Habitat Loss, Fragmentation, and Degradation
Conservation Biology
Class Meetings
Dates: 2026-10-07T16:00:00, 2026-10-21T16:00:00, 2026-10-26T16:00:00
Assigned Background
Habitat fragmentation and landscape change
Chapter: Habitat fragmentation and landscape change
Ch No.: 5 (Threats to Biodiversity)
Pages: 88-106 (Habitat Loss, Fragmentation, and Degradation)
PDF: bennett_saunders_2010.pdf
Textbook: Conservation Biology for All (see details below)
Days Covered: BIOL4120_W5D1, BIOL4120_W5D2, BIOL4120_W6D1, BIOL4120_W6D2, BIOL4120_W7D1, BIOL4120_W7D2
Text: Conservation Biology for All by Andrew F. Bennett, Denis A. Saunders
Edition: (2010)
ISBN: 978-0-19-955423-2
Habitat destruction: death by a thousand cuts
Chapter: Habitat destruction: death by a thousand cuts
Ch No.: 4 (Threats to Biodiversity)
Pages: 73-87 (Habitat Loss, Fragmentation, and Degradation)
PDF: laurance_2010.pdf
Textbook: Conservation Biology for All (see details below)
Days Covered: BIOL4120_W5D1, BIOL4120_W5D2, BIOL4120_W6D1, BIOL4120_W6D2, BIOL4120_W7D1, BIOL4120_W7D2
Text: Conservation Biology for All by William F. Laurance
Edition: (2010)
ISBN: 978-0-19-955423-2
Optional Material (Dive Deeper)
Readings
Ch 9 Habitat Loss, Fragmentation, and Degradation
Textbook: Conservation Biology (see details below)
Chapter: 9 (Threats to Biodiversity)
Sections Assigned: 9.1, 9.2, 9.3, 9.4 (Habitat Loss, Fragmentation, and Degradation)
Days Covered: BIOL4120_W5D1
Text: Conservation Biology by
Edition: 2nd (2025-01-17)
ISBN: 9780197667033 (textbook)
Habitat destruction: death by a thousand cuts
Chapter: Habitat destruction: death by a thousand cuts
Ch No.: 4 (Threats to Biodiversity)
Pages: 73-87 (Habitat Loss, Fragmentation, and Degradation)
PDF: laurance_2010.pdf
Textbook: Conservation Biology for All (see details below)
Days Covered: BIOL4120_W5D1, BIOL4120_W5D2, BIOL4120_W6D1, BIOL4120_W6D2, BIOL4120_W7D1, BIOL4120_W7D2
Text: Conservation Biology for All by William F. Laurance
Edition: (2010)
ISBN: 978-0-19-955423-2
Habitat fragmentation and landscape change
Chapter: Habitat fragmentation and landscape change
Ch No.: 5 (Threats to Biodiversity)
Pages: 88-106 (Habitat Loss, Fragmentation, and Degradation)
PDF: bennett_saunders_2010.pdf
Textbook: Conservation Biology for All (see details below)
Days Covered: BIOL4120_W5D1, BIOL4120_W5D2, BIOL4120_W6D1, BIOL4120_W6D2, BIOL4120_W7D1, BIOL4120_W7D2
Text: Conservation Biology for All by Andrew F. Bennett, Denis A. Saunders
Edition: (2010)
ISBN: 978-0-19-955423-2
Video Clips
Are We Living In the Sixth Extinction
Be Smart, 11 17, 2014
Video (9:11)
Description
This time, we’re the asteroid.
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Rodolfo Dirzo et al. “Defaunation in the Anthropocene” http://bit.ly/1H7JQdw
Stuart Pimm et al. “Biodiversity of Species and Their Rates of Extinction” http://bit.ly/1A5UZJM
Get to know an endangered species: http://discover.iucnredlist.org/
Half of world’s wildlife has died off in past 40 years: http://bit.ly/1BHl8jR
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Transcript
The history of extinction
0:02 · [MUSIC] The California Golden Bear The Great Auk The Passenger pigeon The Tasmanian tiger The Pinta Island tortoise The Golden toad All dead. And the killer is right there in the room with you.
0:22 · [MUSIC] The walls of France’s Lascaux cave hold some of humankind’s earliest art, almost mythical species: a wooly rhinoceros, enormous-antlered Megaloceros elk and massive aurochs. The artists lived on, became us, but those cave walls are the last place that those animals still run. They’re gone. Extinct.
0:51 · We all pretty much understand extinction, it’s when a species kicks the proverbial bucket, it rides off into the great biological sunset, bites the dust from whence it came and shall return, which is all just a pretty way of saying that every last one of them dies.
1:05 · Even kids are used to the idea that sometimes groups of living things just… don’t exist anymore. Okay, mostly don’t exist.
Discovering mass events
1:13 · But extinction, as a thing, is a surprisingly new concept. In the 1790’s, by studying various fossils, naturalist Georges Cuvier was the first to show that they were not from living, yet undiscovered creatures, as many thought, but from what he called “lost species”.
1:29 · In the decades to come, scientists like Charles Lyell and ol’ Chuck Darwin began to popularize the idea that Earth’s processes, like geology, evolution, and even extinction, did occur, just very, very, verrrry slowly. So slowly that we’d surely never actually see something go extinct. The idea of so-called catastrophic change was just impossible… It wasn’t until the 1980’s that scientists were able to shake that idea. Geologist Walter Alvarez was puzzled by the sudden disappearance of tiny aquatic fossils between two rock layers that dated from about 66 million years ago, the same age as the last dinosaurs.
2:01 · With the help of his Nobel Prize winning father, he analyzed the chemistry of that boundary and found iridium levels that were off the charts. Now, there’s usually not much iridium in Earth’s crust, but it’s very common in asteroids. So Alvarez’s theory? A 10-km wide rock collided with Earth, wiping out 75% of Earth’s plants and animals. To be honest scientists kinda laughed at it… until the 1991 discovery of the Chicxulub crater near the Yucatan peninsula finally settled it.
2:36 · Everything alive today is a descendent of a survivor of that terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day, the so-called Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction event, the most recent of the Big 5.
The big five extinctions
2:50 · You should feel pretty lucky. When we look at all of Earth’s fossil record together, 98% of the species that have ever lived are extinct,. Only they haven’t always disappeared at a constant rate.
3:02 · In the history of life on Earth, we know of 5 different mass extinctions, when a majority of life on Earth at the time disappeared in the blink of a geologic eye.
3:13 · Besides the most recent dino-killer, there’s the Triassic-Jurassic, Late Devonian, Ordivician-Silurian, and the worst of all, the End Permian. This was the mother of mass extinctions, it wiped out as many as 96% of Earth’s species, so it got the best nickname: The Great Dying.
3:34 · We’ve learned about all these just in time to get some bad news: We are in the 6th mass extinction, and this time, we are the asteroid.
The sixth mass extinction
3:46 · The hard facts of life mean that even when things are going pretty well on Earth, there’s a background rate of extinction. Among mammals, for instance, we’d expect to see one species go extinct every 700 years, or maybe one amphibian every thousand years.
4:00 · Studies of current extinction rates say we’re roughly one thousand times past that, and in some groups, like amphibians, are disappearing forty-five thousand times faster than normal.
4:13 · And since there are so many species still unknown or uncharacterized, all of those numbers are probably underestimates.
4:19 · Goodbye, gastric brooding frog, Pyrenean ibex, the Fomosan clouded leopard. We could have been friends.
4:29 · So how do we know we’re to blame?
4:32 · Around 13,000 years ago, as Earth thawed from its most recent big freeze, all of our favorite weird megafauna like the wooly mammoth, Smilodon, and our old friend Megatherium disappeared from the Earth, thanks to a changing climate and the invention of sharp stabby hunting tools. I really wish we had saved the 8-foot long beaver though. That would be awesome.
4:53 · Along the way, through hunting and farming, humans have been altering ecosystems in small but significant ways, but since the Industrial Revolution, man we have really kicked it into overdrive.
5:05 · With the exception of maybe the first bacteria to breathe oxygen into the air, no living thing has ever altered life on Earth to the degree that we have, which is why scientists now refer to current epoch as the Anthropocene.
Drivers of species loss
5:18 · “We are the ultimate problem. There are 7 billion people on the planet, we tend to destroy critical habitats where species live, we tend to be warming the planet, we tend to be very careless about moving species around the planet.”
5:32 · According to a 2014 paper by Stuart Pimm in Science (link in the doobly do), the main cause of the current extinction is human population growth and increased consumption. But those two things lead to a whole mess of threats: The most obvious are climate change and habitat destruction. Scientists found that most land species have very small ranges, so they can’t just pack up and move when we cut down their forest or turn it into a desert.
5:55 · Ocean species have more freedom to move to better waters, unless they’re coral reefs, but thanks to the highest atmospheric CO2 concentrations in 800,000+ years turning the oceans more acidic, anything with a calcium based shell has nowhere to run… or swim. If current trends hold up and the ocean hits pH 7.8 by end of century, it could wipe out ⅓ of the species in the ocean.
6:23 · Then there’s the invaders! Thanks to a species of snake hitching a ride on military cargo in the 1940s, Guam has lost all of its native birds. “I have had it with these (invasive) snakes on this (Guam-bound cargo) plane” In Africa’s Lake Victoria, 100s of species of cichlid fish species vanished after fishermen introduced the Nile Perch. Go us! We’re erasing species faster than we can even name them.
6:50 · Stanford’s Rodolfo Dirzo says that in the past 40 years, invertebrate populations, which might make up 97% of species on Earth, have declined 45% worldwide, and that’s just the ones we know about. (Link in the doobly do to that one too) You have to feel worst for the amphibians. Over the past 350 million years, they’ve survived multiple mass extinctions, but this time we’re giving them all we’ve got.
7:17 · Dirzo gives this loss of animal life a rather harmless sounding name: Defaunation. But there is nothing cute about it. There is not a group of living things on Earth today that is not threatened by the current and coming extinction. That includes us.
Why saving species matters
7:34 · Extinction is about more than gorillas, tigers, polar bears, and rhinos, and the dozens of other “famous” or “charismatic” species out there. Those are all important and worth saving, but we need to care just as much about the humble beetles, the ugly little worms, and the slimy frogs.
7:52 · Every species, big or small, panda or protozoa, is important and worth saving, whether or not we understand exactly why it’s worth saving.
8:02 · John Muir once said, “When we try to pick out anything by itself we find that it is bound fast by a thousand invisible cords that cannot be broken, to everything in the universe.”
8:15 · I’ve put some links down in the description where you can get to know some of Earth’s less-loved endangered species. Go make friends with one.
8:23 · Our knowledge and understanding of the planet’s ecosystems may be incomplete, but our effect on them knows no bounds. I hope the same tools and technology that we’ve used to push life on Earth to the edge might also give us power to bring ‘em back.
8:39 · So what are we gonna do? Let’s talk about it down there.
8:43 · Stay curious.
8:44 · If you want to read more about the brilliant and tragic stories of extinction in this age of humans, check out “The Sixth Extinction” by Elizabeth Kolbert, link in the description.
Climate change can money stop deforestation
The Economist, 11 01, 2022
Video (12:50)
Description
Rampant deforestation has driven economic growth, but accelerates climate change. How do you put a price on trees, to make them worth more alive than dead?
Film supported by Bain and Company
00:00 - Can money grow on trees?
00:55 - What Costa Rica can teach us
01:52 - Down with the trees: rapid deforestation around the world
03:15 - Why tree-planting schemes aren’t always the answer
04:24 - Paying for existing trees: carbon credits
06:38 - How to finance the restoration of forests
08:10 - What are Payments for Environmental Services?
09:31 - Swapping to sustainable returns
10:40 - Is focusing on economic growth the problem?
11.50 - Why world leaders need to decarbonise the economy
Sign up to our daily newsletter to keep up to date: https://econ.st/3n3kIjj
Why tree planting alone is not an adequate solution for climate change: https://econ.st/3rC50Oq
How the world’s wealthiest countries cause deforestation in poor ones: https://econ.st/3rBgW3d
The role of forests in climate change - listen to The Economist’s Intelligence podcast about their importance: https://econ.st/3rJ527a
How Jair Bolsonaro has damaged the Amazon rainforest: https://econ.st/3CFQiwa
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A balance-sheet could help to save the planet:https://econ.st/3VcAZSS
Why is the Amazon rainforest doing more harm than good? https://econ.st/3T50KCV
Transcript
Can money grow on trees?
