00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.708
(Eerie Music)

00:00:07.750 --> 00:00:17.708
(Distant thunder)

00:00:22.666 --> 00:00:28.166
(Thunder crack)

00:00:39.666 --> 00:00:43.916
Narrator: Humanity enters the
third decade of the 21st century,

00:00:44.583 --> 00:00:48.000
certain in the
knowledge that this planet is broken.

00:00:52.458 --> 00:00:54.666
Climate chaos.

00:00:55.458 --> 00:00:57.166
(Eerie Music)

00:00:58.375 --> 00:00:59.541
Deforestation.

00:01:01.416 --> 00:01:02.625
Plastic pollution.

00:01:04.416 --> 00:01:08.083
The sixth mass
extinction since life began.

00:01:09.958 --> 00:01:12.708
To say there is nothing
they can do would not be true.

00:01:13.875 --> 00:01:20.458
This is a species evolved to problem
solve,(...) to manipulate the environment

00:01:20.666 --> 00:01:22.208
(Eerie music continues)

00:01:22.625 --> 00:01:24.458
or adapt to its changes.

00:01:25.666 --> 00:01:31.625
Never were these attributes, these
evolutionary flukes, more vital than now, when

00:01:31.708 --> 00:01:38.125
the urgency for adaptation is of their
own making.(...) They can collaborate,(...)

00:01:38.208 --> 00:01:44.208
overturn outdated
ideologies. Each has the capacity to act.

00:01:45.250 --> 00:01:46.166
Every child,

00:01:47.041 --> 00:01:48.291
woman,

00:01:48.958 --> 00:01:50.208
man.

00:01:50.875 --> 00:01:54.125
(Birds Chirping, river flowing)

00:01:56.333 --> 00:02:00.333
I've very few gurus in my life,
I've always tried to find my own path,

00:02:01.916 --> 00:02:05.208
but I was deeply
impressed by him. I think he's about

00:02:05.291 --> 00:02:09.166
as close as anyone has
ever come to being a guru for me.

00:02:10.750 --> 00:02:17.416
(Soft Music) (Birds Chirping)

00:02:18.416 --> 00:02:24.625
By the late 20th century, only 1% of
Scotland's ancient Caledonian forest remained.

00:02:26.125 --> 00:02:31.166
One man made it his personal
responsibility to restore it 

00:02:31.625 --> 00:02:35.875
and today, nearly 2 million trees have
been planted at the site.

00:02:37.083 --> 00:02:39.833
That man was Alan Watson Featherstone,

00:02:41.083 --> 00:02:42.875
founder of Trees For Life.

00:02:46.375 --> 00:02:53.458
Twenty years or so ago, I was one of
Alan's trustees in Trees For Life.(...) And what I

00:02:53.541 --> 00:02:59.083
liked about it was that it was not a
conservation body like I worked for; for the

00:02:59.166 --> 00:03:05.000
RSPB or others. I felt that,
although I'm not spiritual, I felt the spiritual

00:03:05.083 --> 00:03:10.458
nature of restoring the forest
was very interesting and also brought in a

00:03:10.541 --> 00:03:14.125
completely different
group of people, into recognizing

00:03:14.208 --> 00:03:19.000
that we had to restore
these fantastic forests of Scotland.

00:03:20.125 --> 00:03:25.500
I think it's great that individuals
like Alan are able to do the work that they've done

00:03:25.500 --> 00:03:26.750
and inspire people. 

00:03:26.750 --> 00:03:27.791
And obviously that's been great

00:03:27.791 --> 00:03:29.708
and that's stimulated many

00:03:29.708 --> 00:03:30.958
other people to go

00:03:30.958 --> 00:03:32.458
and follow in his footsteps

00:03:32.458 --> 00:03:34.583
and to try and
encourage woodland expansion.

00:03:35.375 --> 00:03:38.000
Alan has been quite a
visionary for many years. I

00:03:38.083 --> 00:03:42.041
remember being really quite
inspired by the vision that Alan had

00:03:43.333 --> 00:03:49.625
and the picture that was being
painted of a more vibrant, wild, restored Scotland,

00:03:49.625 --> 00:03:52.583
that was good for both nature and people.

00:03:55.500 --> 00:03:59.833
Alan's work was seminal. Of course,
he's a pioneer in that work. 

00:03:59.833 --> 00:04:01.708
And he coupled a

00:04:01.708 --> 00:04:02.958
scientific interest

00:04:02.958 --> 00:04:04.416
with the most 

00:04:04.416 --> 00:04:06.041
wonderful aesthetic
sense.

00:04:08.041 --> 00:04:12.416
And I felt that he really appealed to
the imagination. And so I've always had the

00:04:12.500 --> 00:04:16.083
most tremendous
regard for his efforts and

00:04:16.166 --> 00:04:18.500
the way that he
founded and grew Trees for Life.

00:04:21.250 --> 00:04:25.833
Planting trees or encouraging trees to
come back naturally through regeneration is

00:04:25.916 --> 00:04:30.875
crucially important to so many
species in Scotland. I think organizations like

00:04:30.958 --> 00:04:33.041
Trees for Life have
done a fantastic job bringing

00:04:33.125 --> 00:04:35.458
back the forests that
really should be here in Scotland.

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The work of Alan Watson
Featherstone has really sort of 

00:04:40.291 --> 00:04:41.875
set the 
standard for

00:04:41.958 --> 00:04:43.458
ecological 
restoration

00:04:43.458 --> 00:04:45.125
of the 
Caledonian 
pine forest.

00:04:45.208 --> 00:04:48.791
Not only from
an ecological point of view,

00:04:50.166 --> 00:04:56.291
but also in terms of its inclusiveness
of involving a really diverse set of people

00:04:56.375 --> 00:04:59.166
in that process.
Alan was the first to really

00:04:59.250 --> 00:05:02.416
recognize the power
of that kind of approach.

00:05:03.625 --> 00:05:05.500
I think Alan is a prophet.

00:05:06.166 --> 00:05:08.291
I think his work is amazing.

00:05:08.500 --> 00:05:10.875
This is not something just for those

00:05:10.875 --> 00:05:13.958
very special people that we need, who do see

00:05:14.041 --> 00:05:16.541
what trouble the natural world is in

00:05:16.541 --> 00:05:19.208
and who have made it their life's work(...) to

00:05:19.291 --> 00:05:25.375
be advocates for that. But I think
it's down to us ordinary people to do our bit as

00:05:25.458 --> 00:05:29.083
well. I think it is very
important that ordinary people

00:05:29.458 --> 00:05:31.125
understand that
their small

00:05:31.125 --> 00:05:33.041
actions can make
a huge difference.

00:05:33.333 --> 00:05:37.166
In the days gone by, he was this
person with his really long hair and his stripey

00:05:37.250 --> 00:05:42.458
jersey and so on, but yet he was able
to negotiate with sort of hard-boiled Colonels

00:05:42.541 --> 00:05:45.916
from the National Trust for Scotland,
in the days when they still had people like that.

00:05:46.000 --> 00:05:48.583
So I think he
managed to earn great respect,

00:05:48.666 --> 00:05:53.208
and he continues to
have this important part to play.

00:05:58.625 --> 00:06:00.541
When I started this back

00:06:00.541 --> 00:06:01.458
in the 1980s

00:06:01.458 --> 00:06:02.458
I had no background

00:06:02.541 --> 00:06:03.958
in conservation.

00:06:03.958 --> 00:06:05.000
I had no training 

00:06:05.000 --> 00:06:06.166
in biology or ecology.

00:06:07.416 --> 00:06:13.541
I had no physical resources. I had no
access to land. I had no skill. But I had the

00:06:13.625 --> 00:06:16.458
most important thing.
I felt a deep connection with

00:06:16.541 --> 00:06:19.000
the land. I felt the
land was calling out for help.

00:06:25.125 --> 00:06:29.250
I'm often suspicious
of people who
look like gurus.

00:06:29.250 --> 00:06:32.000
(laughs) And very often, they turn

00:06:32.083 --> 00:06:37.291
out to have feet of clay. But I felt
that in Alan's case, ...

00:06:38.458 --> 00:06:40.666
well, he's the real thing.

00:06:43.583 --> 00:06:47.750
(Gentle Music) (birdsong)

00:06:59.958 --> 00:07:06.458
Rewilding is ecological restoration
at the landscape level, requiring less human

00:07:06.541 --> 00:07:12.916
intervention over time. Stable
self-regulating and self-sustaining ecosystems

00:07:13.416 --> 00:07:18.083
should result in a return to
pre-human levels of biodiversity.

00:07:25.041 --> 00:07:30.500
I came across this word, rewilding,
which immediately just exploded in my head. 

00:07:30.583 --> 00:07:35.166
And one road after
another led towards Alan.

00:07:35.250 --> 00:07:38.500
I realised that he had
been pioneering the approach

00:07:39.750 --> 00:07:44.416
for many years that I'd just begun
to stumble across. And the thoughts I'd been

00:07:44.500 --> 00:07:47.458
having were thoughts
he'd been having 25 years before.

00:07:48.833 --> 00:07:52.416
We were struggling actually for a
word to describe this phenomenon years ago.

00:07:52.500 --> 00:07:54.625
The word rewilding,
I think, is
absolutely brilliant

00:07:54.625 --> 00:07:57.125
because it
encapsulates so much
in one word.

00:07:58.208 --> 00:08:03.416
To me, it encompasses the process of
reinstating nature and setting it free to do

00:08:03.500 --> 00:08:07.833
its own thing rather than putting
it into a kind of conservation constraint.

00:08:10.166 --> 00:08:17.791
That word rewilding has galvanised
other people's thinking about getting this done.

00:08:23.958 --> 00:08:28.625
Over the years, you see how things
change and change and how they're always in a

00:08:28.708 --> 00:08:32.541
state of dynamism and how there's no
such thing as stasis in nature.

00:08:32.541 --> 00:08:33.541
You're never trying to

00:08:33.541 --> 00:08:34.791
get back to conserving
one thing. 

00:08:34.791 --> 00:08:36.750
All of these myriad different

00:08:36.833 --> 00:08:42.833
microhabitats open up and close and
open and close and change and transmogrify.

00:08:43.000 --> 00:08:46.666
That's what rewilding is.
It's accepting that we're just

00:08:46.750 --> 00:08:50.833
part of this living world
and that we have to live within it.

00:08:51.708 --> 00:08:55.875
I think people in the world today
recognise the environment is in trouble.

