Episode 9: Nature Positive Tourism –  Long-term plan or short-term jargon?

Sponsored by ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Lemongrass⁠⁠⁠⁠

Holly and Richard discuss how tourism can support biodiversity and nature regeneration and whether the term nature positive tourism is jargon or a long-term plan for the industry with guests Kasia Morgan, Head of Sustainability for Exodus Adventure Travels, and Frans Schepers, Founder and Chief Executive of Rewilding Europe.

In this episode, we unpack:

• The term nature positive tourism – what it is, and whether the approach leads to genuine action.
• How tour operators can drive meaningful action for nature by identifying the right partners.
• Why Rewilding Europe is using nature tourism to support the rewilding of landscapes across Europe.
• How Exodus’ nature strategy and approach has evolved.
• How tourists and travellers can get involved in the restoration of nature on holiday.
• How we can measure our impact on nature as an industry and as individual companies.

Quotes from our guests:

“At Rewilding Europe, we actually use the term rewilding tourism to better describe what we stand for. that is moving away from minimizing harm to actually actively contributing to restoring ecosystems… moving away from observing static nature to witnessing its recovery.” – Frans Schepers.

“The tourism industry is uniquely placed to support that global goal to halt and reverse biodiversity loss… through getting involved, emotional engagement, and helping people play an active role.” – Kasia Morgan

“We work in 11 big landscapes across Europe and that number is growing. In these places we want to build a local nature-based or nature-positive economy, where there's a new narrative moving away from traditional land uses — agriculture, forestry and hunting — to a narrative where local economies build on natural features and natural capital. Of course tourism plays an important role.” – Frans Schepers.

“I think it's tempting to try and find an area in which we can easily quantify.But I think it's also our role to not risk undermining or oversimplifying the importance of the work (nature restoration) and also making sure that a distinction can be drawn between something that might look good at surface level and that is genuinely really effective and focused on the right thing.” – Kasia Morgan

Find out more about our guests in this episode:

Frans Schepers

Kasia Morgan

Some useful links to things mentioned in the show:

Read about Exodus Adventure Travels’ commitment to nature here. 

Find out about Exodus’ citizen science partnership with iNaturalist, launched Jan 2026, here. 

How Rewilding Europe is helping nature-based tourism to thrive. Read more here

Launch of Wilder Places, Rewilding Europe’s travel booking platform wilderplaces.com

Wildlife Watching in the Apennines with Exodus and Rewilding Apennines. Read the article here 

And helpful links from our sponsors, Lemongrass:

5 things we learnt from Carbon Literacy training and how it can help your travel business

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It’s a Journey is a ground-breaking podcast series hosted by Richard Hammond, Publishing Director of Green Traveller Media and Holly Tuppen, sustainable travel writer and expert. Sponsored by Lemongrass, it tackles the uncomfortable, complex, and often overlooked questions facing the travel industry as it strives to have a better impact on people and places.

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