Nonprofits & Activism

Let’s make the world wild again | Kristine Tompkins

Visit to get our entire library of TED Talks, transcripts, translations, personalized talk recommendations and more. Earth, humanity and nature are inextricably interconnected. To restore us all back to health, we need to “rewild” the world, says environmental activist Kristine Tompkins. Tracing her life from Patagonia CEO to passionate conservationist, she shares how she has…

Published

on

Visit to get our entire library of TED Talks, transcripts, translations, personalized talk recommendations and more.

Earth, humanity and nature are inextricably interconnected. To restore us all back to health, we need to “rewild” the world, says environmental activist Kristine Tompkins. Tracing her life from Patagonia CEO to passionate conservationist, she shares how she has helped to establish national parks across millions of acres of land (and sea) in South America — and discusses the critical role we all have to play to heal the planet. “We have a common destiny,” she says. “We can flourish or we can suffer, but we’re going to be doing it together.”

The TED Talks channel features the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world’s leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes (or less). Look for talks on Technology, Entertainment and Design — plus science, business, global issues, the arts and more. You’re welcome to link to or embed these videos, forward them to others and share these ideas with people you know. For more information on using TED for commercial purposes (e.g. employee learning, in a film or online course), submit a Media Request here:

91 Comments

  1. Madhvan Dikshit

    June 16, 2020 at 8:35 pm

    This video clearly reflects our responsibility towards nature… Very inspiring ; yes we can join forces under tough circumstances

  2. elusion2012

    June 16, 2020 at 8:36 pm

    Came here for the thumbnail, stayed for the Talk.

  3. Matt Bryan

    June 16, 2020 at 8:39 pm

    Go vegan.

  4. Jade Choi - Million Dollar Challenge

    June 16, 2020 at 8:56 pm

    Seriously, who’s sick of this quarantine? Because I am.

    • Petrol Monkey

      June 16, 2020 at 9:19 pm

      we all are, but we cant stop until its safe enough mate

    • Fauxe

      June 16, 2020 at 10:37 pm

      every day feels the same

  5. tim smith

    June 16, 2020 at 9:14 pm

    Great talk! We, as a species, have gotten to this high level of civilization by cooperation among many different people and groups. Wildlife influences a lot more of the earth’s systems and need protection from our own ignorance.

  6. alyson Maxwell

    June 16, 2020 at 9:28 pm

    Thank goodness for people like her

  7. thinkabout

    June 16, 2020 at 9:37 pm

    If Nature is given the chance, it will bounce back ! We just have to back off and give this lonely
    little blue ball a chance.

  8. Melissia Charles

    June 16, 2020 at 9:46 pm

    Before i listen…like get naked🤣🤣🤣

  9. Melissia Charles

    June 16, 2020 at 10:03 pm

    Freedom

  10. Jaap Ongeveer

    June 16, 2020 at 10:03 pm

    I read the National Geographic article of her husband Doug and her efforts to rewild areas in Chile and Argentina. Love this!

  11. Daniel Matthews

    June 16, 2020 at 10:04 pm

    More than 5/6 humans are not white women, and most of them have very different priorities because they are not wealthy. You either find a way to give those people the same quality of life that you have, or you give up your quality of life, unless you want to look like a hypocrite. That pretty much sums up what needs to be done, and also why nothing will be done until humanity has fusion power, true AI, and nanofabrication systems that can build and recycle matter intelligently and on a huge scale without requiring manpower as an input.

  12. Christian Williams

    June 16, 2020 at 10:24 pm

    It would of been nice for her to expose more of the truth on what is currently the number one driver of deforestation, species extinction, ocean dead zones, and that takes up 45% of all of the space on all of the continent on this planet. This is all driven by one industry that everybody is participating in 3 times a day on their plates, this industry being the animal agriculture industry. Meat, dairy, fish, shellfish and eggs are the number one destructive force on this planet. It contributes to more greenhouse gasses than all of the transportation sector, meaning cars, boats, trains and plains combined. If we stoped eating what we are not designed for we could re-wild 75% of the land on this planet.