00:08:55.958 --> 00:08:58.833
Things are going in the wrong
direction. Not so many people know

00:08:58.916 --> 00:09:01.416
what they can actually do
to make a positive difference.

00:09:06.958 --> 00:09:10.958
I first came to Glen Affric here
in the Highlands of Scotland forty years ago.

00:09:12.666 --> 00:09:16.166
Fell in love with the Glen. It's one
of the most beautiful glens in Scotland. It's

00:09:16.250 --> 00:09:20.291
got mountains, it's got lochs, and
it's got one of the best remnants of the old

00:09:20.375 --> 00:09:26.625
Scots pine forests.(...) Pines that
are 150, 200, 250 years old, but only old

00:09:26.708 --> 00:09:31.291
trees. There are no young ones growing
here. And this is what I call the geriatric

00:09:31.375 --> 00:09:36.125
forest. The result of this
imbalance, far too many herbivores, deer and sheep,

00:09:36.583 --> 00:09:40.666
which over graze, over browse,
and eat any seedlings that germinate.

00:09:41.791 --> 00:09:46.166
If it was left for 50 or 60 years, it
would be too late. These old trees would all

00:09:46.250 --> 00:09:50.500
have gone. The seed source would have
vanished. When I saw this, I realised that we

00:09:50.583 --> 00:09:52.958
were the last
generation that could save this forest.

00:09:55.333 --> 00:10:01.666
I went up to Scotland. I met Alan,
and we went to the rewilding site, and I was

00:10:01.750 --> 00:10:07.500
just blown away by the physical
evidence of what he was doing and what he showed

00:10:07.583 --> 00:10:11.791
me, the way he was able
to open my eyes to the landscape.

00:10:15.125 --> 00:10:18.166
In ways that I hadn't
seen it before, show me what was

00:10:18.250 --> 00:10:22.458
missing, but show me how
rapidly nature could bounce back.

00:10:22.833 --> 00:10:27.916
I saw an example where the Forestry
Commission had fenced off an area in the 1960s,

00:10:28.000 --> 00:10:30.125
and there was
tremendous growth of new trees.

00:10:31.333 --> 00:10:33.083
Why is nobody fencing off these other areas?

00:10:33.333 --> 00:10:35.333
Somebody needs
to do something about this.

00:10:37.291 --> 00:10:39.750
It slowly dawned on me,
well, maybe that somebody is me.

00:10:41.500 --> 00:10:46.083
So in 1986, I organised a conference
on the environment at Findhorn, where I live,

00:10:46.500 --> 00:10:50.333
a week-long event. And in the final
session, we asked people to make a public

00:10:50.416 --> 00:10:54.125
commitment, if they felt inspired
to do something positive for the planet.

00:10:55.291 --> 00:10:57.125
My commitment was to launch a project to

00:10:57.208 --> 00:11:00.208
restore this
forest, to start Trees For Life.

00:11:01.458 --> 00:11:03.833
And everything
that's come about since then is

00:11:03.916 --> 00:11:07.000
because I made that
commitment in front of 300 people.

00:11:08.250 --> 00:11:14.166
The environment of upland Scotland,
was a wasteland created by humans. And the

00:11:14.250 --> 00:11:18.500
Trees For Life work at
Glen Affric was part of that

00:11:18.583 --> 00:11:23.166
bringing recognition
that we had to restore our land.

00:11:24.875 --> 00:11:30.666
What Alan and Trees For Life have
succeeded in doing is demonstrating the model.

00:11:31.458 --> 00:11:33.958
It's all very well to
talk about rewilding, all very

00:11:34.041 --> 00:11:37.250
well to talk about the
transformations that we need to see.

00:11:38.250 --> 00:11:41.541
But what you need to do
is to show that it can be done.

00:11:42.125 --> 00:11:45.500
[Welcome to the Cambridge Conservation Initiative]

00:11:45.875 --> 00:11:53.916
I was deeply impressed by the depth
and breadth of his vision, by the profound way

00:11:54.000 --> 00:11:59.250
in which he had been thinking through
what rewilding involved, what was required,

00:11:59.875 --> 00:12:03.791
how to implement it,
and by the highly effective

00:12:03.875 --> 00:12:07.083
and efficient way in
which he ran his organisation.

00:12:08.166 --> 00:12:10.833
By the very long-term approach he took

00:12:12.250 --> 00:12:15.791
in a world that is
often dominated by short-termism.

00:12:15.875 --> 00:12:18.250
(Gentle Music)

00:12:20.458 --> 00:12:26.000
I don't call it rewilding, I call it
fostering. We need to foster it, make sure

00:12:26.083 --> 00:12:30.375
that we've got a home for it. I think
that we're all in this together and that it's

00:12:30.458 --> 00:12:35.833
really important that we
see ourselves as part of an ecology,

00:12:36.958 --> 00:12:40.750
rather than a dominating species
that has the power over everything else.

00:12:41.125 --> 00:12:43.208
(Gentle Music)

00:12:44.500 --> 00:12:48.750
Now there's a recognition that
the world is in real trouble, the planet,

00:12:49.916 --> 00:12:54.916
the biodiversity crisis and the
climate crisis means that we've got to do something

00:12:55.000 --> 00:12:57.541
about it. We've got
to think about the future.

00:13:00.833 --> 00:13:05.708
There are clearly opportunities from
this restorative approach, rewilding, whatever

00:13:05.791 --> 00:13:08.666
you want to call it, both
in terms of nature, obviously,

00:13:10.541 --> 00:13:14.166
but also I think for us, I think there
are economic opportunities out there. But I

00:13:14.250 --> 00:13:18.125
think that almost all pales into
insignificance in terms of what this approach

00:13:18.208 --> 00:13:22.500
could mean for the fight against
climate change. We're currently surrounded by some

00:13:22.583 --> 00:13:27.000
pretty old-fashioned technology
for removing CO2. All these trees will do a

00:13:27.083 --> 00:13:29.833
fantastic job of
capturing CO2 from the atmosphere.

00:13:30.125 --> 00:13:32.541
(Raven call)

00:13:32.875 --> 00:13:37.250
Restoring nature, restoring habitats
can be a major contribution to doing that.

00:13:39.125 --> 00:13:51.958
(Sombre Music)

00:14:04.416 --> 00:14:09.708
Collective perceptions of what
constitutes normal environmental conditions have

00:14:09.791 --> 00:14:13.375
been consistently
downgraded over generations.

00:14:14.041 --> 00:14:18.500
A concept known as
shifting baseline syndrome.

00:14:20.375 --> 00:14:24.583
The concept of shifting baseline
syndrome was coined by the fisheries biologist,

00:14:24.958 --> 00:14:31.166
Daniel Pauly, and what he pointed out
was that we conceive as natural and normal

00:14:31.250 --> 00:14:37.250
the ecological situation that
prevailed in our own youth. And when we see that

00:14:37.333 --> 00:14:41.083
ecology being damaged subsequent
to when we were young, we say, "Oh, that's

00:14:41.166 --> 00:14:44.916
terrible! Look, it's got so much
worse. We need to get it back to how it was when

00:14:45.000 --> 00:14:48.125
we were young." But
what we forget is that when we

00:14:48.208 --> 00:14:51.333
were young, it was
already in a highly depleted state.

00:14:53.250 --> 00:14:57.583
The situation we've inherited with
this forest, was by the end of the 20th century

00:14:57.875 --> 00:15:02.416
there was a tiny percentage of it
left. Over 90% of the forest is gone. It's

00:15:02.500 --> 00:15:06.125
estimated at its maximum extent that
it covered one and a half million hectares.

00:15:07.416 --> 00:15:11.791
And with every generation that
passes, we become used to more and more depletion

00:15:11.875 --> 00:15:16.666
and degradation until we accept levels
of environmental destruction that would have

00:15:16.750 --> 00:15:19.958
absolutely shocked
and staggered our ancestors.

00:15:21.875 --> 00:15:26.208
The Highlands of Scotland famously
were described by Sir Frank Fraser Darling, in

00:15:26.291 --> 00:15:31.416
the 1950s, as being a 'wet desert'. And
although it's not a sandy arid landscape,

00:15:31.666 --> 00:15:35.416
biologically it's as impoverished
as other desertified areas in the world.

00:15:37.041 --> 00:15:40.583
Civilisations don't begin in
deserts. Deserts are what we leave behind.

00:15:45.375 --> 00:15:50.125
When I first came to work at Mar Lodge
in 2002, people just saw a beautiful forest.

00:15:51.500 --> 00:15:54.958
They just saw the beautiful Granny
pine trees, which are stunning, as we all know.

00:15:55.291 --> 00:15:57.375
But really, if you
were an ecologist, you look

00:15:57.458 --> 00:16:00.708
at the forest and
think, "This is a dying forest."

00:16:02.083 --> 00:16:06.166
And we think, "This is fine. Well,
look, it's green, isn't it? It's grass, what's

00:16:06.250 --> 00:16:09.041
the problem?" And
we really believe that the

00:16:09.125 --> 00:16:12.625
countryside that we're
seeing is in a state of health.

00:16:12.916 --> 00:16:16.625
I used to think of it like an
old people's home.(...) It's just full of

00:16:16.708 --> 00:16:21.625
250-year-old trees and nothing else.
You couldn't really see a tree seedling above

00:16:21.708 --> 00:16:25.333
the height of the vegetation, heather
height. You would walk around the landscape

00:16:25.416 --> 00:16:29.250
and there'd be no visible seedlings
above heather height. Now you can go and

00:16:29.333 --> 00:16:34.750
there's trees that are over a metre
tall, young trees. Now that people can see the

00:16:34.833 --> 00:16:37.625
young trees, it
suddenly dawns on them, "Well,

00:16:37.708 --> 00:16:39.583
that's what the deer
were preventing happening."

00:16:40.666 --> 00:16:43.708
And it suddenly becomes
much more apparent to them how

00:16:43.791 --> 00:16:46.750
big an impact deer are
having on the landscape in Scotland.

00:16:49.791 --> 00:16:55.375
It was very difficult in the early
years for people to recognise(...) the dreadful

00:16:55.458 --> 00:17:03.625
state of nature in our country. So
that criticalness of the planet's existence is

00:17:03.708 --> 00:17:07.458
allowing us to do things
that we were never allowed to do.