0:00 · [Music] money doesn’t grow on trees but chopping them down has helped lots of the world get richer since the beginning of the 20th century humans have been raiding these resources almost as though they were Limitless the problem is the world is now paying a heavy environmental price it certainly looks like a crisis after the worst drought in 80 years so is
0:26 · there a financial solution if we don’t change the movement of money we’ll continue to finance ourselves into Extinction is paying for trees to be protected and restored the answer and how do you put a price on their worth foreign
0:51 · to understand the alarming story of deforestation let’s start with Costa Rica in the 1980s [Music] Maria’s family was typical of many enticed by The Riches of Agriculture her father cleared and converted their Forest to pasture foreign
What Costa Rica can teach us
1:29 · markets with the driving force behind deforestation from 1940 to 1987 the proportion of land in Costa Rica covered by forests plummeted from 75 percent to 21 percent
1:45 · Costa Rica’s experience is far from unique the rest of the world jumped on the bandwagon too humans have been cutting trees for thousands of years but there was a massive acceleration in the last century the U.N estimates around 10 million
Down with the trees: rapid deforestation around the world
2:01 · hectares of forest are being lost each year that’s around 27 football fields every minute fewer trees means less carbon dioxide being absorbed from the atmosphere and their destruction only adds more emissions accelerating climate change
2:24 · The Heart Of This Global crisis sits the world’s largest rainforest and the so-called Trump of the tropics jair bolsonaro um from 2019 to 2022 the rate of
2:41 · deforestation in Brazil Rose by roughly 50 percent attracting critics around the world the problem is it’s a bit Rich for wealthy countries to demand that poorer ones give up the economic benefits of deforestation the majority of deforestation in recent
2:59 · years has really been driven by agriculture expansion in developing countries it can almost seem hypocritical to criticize these developing nations for following a pathway that effectively made rich countries wealthy in previous centuries
Why tree-planting schemes aren’t always the answer
3:15 · so what can be done the simple answer is for rich countries to incentivize poorer ones to protect and restore their forests one thing the wealthy world has tried is stumping up cash for new tree planting schemes but many of these haven’t borne
3:33 · fruit tree planting programs are incredibly popular they can seem almost childishly easy you plant a tree you save the climate the reality of course is nowhere near that simple in terms of the climate it can be far more beneficial to conserve the forest that’s there so another way is to focus rewards for
3:55 · developing countries on conserving existing forests it works like this using historic rates of deforestation a country predicts how much Forest is likely to lose in the future any Forest that it manages to conserve is judged against this Benchmark the
4:12 · donor hands over a financial reward to the developing country for the trees it saved paying a sum for each ton of carbon dioxide that would have otherwise been emitted it’s not just the developing country that stands to gain the donors often
Paying for existing trees: carbon credits
4:28 · rich countries or companies can benefit too in exchange for their money they can claim what’s called a carbon credit which they can use to offset their emissions elsewhere Carmen credits are a way of allowing companies countries people who can’t
4:47 · reduce their own emissions currently to offset those emissions elsewhere they are seen as an important part of transitioning towards a net zero economy I started out hugging orangutans but now I find myself hugging asset managers and bankers a bit more often Andrew Mitchell is a zoologist turned financial advisor he encourages investors to buy carbon credits and believes they’re an important tool for Forest conservation these credits are hugely valuable it’s a
5:18 · transition strategy whilst you’re reducing your carbon emissions you have to buy offsets you should buy offsets it sounds like a win-win but so far the results are mixed Shady players have gained the system and pulled dirty tricks like duplicating credits or
5:36 · claiming to conserve land never under threat or moving the problem to the forest next door built into the Paris agreement is this consensus that there should be a global scheme for exchanging carbon credits across borders in practice the rules and standards that would govern such a global market have been incredibly difficult to establish and so right now
6:01 · what we’ve got is a system which is really unregulated and although standards and the scale of carbon credit schemes are improving there’s still one big sticking point the rewards for conserving trees still lag behind those for deforesting we need carbon markets to grow they
6:22 · won’t really achieve their full potential unless the price of offsetting a ton of carbon is competitive with the profits that can be generated from other activities on that land ultimately conservation has to become profitable
How to finance the restoration of forests
6:38 · re-enter Costa Rica once the poster child of deforestation but now a global leader in conservation and an example of how to make saving nature pay here landowners are paid by the government to restore and conserve forests and this has helped to create new and sustainable economic opportunities [Music]
7:07 · remember Maria whose father made a living out of chopping down trees like many in Costa Rica her family have since branched out and now do the very opposite [Music]
7:24 · Maria and her grandchildren we plant forests so far 350 hectares worth the government pays them and many other families around 80 a year for each hectare of forest that’s restored or kept intact Graces
7:55 · Ramos [Music] it might sound like a government subsidy scheme but here’s the key bit it’s not
What are Payments for Environmental Services?
8:12 · it’s a system known as payments for Environmental Services launched in the late 90s is paid for by citizens who are seen as benefiting from the services provided by healthy forests like carbon storage the protection of vital food chains and clean water the money is not coming from from the national budget the money comes from those who benefit
8:38 · Carlos Manuel Rodriguez is Costa Rica’s former environment Minister and the brains behind the scheme which is paid for by a levy on consumers water bills and attacks on their fuel use Costa Rica was the first developing country that put a tax on on carbon to
8:56 · generate a revenue for the payment of Environmental Services everybody who uses fuel in Costa Rica and pollutes the environment contributing to climate change must pay in the price of purchases that fuel an extra amount that
9:13 · goes to this foreign fund that pays Farmers so far the scheme has invested more than 500 million dollars in the conservation of forests and it’s paid off in the space of a generation Forest covering Costa Rica jumped from 21 to more than 50 percent
Swapping to sustainable returns
9:32 · with the restoration of trees have come new opportunities for profitable and sustainable Industries blowing away the idea that conservation and economic development are always at loggerheads nature-based tourism has become naturally important because of our jobs in rural Costa Rica as opposed to what we had in the past which was this irrational unsustainable agricultural production there is no dichotomy between preservation and economic development
10:05 · since 1987 the peak of deforestation in Costa Rica the country’s GDP has risen by an average of 4.2 percent a year Costa Rica isn’t a magic formula for saving the world’s forests since it began prioritizing conservation it’s increased food imports an option not available to all countries but there is a lot Costa Rica can teach others for one thing it’s improved some
10:32 · of its bad spending habits reversing subsidies that incentivize the clearance of land at all costs a lead more countries should follow we should put more money into the protection of nature from governments but the reality is even if we doubled all that money it wouldn’t come close to beating the subsidies that
Is focusing on economic growth the problem?
10:52 · directly cause harm to Nature each year the world spends around 150 billion dollars on protecting nature but around 12 times that on subsidies that harm it some campaigners argue a more radical fix is needed to save the volume of forests necessary to avert environmental catastrophe they say what’s required is a fundamental shift away from society’s focus on profits and growth the problem
11:20 · with GDP is that it measures everything we build and nothing that we protect it’s all beginning to change now people are waking up to the importance of keeping nature going to keep our economy going not everyone supports such a drastic change to economic thinking but
11:36 · most do agree that change is not happening fast enough with the eyes of many global leaders on other challenges the world is facing multiple crises in the midst of all this there is a risk that nature conservation and the climate crisis are demoted in the pecking order but climate change the global climate does not wait for short-term crises to pass foreign
12:12 · bullet that will reverse climate change the world needs to urgently reduce industrial emissions and prioritize policies to decarbonize economies but unless trees are worth more alive than dead deforestation and its Devastation will continue I’m Tom standage Deputy editor of The Economist and editor of the world ahead to read more of our future gazing coverage click on the link thanks for watching and don’t forget to subscribe
Climate change the trouble with trees
The Economist, 09 18, 2019
Video (9:44)
Description
Tree-planting has been hailed as a solution to climate change. But how much can trees really do to tackle global warming? See our research here: https://econ.st/32HXvXY
Click here to subscribe to The Economist on YouTube: https://econ.st/2xvTKdy
Summer 2019 - More than 38,000 fires raged across the Amazon. Fires that were man-made. Over the past 50 years almost 17% of the world’s largest rainforest has been cleared. And globally deforestation has almost doubled in just five years.
Since the start of human civilisation it’s estimated that the number of trees around the world has fallen by almost half. Clearing forests increases carbon-dioxide levels but planting them could store away some of the carbon already in the atmosphere.
This woman runs safaris in England. Guests are not only here to see wild animals - they’re here to see wild trees.
Almost 20 years ago Isabella Tree—yes that is her real name-handed 1,400 hectares of Sussex farmland back to nature, by doing, well nothing. She thinks this is the best way to use the land to help tackle climate change.
To stabilise the climate global carbon emissions need to drop to net zero by 2050. Simon Lewis is a professor of global change science.
And there’s never been more global ambition to plant trees. In 2014, 51 countries pledged to plant over 3.5m square kilometres of forest by 2030 - an area slightly larger than India. The 2030 target looks likely to be met. But there’s a catch…
Monoculture tree plantations like eucalyptus grow quickly but the trees are harvested every ten or so years releasing much of the carbon stored in the tree back into the atmosphere - which means that, according to some studies they’ll store only around one-fortieth of the carbon natural forests do over the long term.
In fact, those pledges to plant millions of trees actually promise to store 26bn tonnes less carbon than they could. Sometimes the motives for planting forests are less green than they might appear. By 2020 Ireland ought to have cut greenhouse-gas emissions by 20% below 2005 levels. But at current rates it will have reduced them by only 5%. Planting forests might help Ireland avoid massive penalties for missing EU targets because the potential carbon these forests could store in the future can be counted as a carbon credit today. In the 1920s Ireland had the lowest forest cover in Europe at around 1%. That’s now risen to 11% and the government has set a target to cover 18% of the land with forest by 2046.
And now local community groups are protesting against these monoculture tree plantations. They say they’re doing more harm than good.
Tree-planting programmes invariably have an impact on the people living nearby. In east Africa one project is demonstrating what can be achieved
when there’s genuine buy-in from the local communities. Green Ethiopia is a mixed-tree planting charity.
The land is communally owned and co-operatives of local women receive benefits for planting trees which are protected from being harvested. Here conserving is just as important as planting. Green Ethiopia assesses whether the condition of the land is good enough to regenerate by itself. When it is—on about a third of the area the charity runs they leave it alone. Just like Isabella Tree, back in England.
Monoculture plantations are often preferred because they make money. So some experts are looking to a future where carbon payments could create financial incentives for natural forests. Ultimately though, the trouble with trees tackling climate change is space
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Transcript
The deforestation crisis
0:00 · Summer 2019 More than 38,000 fires raged across the Amazon…
0:05 · …fires that were man-made Over the past 50 years…
0:10 · …almost 17% of the world’s largest rainforest has been cleared And globally deforestation has almost doubled in just five years Since the start of human civilisation…
0:23 · …it’s estimated that the number of trees around the world…
0:26 · …has fallen by almost half Clearing forests increases carbon-dioxide levels…
0:33 · …but planting them could store away…
0:35 · …some of the carbon already in the atmosphere Everyone is looking for a silver bullet…
0:41 · …to get our way out of this really difficult problem of climate change Some people have latched on to tree planting as a kind of panacea But the reality is tree planting is not always good This woman runs safaris…
The case for wilding
1:05 · …in England Guests are not only here to see wild animals…
1:12 · …they’re here to see wild trees If you could imagine when we were farming…
1:19 · …back in the 1980s, through the 90s…
1:22 · …this would have been a field of one particular crop as far as the eye can see Almost 20 years ago Isabella Tree—yes that is her real name…
1:32 · …handed 1,400 hectares of Sussex farmland back to nature…
1:36 · …by doing, well nothing She thinks this is the best way to use the land to help tackle climate change Wilding is a hands-off approach It’s become a sort of environment that is a nursery…
1:51 · …for open-grown, freely regenerating trees Within 20 years we have doubled our carbon sequestered in the soil We’ve got the scrub, we’ve got the grasses, we’ve got the trees…
2:04 · …all that will be contributing to this carbon sink To stabilise the climate global carbon emissions…
The pitfalls of planting
2:12 · …need to drop to net zero by 2050 Of course not all sectors are going to get down to zero emissions by 2050 Simon Lewis is a professor of global change science We need to take some carbon out of the atmosphere…
2:28 · …and one of the cheapest and easiest ways is to plant trees Around half the dry weight of a tree is carbon As trees grow they take carbon out of the atmosphere…
2:40 · …and store it in their trunks, leaves and roots…
2:42 · …which helps slow the rate of climate change And there’s never been more global ambition to plant trees In 2014, 51 countries pledged to plant…
2:53 · …over 3.5m square kilometres of forest by 2030…
2:58 · …an area slightly larger than India Ethiopia has made its mark in the record books…
3:05 · …by planting over 350m trees in a single day The 2030 target looks likely to be met But there’s a catch… When you dig down into the numbers of these forests…
3:20 · …almost half the area pledged so far by countries…
3:24 · …is actually from monoculture plantations And that means a single species planted over…
3:31 · …thousands and thousands of hectares Monoculture tree plantations like eucalyptus grow quickly…
3:37 · …but the trees are harvested every ten or so years…
3:40 · …releasing much of the carbon stored in the tree…
3:42 · …back into the atmosphere…
3:44 · …which means that, according to some studies…
3:46 · …they’ll store only around one-fortieth of the carbon…
3:49 · …natural forests do over the long term It’s made into short-term products like paper…
3:55 · …and then when that paper is used and then discarded…
3:58 · …it decomposes and that carbon goes back into the atmosphere Simon analysed pledges from 43 countries in the tropics and sub-tropics These big announcements are not going to deliver…
Policy and ecological impacts
4:10 · …on the carbon capture that we’re expecting If they were all natural forests we would sequester…
4:17 · …42bn tonnes of carbon this century In fact, those pledges to plant millions of trees…
4:25 · …actually promise to store 26bn tonnes less carbon than they could Sometimes the motives for planting forests…
4:34 · …are less green than they might appear By 2020 Ireland ought to have cut greenhouse-gas emissions…
4:41 · …by 20% below 2005 levels But at current rates it will have reduced them by only 5% Planting forests might help Ireland avoid massive penalties…
4:53 · …for missing EU targets…
4:55 · …because the potential carbon these forests could store in the future…
4:58 · …can be counted as a carbon credit today In the 1920s Ireland had the lowest forest cover in Europe at around 1% That’s now risen to 11% and the government has set a target…
5:12 · …to cover 18% of the land with forest by 2046 In Ireland, they’re rapidly increasing the amount of forest cover But it’s overwhelmingly going towards monoculture plantations of conifers And now local community groups are protesting against…
5:33 · …these monoculture tree plantations They say they’re doing more harm than good Because these monoculture plantations are about getting…
5:42 · …the maximum yield as fast as possible they often apply fertilisers…
5:47 · …which contribute to greenhouse gas nitrous oxide Conifer plantations are very densely stocked…
5:56 · …so cut out almost all the light…
5:58 · …are very poor for biodiversity and can really affect people living nearby Tree-planting programmes invariably have an impact…
Community-led regeneration
6:09 · …on the people living nearby In east Africa one project is demonstrating what can be achieved…
6:15 · …when there’s genuine buy-in from the local communities Green Ethiopia is a mixed-tree planting charity We plant seedlings in rural areas of Ethiopia…
6:27 · …that is heavily affected by degradation due to deforestation The land is communally owned…
6:34 · …and co-operatives of local women receive benefits for planting trees…
6:38 · …which are protected from being harvested Empowering the local community on tree planting…
6:47 · …contributes a lot for the sustainability of our forestation activities…
6:51 · …because it creates a sense of ownership The local communities strongly participate…
6:58 · …in planting, managing and conserving the sites Here conserving is just as important as planting Green Ethiopia assesses whether the condition of the land…
7:13 · …is good enough to regenerate by itself When it is—on about a third of the area the charity runs…
7:19 · …they leave it alone Just like Isabella Tree, back in England Perhaps the right way to think about tree planting is…
7:30 · …just leave the land and it can do it spontaneously itself There is no need for interventions by humans in most cases But this approach brings its own challenges The problem with this kind of natural regeneration is that…
Limits of the tree solution
7:45 · …it’s very difficult to get funding The funding is all driven by targets…
7:51 · …the numbers game In a regenerated landscape like this…
7:55 · …we can’t have any idea of how many oaks there’ll be…
7:57 · …or how many crab apples will come Monoculture plantations are often preferred because they make money So some experts are looking to a future where…
8:07 · …carbon payments could create financial incentives for natural forests If carbon becomes much more important as a commodity…
8:16 · …then perhaps these natural forests would become…
8:20 · …more profitable than plantations There’s a real opportunity here to shift the incentives…
8:27 · …towards getting benefits for the climate…
8:30 · …and benefits for local people and benefits for local wildlife Ultimately though, the trouble with trees tackling climate change is space There’s just not enough land in the world to plant enough trees…
8:47 · …to offset all the carbon emissions from fossil fuels We could say let’s restore forest on every single piece of land…
8:54 · …that used to have forest on from before agriculture And if we did that it would be about 200bn tonnes of carbon Now that sounds a lot but to put it in context…
9:05 · …that’s about 20 years’ worth of emissions at present rates Tree planting might be looked at as a saviour But it’s not It’s not an excuse not to cut fossil-fuel emissions
Four years ago we flooded a forest - the results are insane
Mossy Earth, 10 02, 2026
Video (16:43)
Description
After 4 years this forest has completely transformed into a proper flooded forest!
