I first read about Ben Goldsmith in an article about rewilding – but not the official kind. Coda Story, which more often writes about disinformation and the war on science, called it The secret movement bringing Europe’s wildlife back from the brink. The article talks about how some people are secretly rewilding landscapes in the UK and Europe, without any official imprimatur.

But it also had these two paragraphs:

“For Ben Goldsmith, despair over the destruction of our wild places intersects with his own grief over the sudden loss of his teenage daughter, Iris. A lifelong lover of nature, she died, aged 15, in a farm vehicle accident in 2019. He has since given his farm over to rewilding. The spot where Iris died is marked with a stone circle. Not far off, along the stream threading through his land, a family of beavers has appeared.

“The family on my land happened to make their own way there, which is sort of a beautiful irony,” Goldsmith said. “They appeared by magic at a time in my life when I really needed and wanted that. It was one of the happiest events of my life.”