  13. Bob Ross is god

    June 16, 2020 at 10:35 pm

    This is why I think rich people have a bigger responsibility to protect the planet and our future

  14. Ligia Sommers

    June 16, 2020 at 10:40 pm

    Thank you for being such an inspiration and making a difference in a needy and hurting world 🙏🏻💖🌷

  15. Mr Mike

    June 16, 2020 at 10:44 pm

    I’m all for managed conservation (in the tradition of TR). The most significant problem: How do we properly relate to the earth and protect it (in balance with corporate activity) until we can prove successful getting along with one another as a human race? Good, thought-filled commentary, Kristine Tompkins.

  16. 1234coolman

    June 16, 2020 at 10:51 pm

    Never been so bored in my life

  17. William T. Smith

    June 16, 2020 at 10:54 pm

    YA YA YA! WILD WILD WEST ALL OVER AGAIN, ALL THE MALCONTENTS DEAD SOON AFTERWARD’S.!.GAURRENNTEED SILVER BULLET SOLUTION

  18. Zenn Exile

    June 16, 2020 at 11:01 pm

    Continental scale wildlife reserves that span the entirety of all available landmass, permaculture, and decentralized agriculture are absolutely the only true path forward. We need to finally accept our position as caretakers of global ecosystems. We can’t allow the Elite few to carve up what’s left of our future for a quarterly gain. Our children will curse our names with their dying breath as human extinction will come swift on the heals of our inaction. Technology is not developing fast enough to overcome our mistakes. We have to take two steps back and reset out approach.

  19. Gaasuba Meskhenet

    June 16, 2020 at 11:13 pm

    Just give people enough money to live on so they don’t need so many excess livestock for the market

  20. Justin Torres

    June 16, 2020 at 11:53 pm

    This woman and her husband are remarkable people and have done so much to help the planet. By no means, what I say is meant to belittle or deter from the messages that she speaks and wishes to instill in a younger generation. But as someone of this younger generation with the decided life purpose of wildlife conservation, should we not question why we have to privatize nature in order to protect it? What should be something no human has the control over? I understand why this is necessary, the human world is decided by money and you can hear the heaviness of the words she speaks when she talks of the use of wealth and privatization of land as the “chess move” to make in order to protect the planet. The reality of this age is that money and ownership is the only way to protect the planet fast enough with the ever decreasing time window we are given to do so. In addition ownership of nature is the only thing stopping those who would benefit from destroying it, so believe me I understand why this is so. That doesnt change that I think it is wrong and several of my generation do as well. The notion that spoke the most to me and what all environmentalists share is that the first step for change is believing it is possible, no matter how small of a possibility that may be. I think that even when nature is preserved there will still be problems the next generation will have to solve, that being the world view of nature and its importance. We are a part of nature, not apart from it.

  21. Lisa Love Ministries

    June 17, 2020 at 12:05 am

    Develop a personal relationship with Christ our LORD and only Savior.👑
    John 14:6

  22. Play Dog

    June 17, 2020 at 12:24 am

    Very nice, noe stop big wild hunters from USA and Europe going to Africa to shoot our Elephants, lions, leopards for a family postcard photo. Expose and arrest them back home if you are serious.

  23. K

    June 17, 2020 at 12:36 am

    I like this *format* so much more than watching someone stand on a stage giving a Toastmasters-like talk.

    But I don’t want to hear any more privileged white talks for a while though, esp talking about their family foundations. I need a break from all white board of directors, companies, CEOs, leaders, authorities, etc. Move out of the way and let’s equalize.

    • DDPWE

      June 17, 2020 at 1:11 am

      IF ALL rich people were like this, we wouldn’t be here at this point right now. That’s the problem, the rich that AREN’T like this just want more, for WHAT?! Exactly, EGO. Go capitalism, it’s been working perfect!

  24. David Chang

    June 17, 2020 at 1:11 am

    Beautiful wildness! When will the whole Earth becomes? Will each one of us connect with Nature?