🌊 To support our work you can become a member here: https://mossy.earth
MOSSY EARTH MEMBERSHIP
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The rewilding membership that restores nature across a wide range of ecosystems.
🌲 Support a diversity of ecosystems
🐺 Rewild habitats to bring back biodiversity
🦫 Fund neglected species & ecosystems
Learn more and become a member here: https://mossy.earth
🥾 Visit this and other rewilding projects: https://www.mossyearthjourneys.com/
📝 Field notes channel - https://www.youtube.com/@MossyEarth-FieldNotes
🔗 All our links: https://www.mossy.earth/links
💪 OUR PARTNERS IN THIS VIDEO
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BROZ: https://broz.sk/en/
The project was also made possible thanks to the support of the LIFE17 NAT/SK/000621 project.
⏱️TIMESTAMPS⏱️
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0:00 Intro
1:08 Project recap
3:13 Flooded forest
🔎 ABOUT THIS PROJECT
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Over recent decades, large swathes of Slovakia’s wetlands have been lost. They have been drained to make way for agriculture as a result of the construction of dams for hydroelectric power, as well as for timber production. Wetlands are an integral part of the Danube floodplain landscape in Slovakia and draining them to plant trees has detrimental impacts on the environment. Wetlands store large amounts of carbon and are home to a diversity of plant and animal species that are specially adapted to the wet conditions. One of these species is the nationally endangered and endemic Pannonian root vole, which has declined drastically in Slovakia in response to disappearing wetlands. This project will turn forest back into a wetland by digging 650 meters of ditches. This will kickstart a “flood” of change and bring back a healthy functioning, sustainable and wilder ecosystem.
Read more about this project here: https://www.mossy.earth/projects/restoring-wetlands
CREDITS
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This project is managed by BROZ
Filming: Julie Schleiss-Andreassen, Duarte de Zoeten, Adriana Brossmannova and Jakub Sigmund
Writing: Duarte de Zoeten
Editing: Duarte de Zoeten and Lana Piršl
Thumbnail: Duarte de Zoeten, Thomas Hikin and Thomas Berry
Subtitles: Thomas Berry
Transcript
Intro
0:00 · We flooded this forest and the results have been incredible to witness.
0:05 · This project started 4 years ago now and since the return of the water year after year, we have seen the return of this wild ecosystem.
0:13 · A boom of life, a beautiful show of nature’s resilience and its ability to come back if we give it a chance.
0:22 · And this year, we have a lot to show you.
0:25 · From the transformation of the forest and the channels to some sketchy encounters with larger animals and the most impressive display of life I’ve ever seen when diving in this flooded forest.
0:41 · I mean, that is absolutely insane.
0:45 · I think it’s the coolest thing that I filmed in this wetland, in this forest that we have flooded.
0:52 · And we’ve been flooding this for 4 years, so it’s just really incredible to see this.
0:58 · And in this video today, I’m really excited to show you how this place has changed over the years and all the amazing wildlife that now calls this flooded forest its home.
Project recap
1:08 · But first, let’s recap how we got here and why we’re doing this.
1:12 · This project started because of this dam here, which was built in the 90s and rerouted 85% of the Danube’s water away from its floodplain and into a concrete channel.
1:22 · This left all of these forests that used to flood every year completely dry and reduced fish populations by an astonishing 70% among many other issues associated with the loss of these wetlands.
1:35 · And since then, our partners, Broz, have been trying to pick up the pieces and bring back some of these ecosystems.
1:41 · And one of the most important things they achieved was a deal with the relevant authorities to have these simulated floods leave the concrete channel back into the floodplain of the Danube.
1:52 · So in 2022, when we had already worked with them for a couple of years and funded a few different projects, we finally set out to do something bigger and decided to use 40,000 euros of our rewilding budget to fund the creation of the channels to bring water to some really nice forests from where it had disappeared.
2:11 · So I was really nervous that it will work, so we just dig it during the dry season and the water came and suddenly we were here and I was really happy that the maps, as I said in the previous video, that they were not lying, so it was really flooding as we planned, as we wanted.
2:28 · And later on, after a couple of years of successful flooding, money was suddenly required to buy a portion of the land that the government was going to sell, and which Broz wanted to protect, of course.
2:39 · So we quickly put together the required 31,000 euros to do this, and they managed to buy it.
2:45 · And of course, the only reason we had these funds ready to go at such a short notice is because of our Mossy Earth members, who have a monthly subscription with us that funds our rewilding work.
2:55 · So please keep this in mind as you watch this video and the impact that we have made here.
3:01 · This has been done because of our Mossy Earth members, and if you like what you see, then please consider becoming a member at mossy.earth to allow us to do more of this kind of rewilding across a wide variety of ecosystems.
Flooded forest
3:14 · Now, after four years of successful flooding, I was really excited to show you around, but as I was heading into the wetlands, I ran into some trouble.
3:24 · So I’ve just set up camp on top of this log because I was running through these chest-high nettles, and I just kind of kicked down one of them, and literally there was a boar.
3:38 · Just a boar, like straight.
3:40 · And then it just thankfully bolted off, and then three other noises, chaos around me, and they just ran away, and it was so sketchy.
3:52 · That’s the closest I’ve ever been to a boar and getting gored by one.
3:57 · And as I waited, perched on my log for a bit, I did spot a deer making its way out of the wetland after all of that disturbance.
4:04 · And when things quieted down, I went into the wetland.
4:08 · I don’t know if you can hear because of all the wind and so on, but in the background, I can hear the first European fire-bellied toads, which is one of the target species of this project.
4:18 · It’s really, really great to be here.
4:21 · And the wetlands, the flooded area, is as big as I’ve ever seen it.
4:25 · It’s become denser, it’s become really different, and I can’t wait to jump in here and go explore.
4:32 · This wetland is comprised of one channel, which we dug from the nearest existing canal, and the two forests that the water floods.
4:39 · And to properly show you this place, we spent some days here to uncover as many secrets as possible, and we have a lot to show you.
4:46 · So let’s start now with the first forest up here.
4:51 · This place has become quite the jungle here.
4:55 · And it’s just like dead wood everywhere creating these underwater mazes for the fish, for the amphibians, for the insects to grow, and of course all the birds that feed on them.
5:08 · It’s become really this place that’s dense with life, which is really cool to see.
5:14 · On the leaves and amongst the floating debris of the forest, we found snails and other invertebrates, and it has these beautiful mating crane flies, this nettle weevil, or this winter damsel fly.
5:27 · And when we go underwater, we find a whole little world that is quite distinct from other submerged environments, because of how ephemeral it is.
5:36 · The water comes here only a certain number of weeks each year, and that creates some unique characteristics.
5:42 · You see, the rapid advance of the water leaves much of the understory intact and submerged, such as the nettles which dominate here when the ground is dry.
5:50 · And this then forms a protective maze that is ideal for the fish to use.
5:56 · Now, for obvious reasons, they were quite hard to film here, as they have many places to hide, whenever I would put the camera down.
6:03 · So we filmed them in the channels instead, which we will look at in a bit.
6:08 · However, in amongst the trees, we were able to find many fire-bellied toads, and at first I only managed to film one while doing the underwater filming.
6:17 · But later on, Julie was able to capture them more at ease, with some of them even starting their characteristics song, that always fills our ears here and adds a real magical soundtrack to this place.
6:30 · So this here is a tree that I recognized from four years ago, because of the real characteristic little arch down there.
6:37 · It’s one of the ones that has died and is now this wonderful piece of, enormous piece of standing dead work, which is really important for the various insects that can take advantage of it.
6:49 · And where there are insects, there are birds.
6:52 · First, you spot the swallow, always busy, high up above the wetland amongst the trees.
6:57 · But when you look closer, you could also find birds lower down, such as this tree creeper that creeps up and down these trunks in search for food.
7:05 · And then I heard a noise, a very typical one for such a forest, but I only just caught a glimpse of the woodpecker flying towards the lower part of the wetland.
7:14 · And all this deadwood attracts more than just woodpeckers, it also attracts a chicken of the woods.
7:21 · So when they are this soft, it’s really good.
7:24 · Have you ever had the Istragov goulash?
7:26 · Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was not doing goulash, I just mixed them with the ham.
7:29 · It was like, not ham and eggs, but Ham and Istragov mushroom And one of the evenings I was here, I got to try out these chicken of the woods in some tacos at Sigi’s place.
7:41 · So Sigi, how confident are you?
7:43 · I hope so. I hope it’s a good one.
7:46 · 95% chance.
7:47 · 94%.
7:50 · And they were indeed delicious, so I can highly recommend them.
7:53 · But please be very careful whenever you pick mushrooms to eat.
7:57 · This is something else, fallen tree.
7:59 · You know, maybe a beaver. That would be kind of cool.
8:03 · I hope they don’t dam up our channel.
8:06 · And wow, look at this. It’s just such a jungle here.
8:12 · I keep saying that, you know, but it is what it feels like.
8:14 · It feels just overgrown and it’s really nice to see it like this.
8:19 · The transformation here in the channels has been quite impressive.
8:23 · And as usual, please bear in mind that I’m mixing some shots from past springs here.
8:27 · But maybe some of them are from early April, whereas this is late April.
8:31 · So a lot of the greening is just the spring in action.
8:34 · But many new additions here got nothing to do with the spring, such as the nice mix of willows and other water-tolerant species that now border the channel.
8:44 · Some of these were planted by Broz, while others are just natural recruitment.
8:49 · They’re, of course, a species that loves water.
8:51 · I mean, look at the huge willows back there.
8:56 · But it’s still really nice to see that these ones have established themselves well and are now sort of growing here so that this can become more and more like a floodplain forest.
9:05 · Not just the big forest area up there and the big forest area down there, but the channel also.
9:11 · I think the visible roots of the willows are really beautiful and striking with their red color, adding a nice element to the banks of the channel and helping stabilize it further.
9:23 · Then underwater here is where we can easily film the fish.
9:27 · They go about the channel in shoals that sometimes get pretty large, with a few hundred fish in each.
9:32 · Now, I’m unable to tell you the exact species of fish, as they are quite young and hard to distinguish.
9:38 · However, I can tell you how they fit in these forests.
9:41 · Essentially, every year, as the Danube surges after the winter rain and when the snow of the Alps starts melting, the water reaches forests like this one.
9:50 · And for fish, this presents a very timely opportunity to quickly sneak into these forests and reproduce.
9:58 · The young will then grow here in the shelter of the forest where fewer predators can reach them, and then as the water retreats, they will follow it back to the Danube to live out their lives.
10:08 · Places like this are essentially nurseries, and I’m glad we were able to bring this one back, despite all the damage done by the dam.
10:16 · I’m really enjoying my little exploration here.
10:19 · I’ve been seeing all kinds of really cool stuff.
10:23 · I’ve seen a snake swimming along in the water.
10:27 · I think it must have been hunting for tadpoles and maybe fish.
10:32 · I don’t know. It’s really interesting to see it.
10:34 · And also, I’ve saw some really big spiders that are resting on these branches.
10:39 · They’re clearly aquatic. It was dangling with its leg in the water.
10:44 · I’ve, of course, heard loads of birds and seen them fly by.
10:47 · I’ve seen some ducks in the distance that were using the channel before I came and disturbed them.
10:52 · And just a bit ago, right here, that’s why I went to get the camera, I saw what I think is either a shrew or a vole, but a little mouse-like creature.
11:05 · Super, super cute and right along the edge of the channel.
11:10 · It’s so nice and it gives me really the sense of exploration, of discovering this place anew.
11:16 · All this life is here because we brought back the water and that is just so satisfying.
11:22 · There is something really meaningful about restoring a natural process and letting nature play it out from there.
11:29 · That is why I love doing this work and the reason I think so many of you are here also.