00:17:07.791 --> 00:17:14.250
We can sometimes catalyse or intervene
in a thoughtful way to speed something up or

00:17:14.333 --> 00:17:16.583
help a process or enable a process, that's

00:17:16.666 --> 00:17:19.000
so broken that it
has to be kind of fixed.

00:17:20.708 --> 00:17:26.416
The way we, quote, "manage the land,"
whether it's intensive grouse moors, regular

00:17:26.500 --> 00:17:31.041
burning of the heather, and
suppression of all predators, or large numbers of deer

00:17:31.125 --> 00:17:35.416
and sheep that graze everything down
like giant lawnmowers crossing the landscape,

00:17:35.625 --> 00:17:37.625
munching everything
down to an inch in height,

00:17:38.041 --> 00:17:40.625
we're preventing that
natural process of recovery.

00:17:42.875 --> 00:17:48.916
(Birds chirping)

00:17:48.916 --> 00:17:51.666
(Gentle music)

00:17:51.666 --> 00:17:56.541
(Deer roars)

00:17:56.541 --> 00:18:02.583
(Gentle music continues)

00:18:06.125 --> 00:18:10.125
Over the past few centuries,
changes in land management, coupled with the

00:18:10.208 --> 00:18:15.166
eradication of apex predators, led
to an exponential growth in the numbers of

00:18:15.250 --> 00:18:18.916
grazing animals and
wild herbivores in Scotland. This

00:18:19.000 --> 00:18:23.041
has critically degraded
the landscape and biodiversity.

00:18:24.375 --> 00:18:29.583
So in Scotland, the Highland
Clearances here in the 18th century, were followed

00:18:29.666 --> 00:18:32.375
by a massive explosion
of large herbivore numbers.

00:18:34.500 --> 00:18:41.000
The sheep has been the main agent of
clearance and enclosure. Even Thomas More in

00:18:41.083 --> 00:18:46.500
his book "Utopia" described how the
sheep, which used to be so mild and such a

00:18:46.583 --> 00:18:52.666
small eater, is now swallowing down
the very men themselves.(...) We need to see,

00:18:53.250 --> 00:18:56.291
much wilder and more
rich and diverse and abundant

00:18:56.375 --> 00:18:59.250
ecosystems than the
ones that we have in Britain.

00:19:02.333 --> 00:19:06.250
Particularly in the uplands of
Britain, where farming makes no economic sense.

00:19:07.750 --> 00:19:12.416
Some of the more visionary landowners
are doing very intensive culls of the deer, to

00:19:12.500 --> 00:19:14.916
bring the numbers
down to very few animals.

00:19:16.458 --> 00:19:19.958
So the biggest intervention that's
made at Mar Lodge is management of deer.

00:19:22.250 --> 00:19:26.791
Since 1995, the Trust has had that
objective to reduce the deer population to get

00:19:26.875 --> 00:19:33.333
tree regeneration.(...) It took at
least 10 years to start to see any results from

00:19:33.416 --> 00:19:36.791
that. I do a lot of monitoring of the
tree regeneration here and of the browsing

00:19:36.875 --> 00:19:42.416
impacts of deer. And that's very much
guided the deer management on the Estate and

00:19:42.500 --> 00:19:46.666
advised us as to what level the deer
need to be brought down to allow the pine

00:19:46.750 --> 00:19:51.041
trees to actually grow. And that's
been quite a tough process as deer management

00:19:51.125 --> 00:19:54.958
has been in many places. And
there was a lot of opposition to the quite

00:19:55.041 --> 00:19:59.708
considerable deer cull. But I think
now that we can see the rebirth of a forest,

00:19:59.791 --> 00:20:03.416
there's definitely a sort of shift
change in people's views about the site.

00:20:04.000 --> 00:20:06.541
(Capercaille call) 

00:20:07.041 --> 00:20:10.458
In other situations, and that's the
case with most of the work that Trees for Life

00:20:10.541 --> 00:20:15.208
has done, because we don't own the
land here in Glen Affric, we don't have control

00:20:15.291 --> 00:20:19.458
over the deer numbers. We've had to
put up fences in partnership with the existing

00:20:19.541 --> 00:20:23.708
landowners to keep deer out
and then you get the trees recovering.

00:20:25.166 --> 00:20:29.916
If you're trying to protect or
regenerate one wee patch of forest, but you know that

00:20:30.000 --> 00:20:34.625
just over your boundary you have high
numbers of deer, it becomes so difficult. But

00:20:34.708 --> 00:20:37.833
we have this situation now in
the Cairngorms where there's multiple

00:20:37.916 --> 00:20:42.916
land-ownerships together who all
have the same approach to deer management. And

00:20:43.000 --> 00:20:45.833
then that just makes the
whole woodland expansion and

00:20:45.916 --> 00:20:49.083
the possibility of that
happening, so much more likely.

00:20:49.625 --> 00:20:54.291
Due to the work of Forestry and Land
Scotland in controlling deer numbers, we've now

00:20:54.375 --> 00:20:56.625
reached that
tipping point and we're getting

00:20:56.708 --> 00:20:59.416
spontaneous regeneration
without the need for fencing.

00:21:01.958 --> 00:21:07.416
The biggest forest in the world is at
this latitude, 57 degrees north. Alaska to

00:21:07.500 --> 00:21:11.375
Canada to Scandinavia to
Russia to Siberia, it's all forest.

00:21:16.583 --> 00:21:18.416
Scotland should all be forest too.

00:21:27.125 --> 00:21:30.541
(Atmospheric Music)

00:21:30.541 --> 00:21:34.083
(Atmospheric Music)
(Ptarmigan call) 

00:21:34.083 --> 00:21:43.000
(Atmospheric Music)

00:21:43.000 --> 00:21:46.541
(Atmospheric Music)
(Raven call) 

00:21:46.541 --> 00:21:48.416
Southwest Norway's model of land

00:21:48.500 --> 00:21:51.916
management does not
rely on intensive monocultures.

00:21:53.708 --> 00:21:57.125
It presents a
demonstrably successful and highly

00:21:57.208 --> 00:22:01.166
profitable alternative to
land management in the Highlands.

00:22:01.166 --> 00:22:03.541
(Bird calls)

00:22:05.166 --> 00:22:10.208
The biophysical conditions of life
in Southwest Norway and in the Highlands are

00:22:10.291 --> 00:22:15.291
very similar indeed. The rocks are
literally Caledonian. They're from the same

00:22:15.375 --> 00:22:20.416
mountain building phases that built
Scotland and the rest is Precambrian. Weather

00:22:20.500 --> 00:22:26.208
is very similar. It's a highly oceanic
climate. It is slightly wetter than anywhere

00:22:26.291 --> 00:22:30.291
in Scotland in some places and the
wind at sea level is slightly faster than

00:22:30.375 --> 00:22:34.291
anywhere in Scotland. But in all
major respects, they are closely similar.

00:22:34.916 --> 00:22:39.000
The Caledonian forest represents an
unbroken link back to the last ice age. In over

00:22:39.083 --> 00:22:42.375
10,000 years these
remnants are still standing here.

00:22:44.666 --> 00:22:46.625
(Soft Music)

00:22:47.041 --> 00:22:48.083
(Wings flapping)

00:22:48.916 --> 00:22:52.125
They're really quite special
places. They've got a lot of history to them.

00:22:52.125 --> 00:22:53.666
(Black grouse rookooing)

00:22:53.791 --> 00:22:56.333
And of course they're so rich in
biodiversity.

00:22:56.333 --> 00:22:58.833
We know that the forests in the
-(Eagles screach)-

00:22:58.916 --> 00:23:03.166
Cairngorms, for example, are home to
a wide array of really rare and endangered

00:23:03.250 --> 00:23:06.833
biodiversity, that's just
not found elsewhere in the UK.

00:23:11.333 --> 00:23:14.041
10,000 years ago, we
had no trees in Scotland because

00:23:14.125 --> 00:23:17.083
the whole country was
covered by ice in the last ice age.

00:23:20.208 --> 00:23:24.250
(Ptarmigan calling)

00:23:24.250 --> 00:23:26.625
(Dripping water)

00:23:26.625 --> 00:23:28.041
And when the
temperature warmed up, there was

00:23:28.125 --> 00:23:30.458
nobody to plant trees.
They came back by themselves.

00:23:39.541 --> 00:23:42.625
Seeds came in the wind,
birds carried seeds in their bellies.

00:23:43.166 --> 00:23:46.125
(Geese call) 
(Violin Music) 

00:23:46.125 --> 00:23:49.750
(Swan honks, wings flap) 
(Violin Music) 

00:23:51.083 --> 00:23:53.958
As the trees grew and
the vegetation recovered, birds,

00:23:54.166 --> 00:23:57.875
animals, insects and the
whole ecosystem recolonised this area.

00:24:03.000 --> 00:24:07.041
After the ice age, people arrived in
southwest Norway and in the Highlands, facing

00:24:07.125 --> 00:24:10.750
the same kind of problems which they
solved in the same kind of ways. They acquired

00:24:10.833 --> 00:24:15.000
agriculture and exploited the
land and the results were very similar.

00:24:16.208 --> 00:24:20.791
There was a great deal of
deforestation and on the coastal areas, it was largely

00:24:20.875 --> 00:24:25.041
complete by the Bronze Age, both
in Scotland and in Norway. With further

00:24:25.125 --> 00:24:28.458
deforestation peaking in
the 19th century in both countries.

00:24:31.333 --> 00:24:36.833
Subsistence pastoralism lasted in
Norway unchanged into the late 19th century. Then

00:24:36.916 --> 00:24:40.333
it began to break down largely
because of mass emigration to the United States.

00:24:40.500 --> 00:24:43.916
(Film camera reel noise)

00:24:44.083 --> 00:24:48.916
And the landless labourers found a
much better life in the United States.(...) The

00:24:49.000 --> 00:24:52.125
landowners then
consolidated on their best land and the

00:24:52.208 --> 00:24:55.458
grazing animal population on
the mountains decreased very greatly.

00:24:56.500 --> 00:24:59.791
And the first pulse of
regeneration in Norway dates to that time.

00:25:01.125 --> 00:25:04.833
If humans weren't interfering, the
forest would recover by itself. That is the

00:25:04.916 --> 00:25:07.666
natural state of
things on the planet. That would

00:25:07.750 --> 00:25:10.958
happen today if humans
were not actively preventing it.

