I’ve said many times on this blog that I think one of the most awe-inspiring things about forests is their resilience and their capacity to recover from degradation, if given half a chance. As we soon enter the UN decade on ecosystem restoration, here are a few short, beautiful and inspiring films that track what can happen if you let nature claw its way back on degraded lands.
One of my all time favourite documentaries. A story about a dedicated botanist’s ambition to regrow a native forest on a valley of pasture in Hinewai Nature Reserve, in a corner of New Zealand. With his bike, a pair of secateurs, and an attitude that nature itself can do the heavy lifting, Hugh Wilson is helping hillsides blanketed by invasive gorse return to old growth forests.
Another hidden gem, this tells the story of Omar Tello, a banker who decided to dedicate his life to saving native trees from areas slated for deforestation, and use them to regrow a patch of Ecuadorian jungle in his back garden.
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Something of a classic. “Since the 1970’s Majuli islander Jadav Payeng has been planting trees in order to save his island. To date he has single handedly planted a forest larger than Central Park NYC. His forest has transformed what was once a barren wasteland, into a lush oasis.”
A trippy, short film . “The narrative runs in reverse, rewinding the clock on deforestation to undo the damage caused by the unsustainable production of one of the worlds most versatile commodities“.
Not so much a tale of restoration, as an example of what the UK would once have looked like before we got cracking with the decimation of our temperate rainforests. A film for anybody who thinks it’s smart that we spend millions of pounds in conservation funding each year preserving the status quo of desolate landscapes. Learn more about efforts to restore the UK’s forests here.
I still think this is one of the most pioneering pieces of film-making of the past decade. What I would love to see is a decade-long project that tracks the recovery of a forest on a farmland. I don’t believe this exists at the moment, but just imagine how spectacular it would be.
Something like this, but in reverse.
Seeing as we’re entering the UN decade on restoration, maybe it’s the perfect time for some camera boffins to get started on this?
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