11:35 · And if that is the case for you, then maybe you should consider joining us by becoming a Mossy Earth member.
11:41 · Our members fund all our work directly. It is quite simple, actually.
11:45 · Normal people, like you and me, contribute some money every month.
11:49 · In our case, the membership starts at the price of a fancy coffee.
11:52 · And we then put all the contributions together and get on with the rewilding work.
11:57 · There are no ads, no debt, no investors and, of course, no AI storytelling.
12:02 · Just normal people coming together to do some rewilding.
12:06 · And since Matt and I started out in 2017 with 300 bucks of investment between us, we managed to keep our growth organic and balanced, both in how we fund our work and how we grow our teams and impact.
12:19 · So far, we have four teams on the ground doing amazing work restoring coral reefs, bringing back seagrass, meadows, rewilding a whole river basin and turning a degraded piece of land in the Amazon into a living rainforest rewilding lab.
12:34 · And we also work with partners in a dozen more countries, from the rivers of Colorado or the forests we are planting in Iceland, all the way to the anti-dessertification research we are funding in Benin or the flooding we have been doing here with Broz.
12:49 · The common thread is that all our projects are making the landscape wilder and to achieve this, we always try to follow the best available science.
12:56 · Or we test new ideas and then report our findings openly, including our failures, of course, which is really key.
13:03 · So if this is the kind of thinking and the kind of work you would like to support, then please consider becoming a member at mossy.earth The link is in the description. Or you can scan this QR code here.
13:16 · Once I reach the lower forest, I went deeper and deeper and eventually I found more than I had bargained for.
13:26 · I think the camera really does not convey the size of this thing.
13:30 · I’d say it’s at least an 80 kilo creature and it left me in my best caveman mode impression to make sure there were no other boar around.
13:38 · Every time this happens to me, it’s a very primal feeling.
13:41 · So I’m curious to hear if you’ve had any memorable encounters with boar or other large animals.
13:47 · So please leave your stories in the comments for all of us to read.
13:52 · And once I calmed down, I started tuning into the forest here and it was just mesmerizing.
13:59 · The dappled light of the late afternoon reflecting off the water, the droplets falling like rain from the leaves of the willows saturated because of the flood.
14:09 · I really felt I was there in a floodplain forest of old, of the days before the dam ruined so much of the landscape.
14:19 · And as I explored further, I also solved the mystery of the woodpecker I saw earlier which had its nest in a small hole here where it is dutifully raising its young.
14:28 · And it wasn’t the only one as I also found a great tit busy flying back and forth to feed its chicks, safely hidden away in the crack of this willow.
14:38 · And when I reached the place where the forest meets the channel, I changed back into my underwater gear and I quickly ran into a fire-bellied toad that I decided to bother for a few minutes just to try to show you its incredible fire-belly from a different perspective.
14:53 · I mean, what a unique and beautiful animal.
14:57 · And once I let it go back into the flooded forest, it was time for me to dive down.
15:02 · You see, in all these years that I’ve been documenting this place, I’ve got to experience many amazing and wonderful things.
15:09 · I have seen a boom in toads and frogs, a boom in eggs.
15:14 · But somehow I never timed it just right to see what I think is one of the most impressive spectacles on offer here.
15:22 · And bit by bit, as I swam along, it started to unfold in front of me.
15:28 · At first it was just a few stragglers, but soon enough I caught up with a main show.
15:33 · I mean, look at this explosion of life.
15:37 · All of these tadpoles determined to live to become residents of this forest.
15:43 · They’re sticking together to survive snakes and herons, they’re fighting the current and sometimes they’re carefully swimming up to take a breath.
15:51 · And to think that every year now this explosion of life is happening because we brought water to this place.
15:58 · It is just incredible.
16:00 · For me, these fish and these tadpoles are just the perfect representation of what this wetland here has to offer.
16:08 · It’s just such an unusual place to see this bloom of life.
16:12 · And I think it’s really wonderful to see this sheer abundance, especially when it comes to the tadpoles, but also the fish.
16:19 · They’re harder to spot, but they’re everywhere.
16:22 · It’s just really fulfilling and amazing to see this.
16:26 · And if you’re a Mossy Earth member, thank you for empowering us to do this.
16:30 · I hope you are proud of what we have achieved here together.
16:34 · And if you’re yet to join us, please consider doing so at mossy.earth Until next time.
16:42 · Cheers!
Giant Pythons Have Overrun Florida. Here’s Why
PBS Terra, 08 08, 2023
Video (13:31)
Description
Watch the full first episode of Human Footprint here: https://youtu.be/m36E3n7y3mY
Ever heard of the phrase “when pet pythons outgrow their owners”? Well, host Shane Campbell-Staton is about to take us on an adventure to find out what happens next in this episode of Human Footprint. Join Shane as he meets bounty hunter Donna Kalil, exotic animal trader Hillary Dupont, and biologists Matthew McCollister and Kristen Hart as they battle the invasive Burmese Pythons of the Everglades.
Human Footprint is a show that delves into the impact of humans on the planet. Join Shane as he travels from farms to restaurants, from high-tech labs to street markets, and from forests to cities to uncover the consequences of our unique history. Are you ready to explore our past, present, and future as a species?
PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. To support your local station, go to: http://to.pbs.org/DonateTerra *****
Transcript
0:07 · Another monster gone!
0:09 · Oh my gosh.
0:11 · Burmese Pythons have transformed the entire ecosystem of South Florida.
0:17 · After arriving here as seemingly innocent pets, these snakes have overrun their new environment in just a few decades.
0:23 · The thing is, there’s still a lot we don’t know about how these elusive snakes live in the wild, like how long they live, how far they move, or even how many offspring they have.
0:33 · And the only way to find out… well, is to catch them.
0:36 · So I met up with a python hunter, an exotic pet dealer, and a team of wildlife biologists to get the story behind the invasion, and see how these dedicated south Floridians are working together to protect these natural habitats.
0:50 · I’m Shane Campbell-Staton, and this is Human footprint.
0:55 · Once I see it, adrenaline starts pumping and, you know, the game’s on.
1:13 · I’ve caught on full moons, I’ve caught below 75.
1:16 · I’ve caught on windy days.
1:17 · So, you know, you just got to be out here.
1:20 · You never know when a python’s going to be out here moving around.
1:25 · In 2017, Donna Kalil quit her job in real estate to become a full-time Burmese python hunter.
1:34 · I’m loving the, loving this uh, the snake leather. It’s nice and supple.
1:39 · Right there.
1:39 · Yeah!
1:40 · Love the trim.
1:41 · It helps my volunteers, you know, remember what you’re looking for out there.
1:47 · What made you decide to take up the mantle of python wrangler?
1:50 · I know how to catch snakes.
1:52 · I’ve known how to all my life.
1:54 · And I knew that I can make a difference to the environment that I love.
1:57 · What is the largest python you’ve caught?
2:00 · The largest I’ve caught was 16 even.
2:03 · Oh wow!
2:04 · These guys didn’t sprout wings and fly over from Southeast Asia.
2:07 · We brought them here.
2:08 · So we made the problem.
2:09 · We got to, we got to fix it.
2:12 · One way Florida is trying to fix the problem is by paying folks like Donna to capture and kill the pythons.
2:19 · So far, she’s brought in more than 600 of them.
2:26 · So if you do see something on the road, yell “Python,” and then we’re good to go.
2:31 · Awesome. Let’s ride.
2:38 · I so highly respect these things because they’re in an environment that they were put in, and they took over.
2:45 · Oh, will you stop?
2:47 · Back up just a little bit.
2:48 · Got something?
2:49 · Stop.
2:53 · Let me go check.
2:55 · It was down by the trees?
2:56 · Both of us saw it.
2:58 · When they feel vibrations coming at them, when they think that there’s something’s coming at them, they’re going to take off.
3:12 · There is a gator right there.
3:14 · You definitely saw a python though?
3:17 · I’m positive.
3:24 · If it was a python, it got to the water before we got to it.
3:33 · To understand how the python problem started, you need to understand the Florida pet trade.
3:40 · Some of the snakes Donna and I were looking for came from stores a lot like this one in Palm Beach County.
3:46 · We had a 22 foot reticulated python named Heather.
3:50 · We named her after my sister.
3:53 · I never really had a fear of big snakes.
4:02 · Hillary Dupont took over the store from her parents, who started it in the 90s.
4:12 · Her dad was a herpetologist and zookeeper, so Hillary’s been around exotic animals her whole life.
4:19 · So I grew up, back in the day, I have pictures, where my Dad used to bring home the lions and the chimpanzees from lion country, back when that was “OK”!
4:32 · Hillary’s bringing up her children in this world too, and from what I can see, they’re into it.
4:37 · I mean, really, what kid wouldn’t love growing up with all these animals in the family?
4:46 · Did a lot of Burmese pythons come through this store?
4:50 · Were they sold here?
4:51 · Yeah, we did.
4:52 · We had a lot of Burmese pythons come in and out and people would buy them.
4:56 · And then, of course, when they got to a certain size, they were like, oh, where are we going to keep this?
4:59 · Where are we going to put this?
5:00 · And they would bring them back.
5:01 · But not everyone took their pythons back to the store.
5:05 · Many dumped them into the closest wetland.
5:07 · Yes, we’re 100% at fault for contributing to that back in the day, but that’s where I’m redeeming myself.
5:16 · Florida Fish and Wildlife called us and said, do you want to be a drop center?
5:19 · And we said, absolutely.
5:21 · And so that’s when they started getting dropped to us.
5:23 · Wildlife drop centers provide a safe place for people to bring unwanted pets… so Hillary’s store is a rare place where you can see Burmese pythons kept legally in Florida.
5:35 · Can I see one of these guys?
5:35 · You wanna go see one of them?
5:36 · Oh, yeah.
5:37 · I’ll bring you over there.
5:39 · Come on, darling.
5:40 · Oh, my goodness.
5:42 · Come on.
5:43 · Boy’s got body, as they say.
5:47 · This is Satan.
5:48 · This is Satan?
5:49 · I know.
5:50 · It’s a horrible name.
5:53 · He’s kind of heavy and lanky.
5:55 · Alright Satan, let’s say hello to everybody.
5:58 · How long is Satan?
6:00 · Well, he’s around eight feet.
6:01 · Okay.
6:02 · And how old is the Prince of Darkness?
6:04 · We’ve had him for around five or six years.
6:06 · In a glass cage, these snakes seem harmless.
6:10 · But when they were released into a new environment, the results were devastating.
6:18 · Scientists are still trying to understand just how large of an impact they’re having.
6:23 · What they do know is that with their indiscriminate appetite, these snakes are wreaking havoc on the ecosystem’s native species.
6:31 · Burmese Pythons can take out the ecosystem’s apex predators, like alligators and crocodiles, upsetting the delicate balance in the Everglades which is home to endangered species like the Florida panther.
6:42 · And they can pose a risk to humans too.
6:45 · While Burmese Pythons typically stay far away from us, they can strike with and constrict to defend themselves and are fully capable of devouring cats and dogs.
6:54 · The animal is a challenge like no other.
6:57 · There’s a lot of surprises.
7:00 · This is ecologist Kristen Hart of the US Geological Survey.
7:04 · When she’s not chasing personal bests, she’s chasing down pythons… Kristen and Matt McCollister of the National Park Service are part of a team that’s trying to learn everything they can about how these snakes live in the Florida swamps.
7:23 · Today on the to-do list is to check two of our transmitted females.
7:28 · Okay.
7:29 · She was around 125 pounds when she was caught about this time last year.
7:36 · This is a basic radio tag.
7:37 · Okay.
7:39 · This is for an adult.
7:40 · We anchor it to the rib.
7:41 · So, there’s a surgery to put the tags in.
7:45 · We put two in, so we don’t lose them.
7:47 · They have a different frequency.
7:49 · So should one die, one tag, the battery expire, we still have a backup.
7:54 · And so it goes actually in the body in a surgery.
7:57 · And then we feed the antenna also right under the skin.
8:02 · You can hear it in the animal.
8:04 · It’s all inside.
8:06 · So they come in for surgery based on the expected battery life.
8:11 · It seems pretty straightforward, but at the same time, it’s a very technologically advanced solution.
8:19 · It’s a really important tool for us.
8:21 · If we’re just walking around the woods, you’re not likely to find a python.
8:24 · The tags are definitely the thing that help us track these animals.
8:28 · The team has radio tagged over 60 pythons.
8:31 · But they’re still learning the most basic facts about this species’ biology… like how long they live, how far they move, and how many babies they have… because to control them, we’ve got to understand them.
8:44 · So we’ll end up going around this marsh and then back in the pine.
8:48 · I think they’re adapting very well.
8:50 · And very quickly here in South Florida, it is a landscape scale phenomenon.
8:57 · This is not an easy environment to get around in… much less find a snake that doesn’t want to be found.
9:11 · It makes me realize how large I am as a human being.
9:15 · Not exactly built for stealth, but I’m trying my best.
9:19 · If it was easy, it would have been done before.
9:27 · Burmese pythons are very cryptic.
9:28 · They are in the canals.
9:30 · They are on the levees.
9:33 · They can be up in trees and underground.
9:41 · I believe it’s right here, just off the signal.
9:44 · You know, the animal is close to 16 feet long, so it could be in a few places.
9:48 · But if she’s in a ball, it’s likely right here.
9:53 · Just off where the signal feels hot.
9:55 · Prove once again why they have been able to conquer this habitat.
10:01 · Believe it or not there’s a snake here.
10:03 · The radio tag doesn’t lie… there’s a 16-foot python right under our feet, we just can’t get to it.
10:11 · Unfortunately, y’all have received the typical track experience.
10:17 · We will have to try another one.
10:23 · I mean, I think it’s like an alien thing.
10:24 · Right?
10:25 · I mean, they lose teeth and they grow them back.
10:28 · They have regenerative organ growth.
10:30 · So they can actually like their heart can shrink, their stomach can shrink, and then they can grow it back.
