you usually have to get up very early in the morning to see them in action. By the way, black grouse populations have been in massive decline for a long time - but rewilding efforts have a positive impact on this iconic species - go here for more on this … and here’s a video clip that’ll give you a good sense of what we saw and heard!

The weather, the weather - it was one of those days that really regaled us with everything. Sometimes blue-skied and sunny, it was foggy and drizzling moments later. When we came to decide whether we should climb the Meall a’ Bhuachaille, the weather suggested we should turn around. What did we do? We went up, of course. There was rain and thick fog and somewhere in between the sun was out again. We saw red grouse on the way up and absolutely nothing when we reached the cairn at the top in thickest fog.

On the way up and especially also on the way down again, we came across a wide variety of landscape. I’ve seen some of the other landscapes by now and so I know that Glenmore is on a good path. And yet, a lot of it is still plantation-forested, there are huge patches of clear-felled land, there are places where the removal of invasive species clearly didn’t take - more of them are growing. But you could see, everywhere we went, that there are an increasing number of people in Scotland who are very serious about nature restoration.

Clearly, a great deal more needs to happen. As Rewilding Britain points out, “Scotland is ranked 212 out of 240 countries for the state of its nature. To give nature the best chance of bouncing back, we need to enable rewilding, at scale, at speed. There are over 150 rewilding projects already restoring nature across Scotland – but just 2.1% of Scotland’s land is rewilding.”

This is my focus for the coming weeks - visiting rewilding people and projects, learning more about what is happening, and what needs to happen going forward to scale the movement and restore Scotland’s nature. I think Rewilding Britain puts the finger on it: while all of this amazing work is taking place with a growing groundswell, what needs to happen at the political level is the adoption of nature-positive laws. Find their briefing paper on Scotland’s Land Reform Bill here.

Before closing, I wanted to add something more about that meeting with James: There was something that immediately struck me as we went on our walk ‘n’ talk – he made me reflect on where I had been at his age. We’re both family men, we both have three children. James is at a time in his life where I was thirty years ago. He juggles family life and working life with his wonderful wife and her job and three little children, just as I did then.

There’s all of that - and they do it with lives that are focused on nature and especially on nature recovery. Me? Thirty years ago? Nature wasn’t on my mind, at all. It was all about life as a partner, dad and screenwriter for me. I don’t feel bad about that, of course, it’s just the way it was - I’m highlighting it for two reasons:

1: James is an example - one of many I see - of younger generations stepping up, focusing on nature recovery, on planetary health, on sustainable economies. They’re stepping up where we – for the most part - did not. You can argue, of course, that we didn’t know any better. But at least for the last two decades, that argument really no longer holds. We lived (and most of us still do) in willful ignorance.

2: The second reason for bringing it up is simply this: Every moment is the right moment to start caring about nature and doing something about it. As the old saying goes, better late than never. So if you’re an older geezer like me, as you read this, maybe you’ll think about it and say to yourself – now’s the time. And you’ll start acting, in whichever form, in more nature-positive ways.

Cheers,

PS: Were you wondering about the motor home troubles during those Rewild Podcast travels? After some early mishaps, they actually enjoyed four months of trouble-free bliss. Things got from bad to worse, think old motor home, the Alps - and an engine falling apart. If you’re up for it, listen to James in this podcast (the story of motor home troubles begins at min 27:00).

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