00:25:12.000 --> 00:25:17.125
Even after a long period of being
deforested, the forest can return. And in the

00:25:17.208 --> 00:25:18.791
case of Norway, it
happened almost entirely

00:25:18.875 --> 00:25:21.666
by natural
regeneration. A small amount was planted.

00:25:23.041 --> 00:25:27.916
Ecological restoration across
landscapes can happen in the face of much higher

00:25:28.000 --> 00:25:32.333
human population densities than we
have here in Scotland. So for example, South

00:25:32.416 --> 00:25:37.208
West Norway has massively restored,
you know, quite by accident as it turns out,

00:25:37.625 --> 00:25:41.541
woodlands at the landscape scale. And
yet, South West Norway has human population

00:25:41.625 --> 00:25:44.375
densities two and a half times
higher than the Scottish Highlands.

00:25:45.583 --> 00:25:50.458
I think what we're having to contend
with in Scotland is the impact of our system

00:25:50.541 --> 00:25:56.208
of land ownership,(...) which has
obviously come about as a result of our history

00:25:56.916 --> 00:26:02.666
and tends to focus on
private gain over public benefits.

00:26:03.666 --> 00:26:06.458
And that's a
contrast to Norway where much more

00:26:06.541 --> 00:26:09.958
of the land can be
managed for public benefits.

00:26:11.833 --> 00:26:14.583
I think that's a key constraint
-(Red Kites calling)-

00:26:14.583 --> 00:26:18.208
with our transition to nature-based economy.
-(Red Kites calling)-

00:26:21.875 --> 00:26:24.958
There is a huge divide(...) between

00:26:25.041 --> 00:26:28.708
conservationists and land
managers. Those are big, big labels.

00:26:30.000 --> 00:26:33.791
I rather hope that because we farm
here and because we've got the Red kites, we've

00:26:33.875 --> 00:26:35.916
got the Red squirrels and
we've got all the other wildlife,

00:26:37.333 --> 00:26:42.458
that people look at us and think,
"Oh, you can do it all." You don't have to

00:26:42.541 --> 00:26:47.125
suddenly give up old farming
practices and start a completely new way of life.
-(Sheep bleating)-

00:26:49.708 --> 00:26:55.083
Farming in English to most people
means growing crops and growing domestic animals.

00:26:55.375 --> 00:27:02.416
A Norwegian Landbruker or farmer is
making a living from the land by all methods,

00:27:02.500 --> 00:27:09.083
including forestry, hunting,(...)
agriculture,(...) stock rearing and so on. 80% of

00:27:09.166 --> 00:27:12.125
the forest resource in
Norway is owned by farmers.

00:27:12.208 --> 00:27:14.833
Only 20% is owned by
companies or by the government.

00:27:15.875 --> 00:27:19.666
So in Norway, over the past 100
years in the Southwest, there's this tremendous

00:27:19.750 --> 00:27:25.416
process of natural recolonisation and
ecological recovery of the forest ecosystem.

00:27:29.416 --> 00:27:32.958
Same thing could happen in
Scotland, but I don't think we can wait 100 years.

00:27:33.041 --> 00:27:36.416
That's why we need to
actively assist it to accelerate it.

00:27:37.458 --> 00:27:40.166
You cannot reasonably deny that it is

00:27:40.250 --> 00:27:42.375
possible for the same
thing to happen in Scotland.

00:27:43.541 --> 00:27:49.250
Whether you consider it desirable or
not is open to a variety of opinion, but you

00:27:49.333 --> 00:27:53.416
cannot say that it can't be done.
Whether people decide to do that or not is then a

00:27:53.500 --> 00:27:55.458
policy question, it's
not a question of biology.

00:28:03.041 --> 00:28:07.750
(Bird call)
(Gentle Music)

00:28:18.250 --> 00:28:23.291
Forest restoration is only the first
step in the recovery of healthy ecosystems.

00:28:24.333 --> 00:28:27.333
Ultimately, it will
result in a natural world restored.

00:28:28.416 --> 00:28:29.500
To what it once was,

00:28:30.958 --> 00:28:32.916
what it was always meant to be.

00:28:34.666 --> 00:28:36.375
We've got to bring back missing species.

00:28:38.250 --> 00:28:43.458
If we want this ecosystem to recover,
we have to take positive action to help that.

00:28:44.666 --> 00:28:46.083
And there's a lot of concern

00:28:46.083 --> 00:28:48.000
about climate change, climate breakdown.

00:28:49.458 --> 00:28:52.583
It is the biggest threat
from a human society point of view.

00:28:53.666 --> 00:28:58.583
The effects of it will be catastrophic
on our present-day culture. The much bigger

00:28:58.666 --> 00:29:02.541
threat from a planetary point of view
is the sixth mass extinction that's underway.

00:29:03.250 --> 00:29:05.625
The loss of species
and the loss of habitat.

00:29:08.458 --> 00:29:10.791
We know that the forest
was more expansive in Scotland

00:29:10.875 --> 00:29:15.666
historically,(...) and, you
know, it's been considerably reduced.

00:29:19.000 --> 00:29:23.375
In terms of the pinewood system and
many of the species that rely on it, there's a

00:29:23.458 --> 00:29:28.500
need to restore it, to allow those
species to persist in Scotland and to thrive.

00:29:29.458 --> 00:29:33.208
We've got isolated pockets of
woodland, for example, in the Northwest Highlands

00:29:33.291 --> 00:29:37.833
with no Red squirrels in them.
Separated by large areas of treeless landscape, so

00:29:37.916 --> 00:29:43.000
squirrels will not spread, unless we
either bring them back or we reconnect those

00:29:43.083 --> 00:29:45.291
isolated fragments
with a habitat corridor.

00:29:46.583 --> 00:29:49.416
If the decline of the
pine forest continued, there could

00:29:49.500 --> 00:29:52.250
be certain species that
could be lost from Scotland anyway,

00:29:52.375 --> 00:29:54.083
(Black grouse rookooing)

00:29:54.250 --> 00:29:57.875
such as, you know, crossbill,
Black grouse or capercaillie, et cetera.

00:29:57.958 --> 00:30:02.125
The Capercaillie
population has been in freefall. Those

00:30:02.208 --> 00:30:05.416
of us are a bit
despondent, think there's about 350.

00:30:05.583 --> 00:30:07.041
(Capercaille vocalising)

00:30:07.250 --> 00:30:09.583
Other people think
there's double that number.

00:30:10.916 --> 00:30:16.583
The majority of them are in Strathspey,
and anywhere else they are, they're already

00:30:16.666 --> 00:30:20.500
functionally extinct.
(...) So it's in real trouble.

00:30:22.375 --> 00:30:28.000
Capercaillie are an iconic Scottish bird
species. The fact that they're in low numbers

00:30:28.083 --> 00:30:31.375
in a lot of places does suggest some
of these forests just aren't suitable. And

00:30:31.458 --> 00:30:33.541
what's left is quite fragmented. 

00:30:33.541 --> 00:30:34.875
(Capercaillie vocalising)

00:30:34.875 --> 00:30:37.791
They don't like to cross over
open ground, so you

00:30:37.875 --> 00:30:41.791
do need quite a lot of continuous
forest and those safe corridors for the birds to

00:30:41.875 --> 00:30:46.625
move. Capercaillie have actually gone
extinct in Scotland previously, back in the

00:30:46.708 --> 00:30:50.958
1700s, and were
reintroduced in around 1837. They

00:30:51.041 --> 00:30:53.583
are a species of
concern. They are red listed.

00:30:53.875 --> 00:30:56.916
One of the biggest
problems for capercaillie, undoubtedly,

00:30:57.458 --> 00:31:01.833
is that the habitat is
no longer as suitable as it was.

00:31:02.291 --> 00:31:07.833
Capercaillie do indicate how healthy a
forest is, so it tends to be, where you find

00:31:07.916 --> 00:31:11.958
more capercaillie, it is a
richer and more biodiverse forest.

00:31:20.708 --> 00:31:22.791
I think Scotland
is already a wilder place

00:31:22.791 --> 00:31:23.875
(Osprey call)

00:31:23.875 --> 00:31:25.875
over the last 100 years or so.
-(Osprey call)-

00:31:25.875 --> 00:31:28.125
We've already seen several species being restored,
-(Osprey call)-

00:31:28.458 --> 00:31:33.333
either recolonised like the osprey,
or populations have been reinforced, such as

00:31:33.416 --> 00:31:37.708
with the Red squirrel. We've seen some
completely reintroduced, whether that's the

00:31:37.791 --> 00:31:42.375
Sea eagle or the Red kite or the
beaver. And we may well see more and more species

00:31:42.458 --> 00:31:44.875
being brought back to try and sort of

00:31:44.958 --> 00:31:48.000
lubricate the whole
process of ecological restoration.

00:31:48.916 --> 00:31:53.291
(Red kite calling)

00:31:53.666 --> 00:31:57.708
Don't accept no for
an answer. We need more and

00:31:57.791 --> 00:32:01.416
more people who are
prepared to make things happen.

00:32:06.791 --> 00:32:09.375
We really are
ordinary farmers,

00:32:09.375 --> 00:32:12.333
but twenty odd years ago,
something amazing happened to us.

00:32:12.541 --> 00:32:18.958
We looked into the skies and we
saw Red kites flying for the first time in over

00:32:19.041 --> 00:32:22.791
200 years. That release was top
secret at the beginning. We didn't know anything

00:32:22.875 --> 00:32:26.500
about it at all. The release cages
were actually on the next-door farm, but the

00:32:26.583 --> 00:32:29.291
moment the birds were
allowed to fly, they turned up here.

00:32:35.333 --> 00:32:37.708
We got together with
the RSPB and we said, "Look, how

00:32:37.791 --> 00:32:40.250
are we going to manage
this?" They were really rare.

00:32:43.958 --> 00:32:49.958
The RSPB had a superb Red kite Officer
in post who went round and talked to people.

00:32:50.208 --> 00:32:55.083
(Red kites calling)

00:32:55.208 --> 00:32:57.208
He talked to the land
managers, he talked to the

00:32:57.291 --> 00:33:00.291
farmers, he listened to
their questions and their fears.

00:33:01.750 --> 00:33:06.125
Because he met people
halfway, he did actually allay their fears.

00:33:08.875 --> 00:33:15.416
You should recognise the abilities of
foresters and nature wardens and gamekeepers

00:33:15.500 --> 00:33:19.041
and the like, that
they also have very good

00:33:19.125 --> 00:33:23.541
experience. And in that
way, you work out what is best.