10:37 · This is a vast wilderness with lots of prey.
10:41 · We’ve seen everything in their diet – mammals, birds, gators.
10:46 · Once gators are on the menu, you’ve reached official gangster status.
10:52 · It’s just unbelievable.
10:53 · Burmese pythons eat prey as small as mice, and as large as deer.
10:58 · And in some part of the everglades, these mammal populations have dropped by more than 90% from their python numbers.
11:08 · She’s at the base of this squash myrtle.
11:10 · I see her, I think.
11:12 · You see it in there?
11:13 · I do.
11:13 · Go and get your blood stuff out.
11:14 · It’s moving.
11:14 · I see it.
11:15 · You see it in there?
11:17 · Get the camera right in there.
11:17 · You see it?
11:19 · Wanna let her move out.
11:20 · You ready?
11:21 · Yeah.
11:23 · Nope, she wiggled out.
11:26 · Here’s a head.
11:37 · [Inaudible] To touch this animal and feel how muscular the whole thing is.
11:51 · Giving me all kinds of presents back here.
11:54 · You appreciate the beauty of it.
11:56 · But it’s also like this cannot be out there.
12:00 · I mean, but it is.
12:03 · You wanna go and cinch, cinch the drawstring?
12:08 · 20.1.
12:09 · Tare the bag.
12:11 · It’s hard to believe that this 10-foot snake is the smallest python we tracked today.
12:17 · After taking measurements and collecting blood, the team releases the snake back into the wild.
12:23 · For Kristen, that’s a necessary evil.
12:27 · It is a big ask to put them back, right?
12:29 · Because you have an invasive in your hand, just put it down, get it out of the system.
12:34 · But if we do that, we lose the ability to learn.
12:36 · It is like driving the car while you’re building it in many ways.
12:39 · The rulebook is not there for these animals.
12:44 · The better we understand these snakes, the more likely we are to find a weakness that we can exploit to control them and reduce their impacts.
12:53 · What is the outlook?
12:54 · Is the goal like eradication?
12:56 · Is that beyond what is possible now?
12:58 · Trying to manage and mitigate the impacts that they’re having is sort of the shifting, shared goal I think.
13:05 · I love the Everglades.
13:07 · I have to work on this issue like I can’t back away as hard as it gets or as frustrating it gets sometimes.
13:16 · If you want more Human Footprint, you can tune in to the full length series on the PBS App or on your local PBS station.
13:23 · Check out the link in the description to watch a full episode and to find out more about the show.
How Otters Are Saving Earth’s Underwater Forests
PBS Terra, 08 15, 2024
Video (10:06)
Description
Hidden beneath the surface of our coastal seas are towering forests - of kelp. These underwater ecosystems are as crucial to our environment as their land-based counterparts. We’ll explore them alongside conservationists who are working to restore these threatened habitats. We’ll also meet some adorable sea otters and learn about the role they play in maintaining the balance in this sensitive environment.
Hosted by Joe Hanson from Be Smart, Overview uses stunning 4k drone footage to reveal the natural and human made marvels shaping our planet–from a 10,000-foot view–literally.
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Transcript
0:00 · (birds squawking) (light music) (water moving) This is one of the most important forest ecosystems on earth.
0:10 · Okay, not a forest like you were expecting, right?
0:13 · But trust me, this forest ecosystem is every bit as beautiful and epic as a forest on land, only instead of being made of trees, this one is made of giant towering strands of kelp.
0:25 · (light music continues) But this epic forest is in danger of disappearing.
0:30 · Luckily, an unlikely team of marine mammal researchers, underwater ecologists and algae farmers is fighting to bring this forest back from the brink.
0:41 · Like every forest, this one has predators to help keep it in balance, and one of those predators is really stinking cute.
0:53 · I mean, have you ever seen anything that adorable in your life?
0:57 · (light music continues) Kelp forests are the foundation of this marine ecosystem.
1:06 · Without them, this environment would not exist as we know it.
1:11 · They support over 800 species and provide crucial habitat and food.
1:16 · Kelp forests like this one can be found in cold water regions all over the world.
1:21 · Now, you might be tempted to call kelp a plant, but don’t.
1:24 · Kelp is a type of macroalgae, which means it doesn’t have roots, stems, or leaves like plants.
1:32 · Kelp forests have been a part of these coastlines for more than 30 million years.
1:38 · One of the dominant species of kelp here in California is bull kelp.
1:42 · It’s the trees of this underwater forest, and these kelp forests thrive in part because of animals like sea otters.
1:50 · They’re part of a complex love/lunch triangle between predators like otters, kelp, and underwater plant eaters like sea urchins.
1:59 · Here’s how it all works.
2:01 · Urchins eat kelp, which is fine, so long as someone eats the urchins.
2:05 · Someone like our cute and hungry friend here who can eat up to 15 pounds of seafood a day.
2:11 · An otter’s appetite protects the kelp forest from being overgrazed.
2:16 · The kelp keeps the urchin happy and fed.
2:18 · The urchin keep the otter healthy and fed, and the otter eating the urchin keeps the kelp from being overgrazed.
2:25 · Scientists call this type of carefully balanced relationship between different species a trophic cascade.
2:31 · (gentle music) But here’s the thing.
2:35 · This carefully balanced trophic cascade has fallen apart in Northern California.
2:41 · Otters are fighting for their lives here.
2:44 · European settlers decimated the otter population in the mid 1700s and early 1800s as part of the fur trade, but researchers are trying to bring them back one otter at a time.
2:57 · (gentle music continues) (birds squawking) [Sandrine] My name is Sandrine Hazan and I rescue and rehabilitate sea otters.
3:08 · You get to take care and rehabilitate and release the cutest animal on earth into the wild?
3:13 · I do that.
3:14 · Yes, I have that badge. This is a receiver that’s used to pick up a signal that a released otter would have, so they are implanted with a transmitter that has a specific frequency, and we can pick that up with this receiver. We recently released Otter 956 just out here in the kelp bed, and so we have been tracking her on a daily basis.
3:37 · Let’s cut this joyous otter release footage.
3:40 · (soft music) Why do all this work?
3:51 · Why do all this trouble to to track, you know, one otter?
3:54 · Well, it’s really part of the bigger picture of helping to bring these otters back to their historic habitat. They are keystone species and they really do so much for these kelp forests, keeping them healthy and keeping them balanced.
4:12 · [Joe] After the otter population disappeared, another predator stepped up, sea stars, particularly the Sunflower Sea star, with its dinner plate sized body and up to 24 limbs. They began to dine on urchins becoming formidable urchin hunters themselves, but then a series of events turned hundreds of miles of California coastline, a spiky purple.
4:36 · Suddenly a mysterious marine disease nearly wiped out sea star populations, and then a roving ball of warm ocean water known as the blob rolled through the region causing sea temperatures to rise by two to three degrees Celsius. The trophic cascade fell out of balance. The sea stars disappeared, the urchins went wild, and 96% of the kelp canopy along Northern California’s coastline has disappeared in the past decade. A region spanning 350 kilometers of the coast.
5:10 · (soft music) (waves lapping) (bird squawking) I think we’re ready to go.
5:22 · Got my camera.
5:23 · Yeah, let’s do it. (soft music continues) [Joe] One of the last remaining strongholds of bull kelp is here in Mendocino County in Northern California.
5:32 · We’re kind of left in a situation where there is no natural predator in the sea right now. And so what I work on specifically is trying to find ways where human can temporarily mitigate and help fill that role until we’re able to have some level of apex predator back in the system. (soft music continues) This is our coral reef. This is our great barrier reef for Californians.
5:53 · It’s kelp forests.
5:54 · Kelp and the ecosystems they create are why we have any fish in the ocean. They create food, habitat and shelter for hundreds, if not thousands of organisms, including human.
6:08 · [Joe To understand the extent of the loss, scientists like Tristan have turned to aerial imagery and high resolution mapping, looking at kelp from both below the water and from above.
6:19 · So what you’re looking at right there is the dark green patches, and this was just this past fall, and that’s where, that’s the only area where we saw kelp. And so what we’re focused on now is looking at where kelp has been persistent and it’s survived, so then we can really focus our kelp recovery efforts in a way that’s meaningful, impactful, and then also leveraging persistent kelp refugia.
6:44 · [Joe] One of those recovery efforts involved roping in aquaculture researcher, Andrew Kim and his team to plant lab grown kelp in the waters of Northern California.
6:54 · [Andrew Kim] We’ve developed these methods for being able to grow kelps year round. Being able to put kelps out that are already ahead of the curve and giving them really just a headstart in the environment, I think is a big breakthrough because for an annual species, like the bull kelp, it extends the potential window for them to be reproductive and to put spores into the environment.
7:19 · [Joe] Bull kelp like this regenerates every year growing from a microscopic spore to a huge structure dozens of meters tall. (soft music) This kelp can grow up to 60 centimeters per day, making it one of the fastest growing organisms in the ocean. After three years of trial and error, Andrew and his team are seeing success with new ways of planting their lab grown kelp designed to protect young kelp from predators and harsh conditions.
7:47 · Kind of like you would plant a raised garden bed if you had animals like running through your garden, you could put your seaweed in, in a raised bed and keep it out of the hungry reaches of the urchins. About a month ago, we put out kelps that were about six to 10 inches, and we came back and we surveyed these modules, and in the last month, they’ve grown several feet and they’re already attracting lots of fish.
8:13 · Every time we put kelp out, we’re putting a piece of hope out. You know the hope that it’ll create home for some little fish. It’s a big ocean. We just need to keep working and chipping away. We’re all in this together and we need to keep trying.
8:30 · (soft music continues) Back in the rich marine waters of Monterey, Sandrine is working hard to support otters as the cute, hungry predators fight to retake their place as the keystone species of this ecosystem.
8:44 · Do we have ears on 956 right now?
8:46 · We do, yep.
8:47 · This is her signal and she is somewhere nearby and based on this signal, she is resting.
8:52 · Do you think in your lifetime that otters in the kelp forest will be restored north of here?
9:00 · I hope so.
9:00 · The sea otters are trying really hard to expand their range, and we are doing everything we can to support conservation efforts to help them restore back to their range.
9:09 · It sounds like you take it day by day, otter by otter around here.
9:13 · Yes, very, very much so.
9:14 · 956, wherever you are, I hope that you’re getting lots of good urchin snacks. (gentle music) The kelp forest reminds us of the wonder that’s out there in nature, sometimes literally right beneath the surface. It’s also precious and so fragile. We just have to take it one breath at a time. (gentle music continues)
Is “Environmental DNA” the Future of Conservation Wild Hope Explains
Nature on PBS, 04 13, 2026
Video (5:28)
Description
What if you could discover every animal in an ecosystem…without ever seeing them? Environmental DNA (or eDNA) does exactly that. By collecting tiny samples of soil, water, or even air, researchers can identify dozens (or even hundreds) of species from the genetic traces they leave behind.
From tracking predators in Detroit to uncovering rare species in Ecuador’s rainforests, eDNA is helping conservationists make better decisions to protect biodiversity. Learn how it works, why it matters, and how this cutting-edge science is reshaping the future of conservation.
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Transcript
The challenge of biodiversity
0:00 · SPEAKER 1: To protect wildlife, conservationists need to first answer what might seem like a simple question.
0:06 · Which species actually live in the habitats they’re trying to save?
0:11 · This question might be difficult to answer, especially in dense and complex habitats like rainforests or shifting landscapes around cities.
0:23 · Ecologists have a long list of methods at their disposal– radio collars, camera traps, acoustic monitoring, and even good, old-fashioned direct observation.
0:34 · SPEAKER 2: See where it went down?
0:35 · SPEAKER 1: But the newest tool has the potential to be the most comprehensive yet.
Introducing eDNA
0:40 · By collecting small samples of soil, water, or air, scientists can now create a genetic roster of every species that calls an environment home.
0:51 · It’s a tool known as environmental DNA.
1:02 · Here in Detroit, environmental DNA, or eDNA, is revolutionizing our ability to survey wildlife.
Urban wildlife tracking
1:10 · Dr. Nyeema Harris and Dr. Jane Hallam are tracking how predators, like coyotes, travel through the urban landscape and how their range overlaps with the other wildlife, with local pets, and with humans.
1:23 · Camera traps have been the go-to method for this type of research for decades, but now with eDNA, scientists can detect species without ever catching them on camera.
1:34 · Animal shed DNA constantly through scat or hair or skin cells.
1:40 · Samples from a single habitat might contain this so-called trace DNA from dozens or hundreds of wild species.
1:50 · NYEEMA C. HARRIS: We get that species list from the cameras because we see the images.
1:54 · When we’re collecting the eDNA, we also then get a species list.
1:58 · So that means when we’ve collected the soil and we’ve done the molecular analysis, the DNA that we’ve detected has come from 24 different mammal species in the city of Detroit, and some of those species we don’t actually see on the camera.
2:15 · SPEAKER 1: EDNA isn’t new.
Advances in DNA analysis
2:17 · It’s been used to detect wildlife since the early 2000s, but the technology continues to advance.
2:23 · Today, scientists can identify species using much smaller fragments of DNA than ever before.
2:30 · Trace DNA collected in the field is replicated through a technique called Polymerase Chain Reaction, or PCR.
2:37 · It makes millions of identical copies of the genetic material, which can then be cross-checked against a DNA database of known species.
2:46 · Dr. JANE HALLAM: This is a bit like forensics.
2:47 · Environmental DNA tends to be quite broken up because it’s been exposed to the elements, and it’s been broken down by ultraviolet light from the sun.
2:56 · So that DNA isn’t in great shape.
2:57 · It tends to be in quite small fragments, but that’s enough for us to detect the species.
3:04 · SPEAKER 1: The size of those DNA fragments is key to why environmental DNA is such a powerful technique.
Barcoding genetic sequences
3:10 · For context, the genome of an animal like a coyote includes roughly 2.5 billion base pairs.