  25. Sonia Ahmed

    June 17, 2020 at 1:29 am

    I have a dream in a smaller scale with a peace of land in San Diego

  26. طاهر سلمان سوادي

    June 17, 2020 at 9:57 am

    💖

  27. Anurag Uprety

    June 17, 2020 at 10:34 am

    A thing of beauty is wild forever

  28. Sergey Alekseev

    June 17, 2020 at 10:40 am

    My life is quite wild despite the ecology

  29. Sky Art

    June 17, 2020 at 10:49 am

    go to usa on bicycle from patagonia,,,safe air,,,lost conection with reality is illness —- 8 bilion mupets on planet,,

  30. Vishnu Easwaran

    June 17, 2020 at 11:37 am

    Salute!

  31. 1002강민재

    June 17, 2020 at 12:10 pm

    우리는 발전을 중요하게 여깁니다. 그로인해 혹독한 대가를 치르게 되죠. 환경을 가꾸고 보호하는 현실적이고 실천할 수 있는 여러 방안대해 생각해 보는 좋은 시간이었습니다. 멋진 강연 해주셔서 감사합니다.

  32. ES SIS

    June 17, 2020 at 12:39 pm

    Call Thanos

  33. Vitaly Kroychik

    June 17, 2020 at 12:40 pm

    If you’re looking for a place like this in the US – it’s called AMERICAN PRAIRIE RESERVE.

  34. Victoria Williams

    June 17, 2020 at 1:03 pm

    Thank you Kristine for everything you have done here in Chile, I drove through your amazing park in the summer, as we turned every corner of that road you could see all the love and effort that you and Doug put into your project .
    What an incredible gift you have given this country 🌎

  35. Annik Ruby

    June 17, 2020 at 1:04 pm

    Thank you

  36. ITouchTheSky 8GladysWorld8

    June 17, 2020 at 1:07 pm

    Thank you so much for sharing your personal lovely childhood and talking about on how to conserve our amazing environment and world. I agree with you, each of us, we can give our part to do so. I am lucky living in nature, on the top of the mountain in Italy. Thanks to technology, YouTube and Ted, I can watch and listen to you over here. It’s cloudy and foggy at this moment, It’s 3 o’clock in the afternoon, I just finished also doing video editing of my videos that I share on YouTube, I have to go down now in my sustainable garden and harvest some vegetables and small fruits.

  37. Steve Deasy

    June 17, 2020 at 1:07 pm

    Look what the lazy, hedonistic hippies have accomplished.

  38. Julie Tran

    June 17, 2020 at 1:29 pm

    What you have done is so inspired and impressed

  39. Yatendra Negi

    June 17, 2020 at 2:32 pm

    I love the title…

  40. Sean McCallum

    June 17, 2020 at 2:34 pm

    In order to preserve the environment, wealth has to be generated through the capitalist system. Trouble is, capitalism demands the environment be destroyed at a rate faster than we can preserve it.

    This unsustainable cycle won’t change so long as the means of production is held by a small group of people. I’m sure the speaker is aware of that but she clearly has a vested interest…
    ¯_(ツ)_/¯

  41. Open Mind

    June 17, 2020 at 2:42 pm

    cities should be inside forest

  42. Tiavor Kuroma

    June 17, 2020 at 3:49 pm

    wealth is privilege, no point in listing them as separate.

  43. Ritik Gupta

    June 17, 2020 at 4:39 pm

    Thank you.

  44. Now 1

    June 17, 2020 at 4:42 pm

    Beautiful.

  45. Kate Sterling

    June 17, 2020 at 4:52 pm

    I’m UNsubscribing from Ted Talks because they had a talk trying to normalize pedophilia. They are not adults! They can not make those kinds of choices!

  46. A D

    June 17, 2020 at 5:44 pm

    Thank you <3

  47. Sarfaraz Ahmad

    June 17, 2020 at 7:01 pm

    kindness just oozes out of her. amazing

  48. Daniyal Naqvi

    June 17, 2020 at 7:14 pm

    This was a very refreshing talk. Before today, I had no idea about the work you were doing. Excellent! May you find the strength to continue working and making a difference.