00:33:25.375 --> 00:33:30.958
You realise that you are
custodians. It's up to you to foster what's there.

00:33:35.416 --> 00:33:41.000
And the absolute joy on people's faces
when they see the kites diving for the food

00:33:41.083 --> 00:33:46.583
is just something you
can't capture. It's amazing.

00:33:48.791 --> 00:33:53.250
When you put keystone species back again,
they play a key role in making everything

00:33:53.333 --> 00:33:59.750
reconnect and develop its
durability, its sustainability, its resilience. Very

00:33:59.833 --> 00:34:02.291
crucial when we're facing
the threats of climate change.

00:34:03.958 --> 00:34:07.791
We've got beavers now
officially recognised as a native species.

00:34:09.041 --> 00:34:10.250
Beavers are a
keystone species.

00:34:10.250 --> 00:34:14.000
In fact, they are kind
of the keystone species

00:34:14.000 --> 00:34:15.625
of all keystone species

00:34:15.625 --> 00:34:19.875
Because they engineer ecosystems
effectively by building dams.

00:34:21.666 --> 00:34:24.500
It's the largest
rodent in Europe

00:34:24.500 --> 00:34:25.250
and the second largest

00:34:25.333 --> 00:34:27.333
after the capybara in
the world.

00:34:27.333 --> 00:34:28.750
It has webbed hind feet.

00:34:30.041 --> 00:34:32.708
It has that great flat tail.(...) It is a

00:34:32.791 --> 00:34:36.500
wonderful digger. It has
these almost human-like claws.

00:34:38.416 --> 00:34:40.666
They have an enormously
important part to play

00:34:40.666 --> 00:34:42.583
in woodland regeneration.

00:34:43.250 --> 00:34:48.500
Where each dam is, there's a pool. And where
the pool is, that brings an abundance of life

00:34:48.583 --> 00:34:51.000
from the smallest to the largest, from

00:34:51.083 --> 00:34:54.666
aquatic vegetation
to water birds and mammals.

00:34:56.916 --> 00:34:59.666
And so you see improved
natural regeneration and all

00:34:59.750 --> 00:35:01.708
sorts of benefits that
you can't even

00:35:01.708 --> 00:35:02.875
begin to imagine.

00:35:08.166 --> 00:35:12.583
There are only around 1,000 beavers in
Scotland, which is a tiny number compared to

00:35:12.666 --> 00:35:14.291
somwhere like Norway or even
France.

00:35:14.291 --> 00:35:16.125
Norway's got
80,000 or something.

00:35:17.250 --> 00:35:22.333
Most wildlife conflicts are
human-social conflicts. What the animal does can almost

00:35:22.416 --> 00:35:29.000
be irrelevant. For example, in Norway
we have 80,000 beavers, we think, and a rural

00:35:29.083 --> 00:35:32.458
landscape that is more heavily
populated, in fact, than the rural landscape of

00:35:32.541 --> 00:35:35.375
Scotland and beavers
are not really an issue at all.

00:35:36.125 --> 00:35:39.125
In Scotland they're
rather a large issue, and the

00:35:39.208 --> 00:35:42.250
difference is to do with
the social factors among the people.

00:35:43.708 --> 00:35:45.416
They're regularly being
shot.

00:35:45.416 --> 00:35:46.458
I mean,
even without having

00:35:46.541 --> 00:35:47.750
an animal rights
perspective,

00:35:47.750 --> 00:35:48.916
it just doesn't
make sense.

00:35:49.333 --> 00:35:53.750
I hadn't really thought about beavers.
It never occurred that it had been driven to

00:35:53.833 --> 00:35:58.291
extinction relatively recently. And I
thought, we've got to get this creature back.

00:35:58.375 --> 00:36:03.625
(...) In 1998, Scottish Natural
Heritage conducted a public consultation of this

00:36:03.708 --> 00:36:05.791
proposal that
beavers should be returned.

00:36:05.875 --> 00:36:08.083
We quickly realised
there was ferocious opposition.

00:36:08.875 --> 00:36:16.083
And I find it unacceptable that when
you ask public opinion about the beaver,(...)

00:36:16.166 --> 00:36:23.458
10%, who were to do with farming, were
enough to sway the government not to do it.

00:36:23.916 --> 00:36:29.083
The first proposal of SNH, was thrown
out. We thought, well, why didn't we do a

00:36:29.166 --> 00:36:34.083
private enterprise demonstration
project to show that the beaver would be fine?

00:36:38.125 --> 00:36:44.125
It's absolutely nuts, because
individual landowners and organisations like the RSPB

00:36:44.208 --> 00:36:49.375
and indeed Trees for Life are having
to do consultations in order to be allowed to

00:36:49.458 --> 00:36:52.000
have beavers trans
located to their sites.

00:36:53.208 --> 00:36:58.625
And the people working within nature
have got to stop writing feasibility reports

00:36:58.708 --> 00:37:04.541
and having meetings and never
getting anything done and just get on with it.

00:37:05.000 --> 00:37:10.166
The landowner who wants to give a
new home to a beaver in peril, a beaver in

00:37:10.250 --> 00:37:14.916
conflict, has to go through this long
consultation process, holding everything up

00:37:15.500 --> 00:37:17.458
and beavers are
still being shot as a result.

00:37:22.250 --> 00:37:28.125
I think the thing that really
reinforced the idea of rewilding to my family was the

00:37:28.208 --> 00:37:33.583
experience of having beavers here,
because beavers are absolutely on their own

00:37:33.666 --> 00:37:37.750
agenda. They will decide that they're
going to cut this tree down and modify that.

00:37:38.000 --> 00:37:43.375
And you have to brace yourself. And
then in spring, everything is twice as vibrant

00:37:43.458 --> 00:37:48.125
as it was last year, because all of
these species that they cut, also coppice and

00:37:48.208 --> 00:37:53.458
sucker. And they create these
completely different reimagined environments.

00:37:54.333 --> 00:37:57.750
(Birdsong)

00:37:58.291 --> 00:38:01.708
(Music)

00:38:03.708 --> 00:38:09.708
You begin to see ecosystems
developing that were almost unimaginable before.

00:38:09.791 --> 00:38:12.458
And how species
which didn't seem 

00:38:12.458 --> 00:38:15.333
to live there before
suddenly emerge.

00:38:15.833 --> 00:38:20.916
Indeed, one of the things that rewilding
shows us is that our understanding of the living

00:38:21.000 --> 00:38:26.708
world is, to a large extent, an artifact
of human engagement with that living world.

00:38:27.250 --> 00:38:29.250
That the moment
you step back

00:38:29.250 --> 00:38:32.166
and allow Nature
to do its own thing

00:38:32.250 --> 00:38:34.791
does things which
aren't in the textbooks.

00:38:39.166 --> 00:38:45.250
Let Nature do her thing. And that is a
huge shift. That's a massive change in human

00:38:45.333 --> 00:38:50.291
direction. It means we need to be
willing to step back and say, "Okay, I'm going to

00:38:50.375 --> 00:38:52.875
start something and
then I'm going to let it move on

00:38:52.958 --> 00:38:55.875
and take its own course,
its own direction, its own speed".

00:38:55.875 --> 00:38:58.458
(Bubbles)

00:38:58.458 --> 00:39:01.041
(Birdsong)

00:39:01.416 --> 00:39:06.625
People come here and they see
beavers, they see what beavers do.

00:39:08.333 --> 00:39:10.208
And more and more
in the future they will see

00:39:10.291 --> 00:39:12.583
what rewilding is
about in practical terms.

00:39:15.875 --> 00:39:18.416
So we need to get
vegetation recovery because the

00:39:18.500 --> 00:39:21.458
vegetation is the
foundation of all terrestrial ecosystems.

00:39:22.708 --> 00:39:27.291
The vegetation, the
heather, the trees and everything

00:39:27.375 --> 00:39:31.166
else absorbs the sun's
energy and produces organic compounds.

00:39:32.166 --> 00:39:35.958
Trees produce branches
and leaves and so do plants.

00:39:38.500 --> 00:39:41.041
And those are the food
for the invertebrates which then

00:39:41.125 --> 00:39:44.458
support higher animals like
birds and mammals and everything else.

00:39:46.416 --> 00:39:48.458
Without the
vegetation you have none of that.

00:39:48.458 --> 00:39:51.166
(Music)

00:39:58.125 --> 00:40:00.958
We've seen in recent decades that
the warming

00:40:01.083 --> 00:40:04.375
climate presents
a really serious
threat to

00:40:04.583 --> 00:40:10.583
the cold adapted specialist
Alpine plant species that we have here in

00:40:10.666 --> 00:40:16.208
Scotland. As a result we're actually
seeing that populations of these species have

00:40:16.291 --> 00:40:22.791
undergone really worrying declines. So
these species could be flowering plants but

00:40:22.875 --> 00:40:29.875
also specialist lichens and mosses as
well.(...) So these species are adapted to

00:40:29.958 --> 00:40:35.708
very cold, very exposed conditions and
as the climate warms what they sometimes do

00:40:35.791 --> 00:40:41.625
is move upwards, altitudinally and so
these species are running out of the climate

00:40:41.708 --> 00:40:48.166
space that they need to thrive and so
their populations are then declining. That's

00:40:48.250 --> 00:40:54.500
on top of other environmental change
drivers like nitrogen deposition and also many

00:40:54.583 --> 00:41:00.750
centuries of overgrazing. So they've
got a triple whammy to deal with. What we're

00:41:00.833 --> 00:41:08.166
also seeing is lowland species moving
upwards and colonising new areas at higher

00:41:08.250 --> 00:41:12.583
altitudes than they did previously.
What that means is we're seeing what we call

00:41:12.666 --> 00:41:18.041
homogenisation effect, where you're
getting the same species in lots of different

00:41:18.125 --> 00:41:24.250
communities. So we're losing that
distinctiveness and diversity at the landscape level.

00:41:24.250 --> 00:41:26.000
And then because the plant

00:41:26.000 --> 00:41:29.333
species and community
composition is changing
that means

00:41:29.333 --> 00:41:31.416
the habitats available for

00:41:31.416 --> 00:41:33.916
the type of invertebrates
that are required

00:41:34.000 --> 00:41:40.375
at particular times of year for the
chicks of ptarmigan and dotterel for example is

00:41:40.458 --> 00:41:45.416
also changing. If the habitat's not
there for those invertebrates that is going to

00:41:45.500 --> 00:41:50.750
have that knock-on effect. You can
see how the change in plant communities has a

00:41:50.833 --> 00:41:54.083
sort of cascading effect
right through the whole ecosystem.