3:16 · But you don’t need a complete genome to identify a sample source.
3:20 · Certain small DNA sequences are shared among all members of a species.
3:26 · They act like the barcodes you see at the store.
3:29 · And when fragments of eDNA from the wild are cross-checked against a database of existing barcodes, we can match the fragments to the species they came from.
3:39 · Early eDNA methods required a barcode 100 base pairs or longer in order to identify a species.
3:46 · But today, with new sequencing technology and better computing power, fragments as small as 30 base pairs are often enough for a successful species match.
3:59 · This has broadened the use of eDNA to some amazing extremes.
The future of conservation
4:03 · Even ancient, degraded DNA from soil 2 million years old can reveal extinct species, like woolly mammoths.
4:13 · And in dense environments like the rainforests of Ecuador, where vegetation makes wildlife surveys difficult, eDNA has become an essential tool.
4:23 · Traditional genetic analysis can sample just one species at a time.
4:28 · Now, eDNA can sample hundreds at once.
4:33 · To the teams on the ground, eDNA is a low-cost, low-disturbance tool that detects species that are otherwise extremely difficult to find.
4:46 · From the rainforests of Ecuador to the streets of Detroit, results from eDNA are directly impacting environmental policy.
4:54 · Conservationists everywhere are embracing eDNA, the latest powerful tool at their disposal.
5:01 · Finally a way to reveal an entire ecosystem worth of life in a single scoop of dirt.
New Trees Won’t Solve Global Warming
Bloomberg Originals, 04 19, 2023
Video (6:12)
Description
The idea of tree-planting to offset carbon emissions has boomed in recent years. It’s cheap, appealing to consumers and companies, and allows us to feel like we’re “taking action.” But many tree planting programs don’t actually increase forest cover, improve biodiversity or sequester carbon. In this segment from Getting Warmer, climate storyteller Jack Harries explores whether planting trees is actually the best solution to the climate crisis.
Getting Warmer is Bloomberg’s exclusive new show about climate, clean energy and business, anchored by actor and former White House aide Kal Penn.
Accompany him on his journey as he takes an up-close look at bold climate solutions and discovers new facets of the global transition to clean energy.
In a hosted studio segment, Penn sifts through the overwhelming news about our climate and breaks down the facts and trends to understand with a dose of humor and optimism. Why are the recycling symbols on your plastic cups misleading? How does the carbon credit market work and does it actually help? And what is the future of water in a drought-ridden world?
On the road, Penn meets the innovators, researchers, communities and businesses pivoting to new energy sources and spearheading low-carbon technologies. In documentary segments, Penn speaks to the self-declared “crypto cowboys” of Texas who claim Bitcoin mining can help stabilize the state’s troubled electrical grid, and travels to Nevada to visit the company attempting to build America’s first closed-loop supply chain for electric vehicles. In New York, Penn explores the urban designs proposed to save the city from the next Superstorm Sandy and goes inside New York’s Empire State building to investigate the challenges of decarbonizing our cities and landmarks.
The show builds on, and includes contributions from, Bloomberg Green’s award-winning team of climate journalists as well as London-based climate storytellers Jack Harries and Alice Aedy. With a focus on the most pressing questions for young viewers, Jack and Alice unpack one big idea each episode. From recycled wastewater to regenerative agriculture and the challenges of a just transition for workers in the energy sector, they’ll break down how countries across the world are finding intriguing solutions to our climate crisis, and outline the challenges ahead.
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Transcript
The tree planting craze
0:00 · People deal with anxiety in different ways.
0:02 · Some people stress clean, some people stress shop.
0:06 · And when it comes to our climate anxiety, well, we’ve been stress planting.
0:10 · Officials in Ethiopia say a new record has been set with more than 200 million trees planted in just one day.
0:16 · Today we will be planting 20 million trees.
0:20 · Who’s against the trees?
0:21 · I mean the tree, everyone’s for the trees.
0:23 · 23 year old Quebecer Antoine Moses broke the world record for the amount of trees planted.
0:29 · Important people around the world agreed and decreed that planting trees is a great path towards climate redemption.
0:36 · We can get real on coal, cars, cash and trees.
0:41 · But as we start to realize how problematic tree planting programs can be, is this path truly as redeeming as we thought?
The appeal of simple solutions
0:55 · The idea of planting trees to solve the climate crisis has taken off in recent years.
0:59 · Everyone and their mother are behind it.
1:01 · Seriously, my mom loves planting trees.
1:04 · It’s funny ’cause my mom is actually known like in the local area we grew up for as a tree planter, like a controversial tree plant planter.
1:11 · Okay.
1:12 · In the 2019 UK general election, parties fought over who can out-plant one another.
1:17 · It makes everyone look good.
1:23 · The logic is clear.
1:24 · Trees absorb a lot of carbon.
1:26 · The bigger the tree gets, the more of it there is and the more carbon is absorbed from the air.
1:31 · Exactly what we need.
1:32 · It’s hard to pinpoint what started this craze.
1:35 · Some say it was the 2011 Bond Challenge.
1:37 · The largest restoration initiative the world has ever known.
1:40 · Others chalk it up to the controversial 2019 paper, which argued that planting trees is our most effective climate solution to date.
1:48 · This was picked up by almost 600 media outlets and inspired all sorts of mass initiatives.
1:54 · And here we are today, in a world where climate solutions are extremely complicated and technical.
1:59 · The simplicity of putting a tree in the ground is refreshing and reassuring.
2:03 · A breakthrough in the fight against pollution and dirt is the inimitable unique irreplaceable tree.
2:10 · But it’s also the reason why we’ve taken this solution a little bit too far.
2:14 · If the idea that you can simply invest a little money and make your carbon footprint disappear sounds too good to be true, that’s because it absolutely is.
Problems with mass planting
2:23 · And in our quest to meet demand from individuals, governments, and corporations, we’re disregarding the complicated nature of our forest ecosystem.
2:31 · And this can be hugely damaging to the environment.
2:35 · We’re planting almost 2 billion trees a year around the world, and we’re doing that through many tree planting programs that simply don’t work.
2:43 · In 2019 in Turkey, 11 million trees were planted in just one day, but many were planted at the wrong time and in the wrong place.
2:51 · And although the government denies it the country’s forestry union claims that 90% of the saplings died within months.
2:59 · Tree planting also requires way too much land and can potentially take away from land that we need to grow food and support existing ecosystems and habitats.
3:08 · And we’re starting to do some frankly stupid things to find room for all the trees we need to plant.
3:13 · Like literally chopping down other trees so that we can plant new ones.
3:17 · Seriously, are we actually doing that?
3:19 · Crazy.
3:20 · Not to mention we are screwing with biodiversity along the way.
3:23 · Most large scale tree planting programs are monoculture plantations, meaning that only one or two types of trees are planted.
3:30 · Species that are often not native to the area and fast growing.
3:34 · These plantations disrupt natural ecosystems and often decreased biodiversity.
3:39 · For example, according to recent research, mass tree planting efforts in China and Brazil are responsible for actually degrading vast areas of land.
3:47 · And the legal loopholes don’t help either.
3:49 · Tree plantations are technically classified as forests by the U.N., so they get blindly pushed as solutions to reverse deforestation.
3:56 · You know what else qualifies as a forest?
3:58 · London?
3:59 · Seriously.
4:00 · It has enough trees to meet the legal U.N. definition.
4:03 · We pat ourselves on the back for replacing one forest with another forest.
4:07 · Problem fixed.
4:08 · This is causing complacency which is another huge problem when it comes to the tree planting craze.
4:13 · All this work on one solution makes us think that we’ve solved the entire climate crisis which is a whole world of wrong.
4:20 · Because this crisis is complicated.
4:22 · And whether we like it or not the solutions are complicated too.
Better paths forward
4:25 · Planting trees can distract from the core issues of the climate crisis like burning fossil fuels and the socioeconomic pressures that led us here in the first place.
4:33 · Let’s make one thing clear.
4:34 · Planting trees is not in itself a bad thing.
4:37 · There’s actually a lot of evidence that when it’s done properly, it works.
4:41 · In Brazil, 2.7 million native trees have been planted in this southern region.
4:45 · This region is home to vulnerable species like this little guy.
4:49 · Isn’t he cute?
4:50 · These trees ended up creating forest corridors that helped tamarin populations recover.
4:55 · But you know why it worked in this case?
4:57 · Because the trees planted were native to the land which means that they were useful to the locals who built their lives around that resource.
5:04 · Consulting indigenous communities was crucial in the success of this project.
5:09 · But ironically, what’s simpler than planting trees is, well, protecting trees.
5:13 · Letting forests grow back is not only cheap and easy but also more effective at our ultimate goal.
5:19 · Sucking carbon out the atmosphere.
5:22 · Natural and biodiverse forest can store up to 40 times more carbon than plantations.
5:28 · Like a fine wine, trees only get better with age.
5:31 · They stand grand and majestic, witness to humanity’s time here on earth.
5:36 · They’re also efficient beings, always working to make this planet a better place for us.
5:41 · So as far as this problem is concerned, maybe the answer isn’t some radical human innovation but maybe the best thing we can do is to simply get out the way and let nature do its thing.
Ocean Habitat Loss
United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), 06 30, 2017
Video (1:01)
Description
Transcript
0:00 · if this paddling pool full of mangroves represents all of the mangrove trees in the world in 1900 then over the last 100 years we’ve seen a dramatic loss of approximately 35% mangroves help protect coastal areas from storms soak up carbon dioxide and
Mangroves help protect coastal areas from storms, soak up CO2
0:20 · provide refuge for many fish species to grow and Thrive coral reefs which are abundant with life and provide food and jobs for tens of millions of people have declined by 20% and seagrass which stores carbon
Coral reefs, which are abundant with life.
And seagrass, which stores carbon and protects many marine species
0:37 · and protects many marine species has been reduced by 29% in the last century and continues to decline we must reverse this trend and protect ocean habitats they are vital resources for Humanity providing food and jobs and they can be restored [Music]
One fifth of the Amazon rainforest lost to deforestation BBC News
BBC News, 09 24, 2024
Video (2:27)
Description
The Amazon rainforest has lost an area the size of Germany and France combined to deforestation in the last 40 years.
One fifth of the Amazon has been lost as a result of deforestation, agricultural farming, and climate change.
Professor Michael Sweet of the University of Derby said rivers in the Amazon are also “starting to dry out.”
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For more news, analysis and features visit: www.bbc.com/news
Transcript
Amazon deforestation report
0:00 · and talk about this new study that shows that the world’s biggest rainforest, the Amazon, has lost an area the size of Germany and France combined to deforestation in four decades. Let’s show you this image. It’s a map showing the scale of the Brazilian rainforest in 1985.
0:16 · The dark green section is the Amazon.
0:18 · Now, look at this.
0:20 · The same country in 2023.
0:24 · And you can see how much of the forest has disappeared. Let’s speak to Professor Michael Sweet, head of the Nature-Based Solutions Research Centre at the University of Derby. Very good to have you with us, Michael. I think it almost needs repeating, doesn’t it? The Amazon has lost an area the size of Germany and France combined in four decades. Just take us through what’s happening to one of the world’s most precious resources.
Expert analysis of loss
0:50 · Yeah, so that’s that’s 12.5% of the Amazon’s cover. Um, previously people have been talking about deforestation of around 17%. Uh, so it’s it’s not unsurprising this value.
1:03 · Um, but it’s the first time that it’s been cataloged in in such a reliable method. So, that’s 1/5 of the entire Amazon, which is is now gone.
1:14 · Um, but it gets even worse than that because unfortunately the more more and more hectares are at threat. So, it’s thought to be about 38% of the forest as well, on top of that, are actually in a degraded state.
1:27 · And Michael, this is the fault of humankind?
Causes and environmental impact
1:30 · Yeah, so sadly it’s mostly deforestation associated with agriculture for the most part.
1:38 · But then it’s also entwined and linked with aspects of climate change, which again are anthropogenically driven. So, human derived climate change.
1:48 · And that’s causing the forests to dry out a lot more. So, they’re they’re witnessing less rain. And so, So Amazon, on top of losing the trees, the important tree aspect, and obviously the biodiversity which goes with that, as the rivers are starting to dry out as well. And obviously the Amazon is famous for its river, as well as being the lungs of our planet as the trees are concerned.
2:12 · And we’re now starting to see devastating effects with this recently 120 of the the endangered river dolphins being found dead as the river subsides.
2:24 · Professor Malhi, thank you very much for joining us.
Seed Dispersal and Habitat Fragmentation HHMI BioInteractive Video
biointeractive, 06 07, 2017
Video (8:02)
Description
Watch researchers follow brown spider monkeys in a tropical forest of Colombia to determine which plant seeds they are dispersing. Seed dispersers are critical to the forest’s ability to grow and regenerate.
As the tropical forests of Colombia are cleared for farmland and cattle ranches, the remaining patches of forest become fewer, smaller and further apart from each other threatening the survival of the animals that live there, including brown spider monkeys. Brown spider monkeys are critical seed dispersers and as their numbers decrease the forest is less able to regenerate. Andres Link and Carolina Urbina Malo of Los Andes University in Colombia are identifying the seeds that spider monkeys disperse to better understand the monkeys’ role in the forest and to predict which plants will be most affected by fragmentation. Once the seeds have been catalogued, Link and colleagues replant them to create corridors between isolated patches of forest.
For more information and related materials, visit HHMI BioInteractive: https://www.biointeractive.org/classroom-resources/seed-dispersal-and-habitat-fragmentation
Transcript
0:00 · [INSECTS CHIRPING] [MUSIC PLAYING] SPEAKER 1: The tropical forests of Colombia are home to a myriad of plant and animal species.
0:19 · Like many of the world’s forests, this one in the Middle Magdalena Valley is also under threat.
0:25 · As Colombia’s human population grows, huge swaths of forest are cleared for farmland and cattle ranches.
0:32 · The remaining patches of forest become fewer and further apart from each other, in a process ecologists call habitat fragmentation.
