Ep. 046: Healing in the Wild with Jo Robert, CEO Wilderness Foundation UK

·1 hr 1 min·4 clips

Jo Roberts says wilderness work teaches resilience because people cannot “just switch on a tap” or “jump in a car.”

1. Wilder Podcast episode 46 focuses on Jo Roberts and the Wilderness Foundation’s use of wilderness, nature therapy, and outdoor education. 2. Jo Roberts is the CEO of the Wilderness Foundation, and Chloe and Tom host the podcast as founders of The Grange Project in Monmouthshire. 3. The episode asks what wilderness does for healing, resilience, and reconnection, and why access to nature matters for public health. 4. Chloe and Tom describe The Grange Project as an 80-acre nature restoration site in Wales, with volunteers, woofers, and a market garden shaping its work. 5. They say the project has needed extra help because maintenance, nature restoration, and the market garden require more than two people can manage alone. 6. Jo says her father in South Africa took her into wild places with an old folding chair and a mohair blanket, and she learned to love birds and ecological systems from him. 7. She also says her childhood was traumatic, lonely, and shaped by a mother with extreme depression and by the social contradictions of Johannesburg. 8. Jo links her later work to the Mbewu project, which means “seed” in Zulu, and says it took inner-city children back into the wild. 9. She says elders from communities, including former game rangers who often did not speak English, shared the language of nature with those children. 10. Jo describes wilderness as landscapes that are left to function as naturally as possible, even though management still exists in places like South African national parks. 11. She says nearly all of the earth, apart from most of the ocean, has been adapted by humans, which complicates the idea of untouched wilderness. 12. Jo contrasts African, European, and North American wild places, mentioning John Muir, Thoreau, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and the Ukraine border. 13. She says the UK can feel artificial because sheep have eroded landscapes that might once have been forested. 14. Jo argues that detachment from nature has created a “psychic shock” and that humans need belonging, rootedness, and social connection. 15. She says wilderness can help people who are frightened of the world, frightened of themselves, and frightened of others start to feel again. 16. Jo describes sea kayaking, including a near-drowning experience, and says caution, guidance, and respect for danger are now central to how she approaches it. 17. She tells the hosts that many of the foundation’s interventions are ritual-based and designed to help small groups cohabit, slow down, and value each other. 18. The interview is reflective and practical, with Chloe and Tom repeatedly connecting Jo’s ideas to bushcraft, camp roles, and their own experiences in Africa and the UK. 19. People interested in nature therapy, wilderness education, and mental health through outdoor work will likely want this episode. 20. Listeners wanting a purely academic ecology debate or a fast-moving narrative may skip it.

As heard by us

A measured case for nature as care, confidence, and public good.

Wilderness is treated less as scenery than as a force that can steady, teach, and reconnect people, and the case for access to nature lands as a public-health matter rather than a slogan.

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

You want a calm case for wilderness as care, with nature framed as a public health right.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from Wilder Podcast