00:41:57.375 --> 00:42:02.416
There are certain human characteristic
that do seem to be inherently destructive.

00:42:02.500 --> 00:42:05.083
There's a kind of
kink in the human brain that

00:42:05.166 --> 00:42:08.500
drives us to do
terrible things to the living world.

00:42:11.708 --> 00:42:14.291
And this has been the
case for a very long time.

00:42:16.250 --> 00:42:18.750
I mean we wiped
out the megafauna on every

00:42:18.833 --> 00:42:23.041
continent and every island
we arrived on almost instantly.

00:42:24.166 --> 00:42:28.500
And so one of the things
we have to do is to remember.

00:42:31.541 --> 00:42:36.708
We have to recover our knowledge
of how ecosystems used to be in the past.

00:42:37.708 --> 00:42:41.875
And paleoecology, the
study of past ecosystems, is

00:42:41.958 --> 00:42:45.041
like a portal that
takes you into a magic kingdom.

00:42:49.208 --> 00:42:54.416
What I would like for future
generations is to be able to have the experience of

00:42:54.500 --> 00:42:59.541
being in an ecosystem that's not
really degraded. It's not a shadow of its former

00:42:59.625 --> 00:43:05.916
self. Our bodies know, they have an
ancestral memory of when you're in that kind of

00:43:06.000 --> 00:43:12.041
environment.(...) "This is how it
should be!" and it's a very visceral feeling and I

00:43:12.125 --> 00:43:16.791
want all future
generations to be able to experience that.

00:43:18.583 --> 00:43:23.625
But there's no doubt
in my mind that you have to

00:43:23.708 --> 00:43:27.708
try to replicate how
the original ecosystems worked.

00:43:28.708 --> 00:43:36.041
In the 80s what we knew was, that
ecologically we could have the wolf back, we could

00:43:36.125 --> 00:43:39.666
have the lynx back, but the
problems were all social and political.

00:43:40.500 --> 00:43:45.333
It's quite extraordinary to
discover what used to live here.

00:43:45.708 --> 00:43:52.750
We had an incredibly rich and abundant
and diverse ecosystem and we've become used

00:43:52.833 --> 00:43:57.625
to a situation of extreme
depletion that we think is normal and natural.

00:43:58.875 --> 00:44:01.625
We have to denormalize that. Our former

00:44:01.708 --> 00:44:05.208
wildlife may be our
once and future wildlife.

00:44:12.208 --> 00:44:30.958
(Slow Fiddle music)

00:44:32.458 --> 00:44:37.041
(Wind howling)

00:44:38.666 --> 00:44:49.208
The stability of the earth's natural systems relies on the majority of species exhibiting strong self-regulation.

00:44:49.625 --> 00:44:55.375
Human activity continues to
exhibit no such regulation, and is instead

00:44:55.458 --> 00:44:59.416
characterized by
reckless interference and exploitation

00:44:59.500 --> 00:45:03.750
of these finely balanced
and interconnected processes.

00:45:05.500 --> 00:45:10.583
In Scotland, the systematic extinction
of competing apex predators, for example,

00:45:10.666 --> 00:45:17.041
(...) has broken the top-down
regulatory function, their presence once provided.

00:45:17.666 --> 00:45:23.416
Setting in motion, the cycle of
unchecked and chronic degeneration seen today.

00:45:25.208 --> 00:45:29.541
If we want a viable future, a forest
that is going to be naturally self-sustaining

00:45:29.625 --> 00:45:34.666
and self-renewing, crucial steps
still have to be taken, and those include the

00:45:34.750 --> 00:45:39.750
return of missing carnivores. We don't
have any large terrestrial predators at the

00:45:39.833 --> 00:45:43.625
moment, and even the ones we do
have, like the Scottish wildcat, are highly

00:45:43.708 --> 00:45:46.500
imperiled. There's
very few purebreds now.

00:45:48.166 --> 00:45:53.875
When I studied Biology at university,
I was led to believe that ecosystems are

00:45:53.958 --> 00:45:59.375
basically controlled from the bottom up.
But as time has gone on, we've found that

00:45:59.458 --> 00:46:05.166
more and more ecosystems are
controlled from the top down, that to a very large

00:46:05.250 --> 00:46:09.958
extent, it's the predators which
determine the nature of the whole system.

00:46:10.041 --> 00:46:16.291
It's remarkable how powerful these effects
can be that are called 'trophic cascades':

00:46:16.375 --> 00:46:18.333
A process which starts at the top of the

00:46:18.416 --> 00:46:21.666
food chain and
cascades right down through it.

00:46:22.958 --> 00:46:27.208
And it turns out that the large
predators are not just ornamental, not just

00:46:27.291 --> 00:46:31.958
something that's nice to have.
They're absolutely essential for the healthy

00:46:32.041 --> 00:46:35.541
functioning of ecosystems.
And in Britain, we've lost

00:46:35.625 --> 00:46:38.083
all our large predators.
We killed them. We wiped them out.

00:46:40.083 --> 00:46:47.291
People have very deep-seated fears
from their ancestors. It's very easy to lead

00:46:47.375 --> 00:46:51.375
people on into thinking
that everything's a bogeyman. 

00:46:51.458 --> 00:46:54.041
"Oh, Wolf, we had to get rid of
them. They were a real problem".

00:46:58.958 --> 00:47:04.250
I would love to see them brought back
at least to some parts of Britain so that not

00:47:04.333 --> 00:47:10.041
only do we have the extraordinary
and rich experience of having those amazing

00:47:10.125 --> 00:47:15.791
animals in the landscape, but we also
have healthy and functioning ecosystems. At

00:47:15.875 --> 00:47:18.416
the moment, without
those predators, we don't have.

00:47:19.750 --> 00:47:23.541
It used to be thought that the
Eurasian lynx died out in Britain around about 4,000

00:47:23.625 --> 00:47:26.833
years ago because of natural climate
change. And actually, it's pretty clear that

00:47:26.916 --> 00:47:30.208
lynx lived here a lot more recently
than that. The evidence suggests that lynx

00:47:30.291 --> 00:47:34.291
lived here in at least medieval
times. So that would suggest that climate change

00:47:34.375 --> 00:47:37.375
wasn't responsible for the lynx's
demise. And instead, we're beginning to look at

00:47:37.458 --> 00:47:39.041
human action, particularly things like

00:47:39.125 --> 00:47:42.000
deforestation and
probably persecution as well.

00:47:43.166 --> 00:47:48.041
Large carnivores very often kill smaller
carnivores. And we know from right across

00:47:48.125 --> 00:47:52.875
Europe that Eurasian lynx can routinely
kill foxes. In some circumstances, that can

00:47:52.958 --> 00:47:58.250
have a knock-on effect in the ecosystem.
For example, in Sweden and Finland,

00:47:58.625 --> 00:48:03.208
researchers have concluded that as
lynx recolonized habitats that humans had pushed

00:48:03.291 --> 00:48:07.750
them out of in previous decades,
populations of things like capercaillie, like Black

00:48:07.833 --> 00:48:11.875
grouse and Mountain hares, actually
increased. What they seemed to be doing was

00:48:11.958 --> 00:48:16.083
suppressing the fox population. The
foxes were much more significant predators of

00:48:16.166 --> 00:48:19.541
grouse and hares. And the lynx were
suppressing them, either by directly killing

00:48:19.625 --> 00:48:21.666
them or by pushing
them out of the landscape.

00:48:22.666 --> 00:48:29.791
We do have quite high level of
mesopredators in Scotland, like foxes and crows and

00:48:29.875 --> 00:48:35.291
also Pine martens. And these can put a
pressure on vulnerable and sensitive species

00:48:35.375 --> 00:48:39.083
like capercaillie, where
every chick, every egg really

00:48:39.208 --> 00:48:41.583
does count, especially
as they nest on the ground.

00:48:42.500 --> 00:48:47.000
I think there's a real problem for
ground nesting birds, that you have such high

00:48:47.083 --> 00:48:50.833
densities, of
mesopredators.(...) And how do we

00:48:50.916 --> 00:48:54.083
deal with that when
we don't have lynx or wolf?

00:48:54.500 --> 00:48:57.791
So there is some school of thought
to suggest that if we did have those apex

00:48:57.875 --> 00:49:02.291
predators that Scotland had, that
might impact mesopredators in a way that would

00:49:02.375 --> 00:49:06.333
reduce that predation. They might
compete with these mesopredators or make them

00:49:06.416 --> 00:49:08.333
move around the
landscape a little bit differently.

00:49:09.791 --> 00:49:15.208
I think the reintroduction of apex
predators is not only desirable, but necessary

00:49:15.291 --> 00:49:19.958
in the longer run. I don't think we
can have functioning ecosystems without them,

00:49:20.041 --> 00:49:23.791
as we've seen with the famous
example of the wolves returning to Yellowstone.

00:49:29.500 --> 00:49:31.541
We need to get predator prey dynamics

00:49:31.625 --> 00:49:35.083
re-established to move
deer around in the landscape.

00:49:36.583 --> 00:49:41.791
I'm a great believer, if you think an
animal should be back, you should have been

00:49:41.875 --> 00:49:47.958
to see them,(...) to understand
them, so that anyone in this country who's worried

00:49:48.041 --> 00:49:55.791
about it. Farmers and foresters and
politicians, they can see that you have done

00:49:55.875 --> 00:49:58.708
your best to be on
top of the job you're doing.

00:49:59.333 --> 00:50:01.916
You've got to be
able to make a very good case.

00:50:02.750 --> 00:50:06.958
Looking at modern Scotland in
particular, we now have enough habitat and enough

00:50:07.041 --> 00:50:10.958
wild prey that you could support
over 400 lynx, should we choose to do that.

00:50:12.000 --> 00:50:15.666
So these days, there are a lot of
deer in the Scottish countryside in the absence

00:50:15.750 --> 00:50:20.125
of natural predators. And at times and
in places, that can cause problems, that can

00:50:20.208 --> 00:50:23.583
lead to difficulties for the
forestry industry, it can cause road traffic

00:50:23.666 --> 00:50:27.333
accidents, there may well be too much
grazing going on in farmland. It is something

00:50:27.416 --> 00:50:30.833
that costs quite a lot of money,
millions of pounds every year to address, is the

00:50:30.916 --> 00:50:34.375
management of deer populations. Where
the lynx fits in with this, of course, is

00:50:34.458 --> 00:50:38.666
that the lynx is a year-round
predator of woodland deer. Arguably having a natural

00:50:38.750 --> 00:50:42.333
predator in the woodland, providing a
free service, that could be a useful ally.