0:40 · Fragmentation threatens the survival of all animals that live in the forest, by reducing the amount of habitat.
0:45 · And converting what’s left to patchy, disconnected areas.
0:50 · That is particularly true for the largest primate in the Americas– the brown spider monkey.
0:55 · They rely on trees for their food and shelter.
0:58 · And a continuous forest canopy acts as a highway, providing them the freedom to move.
1:02 · ANDRES LINK: The situation with brown spider monkeys in Colombia, is very, very critical.
1:07 · They’ve lost more than 80% of their forests.
1:10 · SPEAKER 1: It’s clear that spider monkeys rely on forests to survive, but do the forests also rely on spider monkeys?
1:16 · [MUSIC PLAYING] Wind, water, or animals can carry seeds from a parent plant to new locations.
1:33 · The seeds of tropical tree species are primarily dispersed by animals that eat fruits.
1:38 · SPEAKER 2: Many animals eat hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands, of fruits in a day.
1:44 · Most of them will swallow the seeds and will defecate them in other places.
1:49 · And through this process, disperse them in different parts of the forest.
1:54 · SPEAKER 1: Spider monkeys eat large amounts of fruits to support their size.
1:57 · And are likely, a major seed disperser in Colombian forests.
2:01 · When seeds simply fall in the forest, they end up near their parent tree.
2:05 · Here, seeds compete with other seeds from the same tree.
2:09 · Their chances of survival are low, but seeds that are carried away by spider monkeys and other dispensers are more likely to survive and grow into a healthy plant.
2:20 · Fragmentation reduces forest regeneration in two ways.
2:24 · It decreases the number of seed dispensers.
2:26 · And it limits how far they can safely travel.
2:30 · Andres Link and his colleagues have come to the middle Magdalena Valley to measure how many seeds spider monkeys are dispersing.
2:36 · And from which tree species.
2:38 · ANDRES LINK: So we started to wonder, what is the role of these primates in the dispersal of seeds of many plant species?
2:45 · CAROLINA URBINA MALO: They help to regenerate the forest, and it’s very important to know which species are they eating because in that way, we know which species are going to spread and which are not.
3:06 · SPEAKER 1: The first step is to collect the seeds dispersed by an individual monkey in a day.
3:13 · SPEAKER 2: And what we do, literally, is to follow them the whole day long.
4:01 · We see that they’re going to defecate, and we pay close attention.
4:06 · But also, normally we hear that some seeds fell that a monkey defecated.
4:10 · Then you can hear it, how it sounds when it hits the leaves and the ground.
4:17 · But when we can’t find it, what we do is that we rely on those animals that are specialists in getting to these fecal samples.
4:29 · We just have to stay really still.
4:31 · A couple of seconds, you’ll start hearing some buzzing that increases and increases in sound.
4:37 · CAROLINA URBINA MALO: The dung beetles have a very particular sound.
4:42 · So you will follow the sound, look for that dung beetle.
4:46 · And they will be making a little bowl from the poop that you want.
4:51 · So you will just take it.
4:58 · SPEAKER 2: So we have some dung beetles here collecting the poop.
5:03 · So there must be seeds around.
5:06 · And we can find something here.
5:07 · We collect each fecal sample in an individual plastic bag.
5:14 · And we put an individual number to each bag because we’re interested in quantifying, not only seed dispersal of the species, but also the ability of each individual.
5:24 · Or the amount of seeds that it can disperse in a single day.
5:28 · Or to find difference between males and females or.
5:30 · In matures and mature animals.
5:35 · A single spider monkey can defecate, probably, between 13 and 17 times a day.
5:42 · And this is only one monkey.
5:44 · And these will represent 100, if not thousands, of seeds that a single monkey disperses in this forest.
5:55 · SPEAKER 1: They clean the seeds they’ve extracted so they can be further characterized and cataloged.
6:01 · This work takes place back in their lab, in Bogota.
6:08 · ANDRES LINK: In the Middle Magdalena, these spider monkeys can disperse about 100 species or maybe more.
6:15 · As we learn about the important role of spider monkey seen in dispersing the seeds of many plants.
6:20 · And at the same time, we see how populations are declining.
6:23 · We start to worry a lot about the future of these forests.
6:26 · SPEAKER 1: With fewer spider monkeys, the forest is less able to regenerate, further decreasing the spider monkeys habitat.
6:33 · Researchers are trying to break this cycle by replanting the seeds they found.
6:38 · They plant them in deforested areas that are no longer used for agriculture.
6:42 · They will grow into the trees that monkeys need for food and shelter.
6:47 · ANDRES LINK: So what we do is that we collect those seeds, and we plant them in areas that have been degraded.
6:53 · Especially, we planned them in areas that we have identified that can be potential corridors between isolated patches of forest.
7:00 · SPEAKER 1: Growing these trees in the areas between forest patches will allow spider monkeys to move from one patch to another, increasing both their chances of survival and their ability to disperse seeds.
7:11 · ANDRES LINK: We really think this process of restoration and connecting these forests will provide a future scenario that is much nicer.
7:19 · A future scenario in which monkeys will not depend on us to have a viable population going on there and surviving without the need of our assistance.
The Everyday Ingredient Destroying the Planet
Bloomberg Originals, 04 05, 2023
Video (11:56)
Description
Kal Penn investigates the damage being done by the palm oil industry in Indonesia. The product is used in everything from cookies to shampoo, but its production has laid waste to forests all over the globe. With only 20% of palm oil deemed sustainable, Penn looks for solutions, including a UK startup with a lab-made version. But can fake palm oil compete with nature in quality and price?
Getting Warmer is Bloomberg’s exclusive new show about climate, clean energy and business, anchored by actor and former White House aide Kal Penn.
Accompany him on his journey as he takes an up-close look at bold climate solutions and discovers new facets of the global transition to clean energy.
In a hosted studio segment, Penn sifts through the overwhelming news about our climate and breaks down the facts and trends to understand with a dose of humor and optimism. Why are the recycling symbols on your plastic cups misleading? How does the carbon credit market work and does it actually help? And what is the future of water in a drought-ridden world?
On the road, Penn meets the innovators, researchers, communities and businesses pivoting to new energy sources and spearheading low-carbon technologies. In documentary segments, Penn speaks to the self-declared “crypto cowboys” of Texas who claim Bitcoin mining can help stabilize the state’s troubled electrical grid, and travels to Nevada to visit the company attempting to build America’s first closed-loop supply chain for electric vehicles. In New York, Penn explores the urban designs proposed to save the city from the next Superstorm Sandy and goes inside New York’s Empire State building to investigate the challenges of decarbonizing our cities and landmarks.
The show builds on, and includes contributions from, Bloomberg Green’s award-winning team of climate journalists as well as London-based climate storytellers Jack Harries and Alice Aedy. With a focus on the most pressing questions for young viewers, Jack and Alice unpack one big idea each episode. From recycled wastewater to regenerative agriculture and the challenges of a just transition for workers in the energy sector, they’ll break down how countries across the world are finding intriguing solutions to our climate crisis, and outline the challenges ahead.
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Transcript
The ubiquitous palm oil
0:03 · Palm oil.
0:04 · You’ve probably heard of it, yet don’t know exactly what it is.
0:08 · But unless you’re on an exclusive nut and berry diet you’re probably eating some today.
0:13 · Or at least rubbed some on your body this morning.
0:18 · The miraculous, versatile substance is used in thousands of everyday products, from chips and ice cream to shampoo and fuel.
0:27 · On average, we consume about eight kilograms, or around 18 pounds of palm oil every year.
0:35 · It comes from the red fruits of an oil palm tree.
0:43 · Palm is usually not a whole ingredient in something, with the exception of cooking oil.
0:50 · We’re often using a fraction.
0:52 · It’s a part of the fruit, a part of the oil, so it’s really easy for that to be invisible within a product.
1:01 · Seems like the ultimate natural resource, right?
1:03 · Just pick the fruit off the tree and make stuff with it.
1:06 · But palm oil has become very controversial in recent years for its cost on the environment.
Environmental controversy
1:12 · Vast swaths of forests have been burned by farmers to make way for oil palm plantations, causing the wholesale destruction of natural habitats, and ultimately contributing to climate change.
1:24 · There have also been reports of serious labor rights abuses in the industry.
1:57 · Despite public and private sector efforts to mitigate palm oil’s environmental impact, only 20% of the world’s palm oil is certified as sustainable today.
Seeking sustainable solutions
2:07 · Like most problems related to the climate crisis there doesn’t seem to be one clear solution.
2:13 · The damage being done by the palm oil industry is significant and not going away anytime soon.
2:19 · But farmers, big companies, and scientists are working in their own ways to try to chip away at its negative effects.
2:27 · The way that we produce food now is a modern miracle, but it’s also having an enormous impact on the environment.
2:33 · We have to create changes.
2:34 · We have to work towards creating these novel foodstuffs, which have much lower impact, which are healthy, and delicious, and different to what we had before.
Smallholder farmer challenges
3:26 · Edy is one of 16 million people working in the palm oil industry in Indonesia, the world’s biggest palm oil producer, churning out about 47 million tons in 2020 alone.
4:00 · About 40% of the oil palm plantations in Indonesia are owned by small scale farmers like Edy, who have less than 25 hectares of land.
4:10 · But many small holders didn’t have an understanding of sustainable farming.
4:14 · Slashing and burning the forest was common because it was the cheapest and fastest way to make land to grow oil palm trees.
4:22 · Between 2005 and 2013, almost half of the deforestation in Indonesia was linked to oil palm cultivation.
4:30 · 2015 was the worst year.
4:32 · Between June and October, fires burned an area roughly the size of Rwanda, or the US state of Maryland.
4:40 · Researchers linked the toxic haze, which lingered for weeks, to more than 100,000 premature deaths in Indonesia, and in neighboring countries like Malaysia and Singapore.
5:07 · In 2016, Indonesian president Joko Widodo imposed a moratorium on new permits for clearing forest and peatland for oil palm cultivation.
5:18 · Deforestation linked to palm oil is still happening, but educational campaigns and stricter law enforcement have reduced it significantly.
5:28 · More farmers like Edy have joined small holders associations like this one.
5:32 · With financial support from NGOs and big companies, they’ve got certification from institutes like the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, or RSPO.
5:42 · Sustainable palm oil has to meet strict standards, such as using best farming practices, conserving the environment, and considering employees benefits and rights.
5:52 · But Edy’s only one of a tiny number of certified small holders because many farmers don’t have the resources or access to get certified.
6:00 · And challenges still remain after being certified.
Big oil industry impact
6:28 · The other piece of the puzzle is big palm oil companies.
6:35 · Here at Golden Agri-Resources, we have more than 500,000 hectares of palm oil plantations across Indonesia, but we also buy fresh fruit bunches from other producers of palm.
6:48 · And so we actually trade and process closer to around six to eight million tons of what’s called crude palm oil, or palm related products.
7:00 · Harvested fruit bunches are sent to mills and then refineries for processing.
7:06 · The outer orange part of the fruit creates crude palm oil, which can be turned into many different products, like cooking oil and biofuel.
7:14 · The white creamy substance inside the kernel creates palm kernel oil, which is used in cosmetics, soaps, and hand sanitizers.
7:24 · In the past, criticism of the industry in terms of its impact on forests, wildlife, and even on local communities, sadly, was justified.
7:41 · We wanna be able to produce the equivalent of a million hectares of land on that half a million hectares of land.
7:48 · So focusing on using biotechnology techniques, but also really good farming practices.
7:56 · But full traceability of the supply chain still remains a challenge.
8:00 · Third party plantations are usually in remote locations spanning millions of hectares.
8:06 · Another challenge is consumer commitment.
8:08 · About 20% of the world’s palm oil was certified as sustainable, but buyers only bought half of it.
8:15 · So the greatest demand still comes from buyers in Europe and the US, to a certain extent Australia.
8:22 · However, the largest volumes are sold in countries like Indonesia, Malaysia, India, and China, where demand for a sustainable product is still very low.
Developing lab alternatives
8:40 · Making palm oil production sustainable is crucial, but some scientists are hoping we could stop using it completely.
8:46 · But the researchers working on an alternative to palm oil will need to ensure their products are competitive in quality and price.
8:54 · Ultimately, there’s no mystery to palm oil.
8:56 · It’s a relatively simple group of compounds of which other organisms can make as well.
9:01 · And that’s what we’ve been able to mimic with the yeast.
9:04 · So this process is very similar to brewing beer, technology we’ve known about for thousands of years.
9:10 · Where, when you brew beer, you take sugars and grow a brewing yeast on them, which produces ethanol, which we can drink.
9:18 · In our process, we’re using natural yeast, which naturally make edible oils.
9:24 · Finding the right yeast is key.
9:26 · After a few years of researching and experimenting, the team found metschnikowia pulcherrima, a yeast that grows on the surface of grapes all over the world.
9:35 · And then they spent another eight years developing the yeast and the process to grow it.
9:40 · Here, we have to use large drums of eight kilograms of the sugar.
9:44 · It’s dragged into the reactor here and then fed to the yeast.
9:47 · Now here we have 50 liters of culture, and this is enough to make kilograms of yeast in a week.
9:54 · This is also a really good mimic to demonstrate what an industrial process will truly look like on the large scale.
10:02 · So the yeast we selected at first didn’t make much oil, but it had a number of other attributes which allow us to produce it on the large scale.
10:10 · So it could be produced under a wide temperature range.
10:14 · It could be produced under a wide range of pHs.
10:17 · It also can use a whole range of sugars, saccharides, and proteins to grow, which allows us to use waste resources very efficiently.
10:25 · The team has completed research and development, successfully fed the yeast with waste food like coffee grounds, and agricultural leftovers like wheat straw and sawdust.
10:35 · Now, they’re running a pilot, producing kilograms of palm oil substitute per week.
10:40 · And aim to increase that to tons per week within a year.
10:44 · So here we have the yeast.