  49. Ben Wielgus

    June 17, 2020 at 7:40 pm

    If they were able to do this with Patagonia profits, imagine what Jeff Bezos could do

    • ben MAT

      June 20, 2020 at 8:39 am

      The profits of Patagonia (14 million CAD of valuation), AND The North Face (24 billion USD of valuation). The profits are more likely from The North Face 🙂

    • Zehra Kamal

      June 22, 2020 at 2:12 pm

      Yet he didn’t top even in philanthropy…..it would be nice to see him doing something on this large scale for nature..

  50. saurabh lad

    June 17, 2020 at 10:38 pm

    You’re an inspiration

  51. Dr mosfet

    June 18, 2020 at 7:01 am

    Wildlife is always in important, but mankind’s need to advance is also important, when I see advancements in technology that could reduce the strains on ecosystems, such a LED grow light and solar cell efficiency increase while at the same time cost going down, making possiblity for warehouse farming to free up land while reducing pollution from shipping. The Resurrection of a unwanted nuclear technology that was deemed useless in the cold war era for it inability to be weaponized, despite it safety capability and short life waist. Such thing can give you hope, but the sad thing is, technology is a two Edge sword, it’s not technology fault but the people who controller it incorrectly. The running of a sea of buffalos across the great plans is something I would have love to see, with out having to live in a new dark age.

  52. M F

    June 18, 2020 at 12:16 pm

    3 steps. 1. Kill all US anti-green corporations, oil and gas, chemicals, weapons, banking and finance, 2. Follow China’s one child policy. 3 Build Bill Gates Terra nuclear reactors.

  53. A ORDEM DO GOLFINHO THE ORDER OF THE DOLPHIN

    June 18, 2020 at 2:12 pm

    It was broadcasted In the anno domini 2001…

  54. SKMusic

    June 18, 2020 at 5:48 pm

    What an amazing person!

  55. Danilius

    June 18, 2020 at 5:57 pm

    Who can help me to learn English? I’m from Ukraine. I know Russian ad Ukrainian language. If you want to learn one of this language – I can help you. I am writing this text without google translate. Comments my text please

    • Lollie Holden

      June 21, 2020 at 12:40 pm

      How would you like to learn?

  56. Kenan Demir

    June 18, 2020 at 7:41 pm

    Thanks a lot for your amd late husband’s extraordinary efforts to rewilde the erath. I have been inspired by your amazing example. Thank you.

  57. Luis G. Gomez

    June 18, 2020 at 8:52 pm

    Great story. Thanks!

  58. eterna invidie

    June 19, 2020 at 12:42 am

    let’s destroy capitalism. two seconds, not sixteen minutes. thank you.

  59. Meyburgh Hofmeyr

    June 19, 2020 at 7:01 am

    Love love love. Thank you Kristine and Doug! There is no award great enough to acknowledge your gift to the world.

  60. Demonious

    June 19, 2020 at 1:40 pm

    It’s so inspiring to watch this at 1.75x speed

  61. Franco Ramos

    June 19, 2020 at 7:04 pm

    This is what happens when you let your feelings speak and try to make them sound rationall, such an stupid talk.

  62. Eula

    June 19, 2020 at 7:17 pm

    I love that you care a lot about nature and the animals. Maybe a piece of that land can be used for shelter of refugees and in return they could help look after it.

  63. strixcz

    June 19, 2020 at 8:53 pm

    Thank YOU – people like you restore my (sometimes almost lost) faith in humanity <3

  64. 이똘태

    June 20, 2020 at 3:14 am

    Our normal life is over from COVID-19

  65. Renato E

    June 20, 2020 at 4:22 am

    Had to gogle Ibera, i was sayng no way jaguars and the othrs can live in Patagoniaits too far south, turns out that park is at the other end of Argentina close to Brazil and that’s right in the range of those animals

  66. Apurv Kulkarni

    June 20, 2020 at 8:06 am

    Rewilding! Yes we can!!