00:50:42.625 --> 00:50:48.291
I just cannot understand the
opposition to lynx, you know, no evidence of

00:50:48.375 --> 00:50:52.958
attacking people, you're never going
to see them. You know, they could be down

00:50:53.041 --> 00:50:56.500
there in that wood, no
one would know they're there,

00:50:56.583 --> 00:51:01.208
(...) except if you see
the track in the winter snows.

00:51:05.791 --> 00:51:10.375
From the 1970s onwards, we see a
series of reintroduction projects taking place in

00:51:10.458 --> 00:51:13.833
the mountainous parts of Western
Europe, such as in the Alps of Switzerland, and

00:51:13.916 --> 00:51:17.208
the Jura Mountains of Switzerland as
well, and parts of Germany, Czech Republic,

00:51:17.458 --> 00:51:21.750
Austria, etc. Which saw the lynx
return to quite busy, quite human-modified

00:51:21.833 --> 00:51:23.333
landscapes, where there's farming, where

00:51:23.416 --> 00:51:25.333
there's forestry,
and tourism, and hunting.

00:51:25.916 --> 00:51:29.416
In Romania, in France,
the sheep farmers have accepted,

00:51:29.583 --> 00:51:36.041
"wW have chosen to undertake this
operation in a wild place,".(...) I think there

00:51:36.125 --> 00:51:39.583
needs to be a kind of just
transition out of sheep farming in places where

00:51:39.666 --> 00:51:41.958
rewilding is going
to be the main activity.

00:51:43.333 --> 00:51:48.708
The issue of lynx predating on sheep
is not a uniform one across Europe. In some

00:51:48.791 --> 00:51:52.500
parts of Europe, lynx just don't
predate sheep at all. The one country where I

00:51:52.583 --> 00:51:55.041
think it's quite a
bit different is Norway.

00:51:57.458 --> 00:52:02.416
We've done a great deal of research on lynx
and predation of sheep in Norway. For

00:52:02.500 --> 00:52:05.791
lynx to predate sheep,
three things have to be true

00:52:05.875 --> 00:52:09.291
at the same time.(...)
The sheep has to be in woodland.

00:52:10.458 --> 00:52:13.708
Because they're ambush predators,
they can't hunt things on open ground. The

00:52:13.791 --> 00:52:18.750
population of sheep has to be very
high, over 20 animals per square kilometre, and

00:52:18.833 --> 00:52:23.416
the population of roe deer has to be
below four animals per square kilometre. If

00:52:23.500 --> 00:52:27.583
any of those things are not true, the
lynx eat roe deer and they do not predate

00:52:27.666 --> 00:52:32.250
sheep. In Scotland, the densities
of roe deer are very considerably over four

00:52:32.333 --> 00:52:37.958
animals per square kilometre, almost
everywhere. So, the scientific data indicates

00:52:38.041 --> 00:52:41.833
that if lynx were
reintroduced to Scotland,(...)

00:52:41.916 --> 00:52:45.041
predation of sheep by
lynx would be an unusual phenomenon.

00:52:46.083 --> 00:52:52.541
We are special in that we spent so
long getting rid of all these things, we don't

00:52:52.625 --> 00:52:57.833
want them back. We could have the wolf
back,(...) and it wouldn't be the worry that

00:52:57.916 --> 00:53:00.958
everyone says. And
really with the lynx, it should

00:53:01.041 --> 00:53:05.083
be here yesterday.(...)
It's a disgrace it's not here.

00:53:06.541 --> 00:53:10.291
Lynx and wolves are very often
talked about in the same breath, when in fact

00:53:10.375 --> 00:53:13.208
they're actually very different
animals with very different ecologies and

00:53:13.291 --> 00:53:18.166
behaviours. The Eurasian lynx is
solitary, and is about half the size of a wolf,

00:53:18.625 --> 00:53:21.458
and is very, very shy
and elusive, and is much more

00:53:21.541 --> 00:53:24.833
closely associated with
woodland and ambush cover than the wolf.

00:53:25.916 --> 00:53:29.666
Wolves, as most people know, are
quite a social animal. They often hunt in packs.

00:53:30.250 --> 00:53:34.458
They can be about 40 to 50 kilos in
size, and it can live quite happily in open

00:53:34.541 --> 00:53:37.666
environments, and it does that in
many parts of the world, and can hunt quite

00:53:37.750 --> 00:53:43.250
happily in open pasture.(...) What
we've seen in the last few decades in Europe is

00:53:43.333 --> 00:53:47.666
a recovery of large carnivore
populations. Wolves have started to spread back into

00:53:47.750 --> 00:53:49.541
various countries
further west from the east.

00:53:49.625 --> 00:53:52.625
Now having wolf running around here

00:53:53.666 --> 00:54:00.375
would upset a lot of people. But near
Amsterdam, there's a pair of breeding wolves

00:54:00.458 --> 00:54:03.791
in the Veluwe, in
the middle of Holland, and

00:54:03.875 --> 00:54:07.208
they've had young
ones, and people just accept it.

00:54:08.458 --> 00:54:15.166
We were doing a research trip in
Greenland to ring pink-footed geese to study their

00:54:15.250 --> 00:54:21.375
migration, and one night I saw two
white wolves, and they suddenly stood up and

00:54:21.458 --> 00:54:27.041
started to howl, and the hair on the
back of my head went up, and then two pups

00:54:27.125 --> 00:54:32.875
came up, and then they walked away.
Two weeks later, the male wolf walked right

00:54:32.958 --> 00:54:37.958
into our camp. Well, we don't need to
worry. He's got his tail between his legs,

00:54:38.208 --> 00:54:42.500
and he's really walking in saying,
"I'm not a threat. I just want to see what you

00:54:42.583 --> 00:54:45.416
guys are up to", and
he walked around our camp.

00:54:45.666 --> 00:54:50.125
He came within about
ten yards, ... and off he walked...

00:54:54.583 --> 00:54:58.916
And I thought that was magnificent.
The cameras were going ...

00:54:58.916 --> 00:55:00.166
bang, bang, bang, bang, bang!

00:55:00.541 --> 00:55:04.583
But what we didn't do
was pick up a rifle and kill him.

00:55:13.625 --> 00:55:22.166
(Eerie Music)

00:55:32.708 --> 00:55:38.541
Humans are unique in their capacity to
determine their fate. Even now, they are at

00:55:38.625 --> 00:55:41.791
liberty to choose a
different path, one of personal

00:55:41.875 --> 00:55:44.916
responsibility in the
stewardship of their planet,

00:55:45.416 --> 00:55:48.333
free to reject the
well-worn path they are

00:55:48.416 --> 00:55:50.666
on towards a bleak

00:55:51.500 --> 00:55:53.833
and unsustainable future.

00:55:54.541 --> 00:55:56.333
(Polar Bear roars)

00:55:56.333 --> 00:56:00.333
Change is coming, and I think we need
to be prepared for it. We're racing towards

00:56:00.416 --> 00:56:04.541
the cliff edge. We're still acting
out the Hollywood escapist fantasy that we'll

00:56:04.625 --> 00:56:08.125
find another planet to go and
colonise and leave this behind as a wasteland.

00:56:10.250 --> 00:56:15.416
We're on a finite planet. We're
already overshooting what the planet produces in

00:56:15.500 --> 00:56:18.500
terms of its biological
productivity.(...) So what we're

00:56:18.583 --> 00:56:21.208
doing is we're strip
mining the future of our children.

00:56:23.333 --> 00:56:28.916
It's terrifying. We've been thinking
about climate change for 25 years. One started

00:56:29.000 --> 00:56:33.000
off feeling hopeful that there could
be real change, and there have been changes in

00:56:33.083 --> 00:56:37.083
that time. We see the wind turbines
going up. My, kind of rational brain says,

00:56:37.166 --> 00:56:41.583
"There's no hope. We're absolutely
doomed", but we're alive, and we're waking up

00:56:41.666 --> 00:56:43.208
every morning. And
I think what you have to do

00:56:43.291 --> 00:56:45.500
is just say, "What
can we do?" in a positive way.

00:56:48.583 --> 00:56:52.791
It's clear we're in a climate
emergency. There's an imperative to try and tackle

00:56:52.875 --> 00:56:57.750
this. It's going to have dire
consequences for future generations if we don't.(...)

00:56:57.833 --> 00:57:02.458
And yet, there's so much we could do
to try and address this whole issue, try and

00:57:02.541 --> 00:57:04.916
keep temperatures below
certain thresholds to stop us

00:57:05.000 --> 00:57:07.875
getting into a tipping point
and really bad things start to happen.

00:57:08.333 --> 00:57:13.125
We cannot go on the way we're going,
and we're either going to learn very quickly

00:57:13.208 --> 00:57:17.250
now to make the
changes that are required, or we're

00:57:17.333 --> 00:57:21.541
facing, in my view,
widespread collapse of industrial society.

00:57:21.916 --> 00:57:27.250
I think we're in a very, very dark
place.(...) And in a dark place, you've just got

00:57:27.333 --> 00:57:31.916
to keep going.(...) I don't like to
think that Gaia will shrug us off as having

00:57:32.000 --> 00:57:36.208
been this awful wasted experiment. And
I just hope desperately that the juggernaut

00:57:36.291 --> 00:57:41.083
of go-for-gold
capitalism can be converted

00:57:41.166 --> 00:57:43.000
into something else,
something more productive.

00:57:44.375 --> 00:57:49.083
The forces of society are exploiting
the last untouched forests. What's happened in

00:57:49.166 --> 00:57:52.541
Scotland, of course, has happened
in many other ecosystems around the world.

00:57:53.250 --> 00:57:56.875
Rewilding and restoring
needs to happen all over the planet.

00:57:57.958 --> 00:58:01.791
I don't think there's anybody that
is unable to make a contribution to this.

00:58:02.791 --> 00:58:07.875
People who've come and volunteered
have found it to be a life-changing experience.

00:58:08.333 --> 00:58:12.083
They go away, they do things
differently sometimes, because they realise they want

00:58:12.166 --> 00:58:14.916
to be part of the
solution, not part of the problem.

00:58:17.458 --> 00:58:21.708
Everyone has to take personal
responsibility. Sometimes it's just a small change of

00:58:21.791 --> 00:58:26.250
behaviour that can make a real
difference, maybe one day. You see a sign that says,

00:58:26.333 --> 00:58:28.291
"Can you please keep
your dog on a lead?" in July for

00:58:28.375 --> 00:58:31.083
instance. And you do, and
those chicks are safe for another day.

00:58:32.583 --> 00:58:37.916
Find something positive that you can
do, inspiring things that you can do at a

00:58:38.000 --> 00:58:40.916
garden scale, or even a
window box scale, actually, to

00:58:41.000 --> 00:58:45.541
attract bees and other
pollinators and help boost biodiversity.

00:58:46.625 --> 00:58:53.250
Noticing the nature around us is
incredibly powerful, and to quote Kathleen Jamie,

00:58:53.708 --> 00:58:58.916
"The art of noticing nature is
underrated", but it's ultimately something that could

00:58:59.000 --> 00:59:03.666
really be an act of
empowerment and even political resistance.

00:59:05.250 --> 00:59:10.875
This battle has to be fought in a
whole range of ways, and diplomacy and tact are

00:59:10.958 --> 00:59:13.833
important, but so are campaigning and

00:59:13.916 --> 00:59:16.125
calling out
governments when they get it wrong.

00:59:19.583 --> 00:59:23.541
Humans have special attributes, but
other species have special attributes as well.

00:59:23.625 --> 00:59:28.125
So we have to learn a bit of humility,
recognising this is a natural process, we're

00:59:28.208 --> 00:59:31.333
interfering with it,
let's stop interfering with it

00:59:31.416 --> 00:59:34.583
and see how we can
assist it. So, there's good and bad

00:59:34.666 --> 00:59:40.750
in people, and what we have to do is
to mobilise the good and discourage the bad.

00:59:41.250 --> 00:59:47.458
We also have an extraordinary
capacity for altruism, for devoting our lives to

00:59:47.541 --> 00:59:52.791
protecting other people and other
species, even when there's nothing in it for us.

00:59:53.291 --> 00:59:59.958
In the last twenty years, for anyone
working in nature, there's this terrible worry

01:00:00.041 --> 01:00:06.041
about what's going to happen to the
planet, but it's never been a better time to

01:00:06.125 --> 01:00:11.583
get on and do things. The wind
is behind the restoration of nature,

01:00:12.916 --> 01:00:15.916
and we need to
encourage all young people to get on

01:00:16.000 --> 01:00:20.791
and do it when there is
still time to save the planet.

01:00:22.500 --> 01:00:28.875
(Soft piano music)
(Children laughing)

01:00:29.583 --> 01:00:34.458
I think for anybody that has
children, and I have two kids, then clearly you're

01:00:34.541 --> 01:00:38.333
always thinking about the future and
what the future is going to be like for them

01:00:38.416 --> 01:00:41.750
and how you want to motivate
them to think and feel about the world.

01:00:42.708 --> 01:00:50.791
(Children giggling and screaming)

01:00:50.791 --> 01:00:58.875
(Birdsong)

01:01:03.583 --> 01:01:08.458
I choose to live in hope.(...) I don't
think there's any rational reason for that,

01:01:08.708 --> 01:01:13.583
but it is impossible not to. And
in order to carry out a project like this,

01:01:14.583 --> 01:01:20.500
you have to live in hope,
because that's what generates our actions.

01:01:22.958 --> 01:01:26.000
I think it's awfully easy to feel
overwhelmed, actually, at the moment, every time

01:01:26.083 --> 01:01:30.875
you turn on the news, and I think
that it's really important to give people hope.

01:01:31.958 --> 01:01:36.833
I am not an expert in moral philosophy,
but speaking as an individual, if you have

01:01:36.916 --> 01:01:41.250
any kind of compassion for other
people, you should pass on the world in no worse

01:01:41.333 --> 01:01:43.500
a state than which
you received it, not to do

01:01:43.583 --> 01:01:45.541
so, seems to me,
extraordinarily selfish.

01:01:47.375 --> 01:01:51.416
And I'm really encouraged and
inspired when I see the children's school strikes,

01:01:51.500 --> 01:01:55.750
when I see the extinction rebellion
activists out on the streets, because that is

01:01:55.833 --> 01:01:58.500
people standing up and
saying, "Things need to change."

01:01:58.875 --> 01:02:03.291
You never know where help is going
to come from. You never know that it is the

01:02:03.375 --> 01:02:07.625
right moment to despair, because
actually there could be something just around the

01:02:07.708 --> 01:02:12.750
corner that you could not
possibly foresee. Who would have guessed that a

01:02:12.833 --> 01:02:15.291
15-year-old Swedish
girl with Asperger's could

01:02:15.375 --> 01:02:19.583
change the whole global
conversation on climate breakdown?

01:02:19.875 --> 01:02:25.958
(Crowd chanting - "Climate change has got to go
Hey Hey, Ho Ho,
Climate change has got to go")

01:02:26.416 --> 01:02:29.583
I think young people are absolutely
brilliant. There are groups everywhere inspired

01:02:29.666 --> 01:02:34.208
by Greta Thunberg, and it's incredibly
humbling and upsetting, and it makes me cry,

01:02:34.291 --> 01:02:40.250
actually, because the older
generation have just wreaked havoc on those children.

01:02:42.375 --> 01:02:46.958
(Children playing)

01:02:47.583 --> 01:02:51.750
We have to give of our hearts. We
have to give our love and care. This planet

01:02:51.833 --> 01:02:56.208
desperately needs that at the moment.
Now we've got to learn to do something that's

01:02:56.291 --> 01:03:00.791
never been attempted before. We have
to learn to give back more than we take.(...)

01:03:00.875 --> 01:03:05.541
To restore these wounded landscapes,
these depleted ecosystems, we have to learn to

01:03:05.625 --> 01:03:10.041
give space back to our fellow species.
We've got to pull back the human enterprise

01:03:10.125 --> 01:03:14.500
and say, "We're going to let that part
of the planet be there for nature."(...) We

01:03:14.583 --> 01:03:16.500
have to find a new
way of living in harmony

01:03:16.583 --> 01:03:19.041
and balance. That
is the task ahead of us.

01:03:23.166 --> 01:03:25.583
Narrator: "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

01:03:26.458 --> 01:03:29.250
And sorry, I could not travel both

01:03:30.333 --> 01:03:32.125
And be one traveller.."

01:03:33.333 --> 01:03:40.291
I can't think of a better legacy
from any human life than the one that Alan is

01:03:40.375 --> 01:03:43.916
laying down, because
what he's setting up is something

01:03:44.000 --> 01:03:47.458
that will outlive him,
possibly for thousands of years.

01:03:48.000 --> 01:03:53.333
I will never see the trees that I've
planted reach maturity,(...) but planting a

01:03:53.416 --> 01:03:55.916
tree like a Scots
pine is a gift to the future.

01:03:56.916 --> 01:04:00.000
George: He talks about a 250-year project.

01:04:01.041 --> 01:04:03.833
I love the idea
that a project can continue

01:04:03.916 --> 01:04:07.625
long after you
have left the living world.

01:04:11.291 --> 01:04:14.416
Narrator: "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I...

01:04:15.708 --> 01:04:21.250
I took the one less traveled
by, and that has made all the difference."

01:04:30.625 --> 01:04:40.708
(Capercaille vocalising)
(Branch creaking)
(Soft music)

01:04:47.708 --> 01:04:50.333
People's eyes sort of
light up when they start planting a

01:04:50.416 --> 01:04:53.000
forest for their future
that's not going to get cut down again.

01:05:01.708 --> 01:05:06.250
Every time I come back, it's like
a piece of a jigsaw is being completed,

01:05:06.333 --> 01:05:12.541
by me. Wildlife always sort of seems
to be on a bit of a back foot, and I'd hate to

01:05:12.625 --> 01:05:15.583
see more of our
native species become extinct.

01:05:22.583 --> 01:05:27.250
If the planet can breathe,(...)
then we and every other creature can live.

01:05:30.625 --> 01:05:34.750
(Birds Chirping)

01:05:37.125 --> 01:05:41.916
I'm doing my bit, and Trees For Life
are doing their bit to, like, not put it all

01:05:42.000 --> 01:05:47.541
right, but to kind of keep a
little bit safe for now and for the future.

01:06:00.541 --> 01:06:04.458
It's going to be a real problem,
like, when we run out of oil or when climate

01:06:04.541 --> 01:06:07.000
change hits,
especially for, like, people growing

01:06:07.083 --> 01:06:09.041
up nowadays or people
who, like, live through that.

01:06:09.416 --> 01:06:11.375
Each week that I do here

01:06:11.375 --> 01:06:13.000
achieves the aim, 

01:06:13.000 --> 01:06:14.750
or helps to achieve the aim of

01:06:14.833 --> 01:06:16.625
increasing the forest 

01:06:16.625 --> 01:06:18.250
until it's ...

01:06:18.250 --> 01:06:20.166
back to its original size.

01:06:20.166 --> 01:06:21.541
That will take a few years

01:06:21.541 --> 01:06:23.583
probably beyond my lifetime

01:06:23.583 --> 01:06:26.041
but we're getting there.

01:06:27.458 --> 01:06:32.375
It would be good to imagine it
could happen in Taiwan in the future.

01:06:35.458 --> 01:06:39.791
We are the natural world, you know?
And you need to conserve that, I need to

01:06:39.875 --> 01:06:43.916
conserve that, and everybody has to
play a part at some point in their life, even

01:06:44.000 --> 01:06:45.916
if it's one week of
your life. 

01:06:46.375 --> 01:06:49.791
This feeling in the forest and to plant trees,

01:06:49.791 --> 01:06:52.833
is yes, really nice.

01:06:54.375 --> 01:06:57.333
I heard Alan Watson Featherstone speak

01:06:57.333 --> 01:06:59.750
and I found him very inspiring.

01:07:00.125 --> 01:07:02.750
Go join Trees For Life just for a
week,

01:07:02.750 --> 01:07:05.291
and it will give you
a hell of an insight

01:07:05.375 --> 01:07:09.208
into what we're doing
wrong, and hopefully at the

01:07:09.291 --> 01:07:12.583
end of that, you can
do something that's right.