  67. Untold Realities Channel

    June 20, 2020 at 2:34 pm

    Another brainwashing video, just as the global warming bullsh*t. You don’t need to protect nature, our future is in the outer space, not on Earth! Our Earth will be destroyed by our sun in 5 billion years, in the next 10 years we’re slowly starting to leave this planet, and colonize not just the Mars, but moving on in the space. You don’t need to help animals too, as they’re helping each other. Animal protecting is propaganda bullsh*t too. If there would be a bigger lifeform on Earth than human, they would also eat the humans, or keep the humans in cages. That’s the matter of evolution, and currently we’re on the top of the pyramid. So many things are misunderstood at these days… Like racism, racism means you love your race, and not to hating other races! So racism is good, and should not to be misunderstood with discrimination.

  68. Aaron Rickle

    June 20, 2020 at 3:22 pm

    Oh God please help us in America. We’re a few decades away from nothing but sparrows, rats, pigeons, raccoons, and stupid grass lawns. The American wild is losing the war with humans.

  69. K Feliz

    June 21, 2020 at 12:29 am

    great speech with a lot of positive energy.
    I believe that human is greedy enought to destroy itself and a new world will start again.

  70. Max

    June 21, 2020 at 10:00 am

    I agree with the comments below about who should have more responsibility then other but I’ll like to say that everyone can make a change. Every single choice you make will affect the life where you live into. Food, clothes, technology, household, car and so on. Yo can direct the “supply and demand”, every single of us. I’d suggest to every one to be more responsible when you buy: sustainability, origin, quantity, disposing. Please keep in mind we are all the same and we are all connected to each other, to animals and to the earth.

  71. Michele Ferraro

    June 21, 2020 at 7:01 pm

    Lady you have my deepest respect and gratitude. Bless you.

  72. Invox

    June 21, 2020 at 7:53 pm

    The best thing we can do to save our planet is not to “do” something, it is to just… STOP! 🌍

  73. dz minh

    June 22, 2020 at 1:22 pm

    trash

  74. derf tastic

    June 23, 2020 at 9:22 am

    I wish there was a way to live with nature, just modernized. Like we should have local produce and livestock farms. we should be focusing on our planet because without one we would not exist. This ted talk definely helped me!!

  75. incense Ann

    June 23, 2020 at 9:57 am

    ???

  76. Nicolas Stavrogin

    June 23, 2020 at 10:11 am

    Do not worry, soon the nature will be wild again, after nuclear war

  77. British Naturalist

    June 23, 2020 at 10:29 am

    We can’t do this while the human population is increasing exponentially without the rest of us being driven into ghetto’s as is currently happening. This is privileged well off brainwashing.

  78. Elizabeth Ashley

    June 23, 2020 at 7:12 pm

    This was incredible. I try to do what I can, but to hear all the work being done to help our planet really gave me strength in a time when sometimes it’s difficult to believe we can do anything to stop the destruction

  79. Parque Patagonia Argentina

    June 24, 2020 at 6:57 pm

    <3

  80. Niels Blume

    June 24, 2020 at 9:36 pm

    Brilliant and inspiring. More wealth should be used for good like this. More humans should think like this.

  81. Jenish Niraula

    June 25, 2020 at 10:33 am

    Not wild. Just kill the half pop.

  82. janny

    June 27, 2020 at 10:27 am

    thank you for your working

  83. Arhan Solo

    June 27, 2020 at 11:33 am

    Very inspiring! My own vision dor the future is that will become the caretakers of the Earth. The time will cone people will realize what is really important.

  84. OlliMSa

    June 28, 2020 at 12:27 am

    Beautiful talk! If I were a multimillionaire this is where I would put my money, but sadly, I do not share her positive view of the future.

  85. Mystic Soundwave

    June 28, 2020 at 4:13 am

    Wild at heart, peace in mind…. 🌿🌿🌿🌿

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Trending

Exit mobile version