10:45 · And you have these giant cells, which are then full of oil, which we can extract.
10:51 · A startup has been spun out from the project, raising over $2.5 million, with the goal to bring the product to grocery store shelves.
10:59 · In the last few decades, we’ve seen people really starting to choose alternative products, alternative analogs to meat, for example.
11:06 · Products like yeast protein from corn.
11:09 · We see ourselves as continuing that journey and being the next generation of novel foods.
Future of the industry
11:15 · Regardless of what the future holds, the palm oil industry needs to make serious changes today.
The Florida River Becoming a Refuge for Manatees WILD HOPE
Nature on PBS, 01 08, 2024
Video (15:34)
Description
Crystal River has long been a safe haven for the Florida manatee, but when an invasive algae wiped out the eelgrass that manatees need for food, the community rallied to restore the river and save the animals that call it home.
After an unexpected storm forever changed Crystal River more than three decades ago, Lisa Moore founded Save Crystal River to rally the community to garner funding for a massive restoration project. Sea and Shoreline’s Jessica Mailliez demonstrates the dirty work they do to remove invasive algae and restore native eelgrass. This transformation has allowed Florida manatees to return to Crystal River, but for those living along the west coast of the state, the situation is much more dire.
There, manatees are declining fast — nearly two thousand have died from starvation since 2020 along the Indian River Lagoon. Zoo Tampa has been rescuing as many starving manatees as they can hold, saving them from death and prepping them for re-release into the wild. Fortunately for the manatees ready to return to the wild, they have a safe destination: Crystal River. The strides made in that small community hold promise for a path forward for manatees across the state.
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Transcript
0:01 · LISA: Crystal River was perfect for the manatees.
0:04 · (water swooshing) ♪ When you lose the basis of your ecosystem, which is your plants, everything else goes away.
0:13 · ♪ It just becomes a chain reaction of devastation, and that’s what happened here.
0:20 · We lost it all. Our river basically died.
0:23 · ♪ We are a manatee refuge. They needed food.
0:28 · There was no food for them to eat.
0:30 · ♪ (water splashing) ♪ It’s one of those situations, your house burns down.
0:38 · What do you do? You rebuild.
0:40 · You have to start from scratch.
0:42 · ♪ (water swooshing) ♪ ♪ Growing up in Crystal River was any child’s dream.
0:58 · You could go out on the boat all day long, go fishing, swimming in the spring, and the water was crystal clear.
1:07 · You could see fish all around you, big fish, and they would just swim by.
1:13 · And manatees could come up here.
1:15 · There was plenty of food, and they could bring their young.
1:18 · They would have their babies here, and they would spend the winter here in our springs.
1:24 · Our water’s 72 degrees year round.
1:26 · It was just a great habitat for wildlife.
1:30 · ♪ ♪ NARRATOR: Manatees, also known as sea cows, are herbivores that live in coastal rivers, bays, and estuaries.
1:41 · ♪ Florida manatees will travel as far north as Virginia or as far west as Texas in Summer.
1:50 · But each winter they return to Florida and it’s warm, spring- fed rivers and bays.
1:56 · ♪ Two thirds of the population now relies on the warm discharge waters from power plants.
2:06 · Manatees began taking refuge there over the past 30 years as urban developments swallowed up spring-fed rivers and bays.
2:15 · ♪ There are still a few good natural springs remaining, and one of the best is Crystal River.
2:25 · But this manatee haven was almost lost.
2:29 · LISA: Back in the ’70s, we had a lot of hydrilla, and that kind of filled the river.
2:33 · It caused a problem. It was an invasive fresh water plant.
2:36 · ♪ NARRATOR: The hydrilla depleted oxygen levels in the water and out-competed the native eelgrass, a staple of the manatees’ diet.
2:45 · ♪ Then in the ’90s, things got a whole lot worse.
2:51 · (waves crashing) ♪ LISA: The 1993, they called it, “Storm of the Century” or the “No-Name Storm.”
3:00 · (waves crashing) We didn’t know it was coming, and it blew in so much salt water from the Gulf of Mexico.
3:09 · It inundated all the waterfront homes.
3:13 · NARRATOR: The storm surge pushed loads of salt water into Crystal River’s freshwater system.
3:18 · ♪ LISA: It really affected the water, but nobody knew it at the time.
3:24 · ♪ We were so worried about people that we didn’t know that so much hydrilla was dead and fell to the bottom of the river.
3:32 · ♪ That caused a problem because it started to rot.
3:37 · ♪ NARRATOR: Eelgrass in the river fared better because it thrives in brackish water.
3:45 · But the rotting hydrilla suffocated the grass and triggered an explosion of an invasive algae called lyngbya.
3:55 · LISA: It turned into slime, and then it looked like the surface of the moon on the bottom.
4:01 · It was noxious to animals. It would give people rashes.
4:06 · Huge plumes of nasty algae destroyed the eelgrass.
4:12 · ♪ NARRATOR: Manatees need to eat close to 10% of their body weight in eelgrass every day, up to 350 pounds of it.
4:23 · (water swooshing) The disappearing eelgrass in Crystal River forced manatees to venture out into colder waters where it’s harder to find food and where they risk dying from cold stress.
4:37 · Manatees can’t survive long in waters below 68 degrees.
4:42 · LISA: It had never happened before, and nobody knew what to do to fix it.
4:47 · I had children and grandchildren and I just kept thinking, “We can’t leave it like this.”
4:53 · We know what this river used to be, and we have to fix this.
4:58 · So neighbors got together, friends got with other friends, and we formed Save Crystal River.
5:05 · MARIE: Remember how bad it was? This park was closed.
5:08 · It was probably the only time in my life I wanted to leave Crystal River ’cause it was just terrible.
5:13 · NARRATOR: After watching the lyngbya take over, Lisa and her friend Marie urged the community to tackle the crisis.
5:21 · MARIE: It was 2015 when we went to every school, and we asked them to write a letter about why the river was important to them.
5:33 · They wrote 5,280 letters, and so then we took them to Tallahassee.
5:40 · LISA: I think that was important, showing them that their opinions mattered to the legislators.
5:45 · And it made an impression ’cause they knew that these people cared.
5:50 · NARRATOR: The campaign also opened the government’s coffers.
5:54 · Soon, the community nonprofit had the funding to hire a private contractor to start restoring the river.
6:01 · LISA: One day, somebody told us about a project that was similar to what we needed to have done.
6:06 · They were taking out algae and replacing it with healthy eelgrass.
6:12 · So they came up here, and they said, “We think we can fix this.”
6:16 · ♪ ♪ NARRATOR: Jessica Mailliez works with aquatic restoration firm, Sea and Shoreline to replant the manatees’ eelgrass on behalf of the community.
6:30 · ♪ JESSICA: I guess I first realized that a career working with sea grass and eelgrass would be something that I absolutely loved was when I realized that really everything depends on it.
6:47 · I love the manatees, the turtles, all those charismatic creatures.
6:51 · ♪ NARRATOR: Eelgrass cleans the water.
6:55 · Its roots hold the sediment in place, and it serves as a critical nursery for many kinds of fish.
7:02 · ♪ But for eelgrass to return and thrive, the lyngbya algae had to go.
7:11 · (water swooshing) ♪ JESSICA: It’s a nasty mat-forming algae.
7:21 · It really blankets everything. It blocks out the sunlight.
7:24 · Nothing can grow beneath it.
7:27 · That stuff smells awful.
7:30 · I mean, it is thick.
7:31 · ♪ We have divers that go in and they hand vacuum the bottom.
7:37 · It’s hours and hours, full days, four to eight hours underwater in no visibility.
7:44 · Just feeling around on the bottom and making sure that you remove all of this nasty algae.
7:52 · It’s a dirty job.
7:52 · ♪ We’ve removed over 500 million pounds of lyngbya and detrital muck.
8:02 · ♪ ♪ I think one of the proudest moments for our divers and our dredge crew is being able to uncover those large spring vents.
8:16 · ♪ You start going down, down, down into a hole.
8:21 · And you realize when you start to feel some water gushing out that you just opened up a spring vent that’s been clogged for who knows how many years.
8:31 · ♪ NARRATOR: The vents are like faucets delivering warm water from underground aquifers deep within the Earth.
8:42 · JESSICA: We have cleaned and uncovered over 800 spring vents in the Crystal River area.
8:47 · ♪ (water splashing) NARRATOR: Once the algae is removed, young grasses can be planted.
8:54 · (water splashing) ♪ There’s a lot of river bed to cover, and it’s all done by hand.
9:02 · ♪ Pre-rooted pods are planted every three feet.
9:08 · ♪ (water swooshing) JESSICA: After we plant these, we come back to check on them every single week for the first four weeks, then biweekly after that, and then every single month for a total of 12 months.
9:24 · ♪ NARRATOR: The community’s efforts to remove the algae mats and restore eelgrass have reversed the river’s decline.
9:32 · ♪ Manatees are once again thriving here, and tourism and fishing are both up.
9:39 · ♪ JESSICA: Crystal River is a huge success story.
9:44 · We have some of the healthiest manatees in the state, and this warm-water refuge is also like a salad bar to them.
9:53 · ♪ Last winter, we had our- our highest concentration of manatees in this area reaching over 1,000.
10:03 · ♪ NARRATOR: The numbers statewide have increased significantly over the past 50 years, from a low of just a few hundred manatees in the ’60s, to a high of about 9,000 in 2016.
10:18 · ♪ But since then, the trend has been going down again, and the Crystal River manatees are one of the few populations doing well.
10:28 · ♪ One of the most threatened populations is in the Indian River Lagoon, which is facing a crisis eerily similar to the one Crystal River endured.
10:40 · ♪ JESSICA: The Indian River Lagoon is on the east coast of Florida, and the problem that we’ve seen there is we had gradual sea grass loss.
10:51 · And then a huge brown tide bloom came in and completely starved the grass of all sunlight, and we lost what we were already short on.
11:03 · ♪ (water swooshing) (equipment humming) NARRATOR: The Manatee Critical Care Center at Zoo Tampa is trying to manage the fallout.
11:15 · ♪ MOLLY: We’ve had over 500 manatees come through our doors and over 300 go back to the wild.
11:22 · ♪ NARRATOR: Manatees are here for a variety of reasons.
11:27 · Some have been struck by boats or overexposed to cold water.
11:33 · But increasingly they’re being brought in because they’re starving.
11:39 · ♪ MOLLY: All over the state of Florida, we are seeing a die off of natural sea grasses for manatees.
11:46 · ♪ Manatees on the East Coast, in particular, they’re coming in basically starving.
11:53 · They’re emaciated. They are very ill.
11:56 · ♪ NARRATOR: The zoo tries to save as many patients as possible.
12:02 · MOLLY: Manatees have a pretty slow gestation, which means they don’t give birth that often, about every two to three years.
12:08 · So if you’re losing a lot of adults, that can be really detrimental to the species in the long run.
12:13 · ♪ This year alone, we took in 17 manatees in two months, which is an incredible number.
12:22 · I’ve seen quite a few orphans coming in our doors, and we don’t really know what happened to their mother.
12:26 · But they come in with no wild experience, and so we want to set them up for success.
12:31 · ♪ They have to gain a lot of weight when they’re at the zoo.
12:35 · They eat about eight hours of their day, and so that is a ton of food.
12:39 · ♪ We can give them romaine lettuce and things to get their body condition back up, but we need the natural vegetation in order for them to thrive.
12:48 · ♪ This is natural sea grass that’s been collected from the wild, and today I’ll be putting it in for our orphan calves.
12:55 · ♪ Our goal is to feed it every single day, so that way they’re used to it.
13:03 · ♪ (water splashing) They need sea grasses out in the wild for them to survive.
13:08 · So it’s really important that we’re out there protecting the sea grasses and helping them to grow so that the manatees will be here for many years to come.
13:16 · ♪ ♪ NARRATOR: When the manatees from Zoo Tampa are ready to return to the wild, a destination of choice is the restored Crystal River ecosystem.
13:30 · MOLLY: Crystal River, in particular, has changed and is such a bountiful environment for them that we’re releasing those animals to that space.
13:38 · (group cheering) ♪ NARRATOR: It’s also become a model for restoration elsewhere.
13:45 · LISA: We wanted everybody in the state of Florida who had a problem like this to know what we did, how we did it, how to get others involved, share this information.
13:54 · NARRATOR: Along the Indian River Lagoon, conservationists are taking notice.
13:59 · The region has a long road to recovery, but Crystal River has given them a roadmap for success.
14:05 · ♪ LISA: The Indian River Lagoon is replicating the same kind of process that’s being used in Crystal River.
14:15 · JESSICA: You don’t have to be a scientist to be part of the solution.
14:19 · You can do something as simple as not using fertilizers, pulling weeds by hand.
14:24 · ♪ You can even be a- a responsible boater by being conscious of here you’re anchoring, making sure you’re using grass-friendly anchors.
14:34 · You can help educate the younger generation about the importance of creating a healthy ecosystem.
14:42 · (water splashing) ♪ ♪ LISA: I think my grandchildren and all the children that are growing up now will inherit from our generation a clean, healthy river teeming with wildlife, both above and below the water.
15:02 · ♪ This river is the life that runs through this community.
15:07 · We wanna protect it forever.
15:11 · ♪ ♪
15:31 · ♪ ♪ ♪
The story of Knepp A rewilding success Field Studies
Natural History Museum, 01 11, 2023
Video (8:32)
Description
The UK is one of the most nature depleted countries in the world, but the Knepp Estate in southern England is trying to change that. Over the past 20 years they have set about rewilding the estate, turning it from a degraded farm to a thriving wildlife habitat.
Find out how they are doing this, and why it is helping in the fight against the biodiversity crisis.
See more on exciting projects at the Knepp Estate here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6w4ihPqk5_IYa4WU1n1fNxkRL-d4sKiC
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00:00 Intro
1:50 What is the Knepp rewilding project?
3:03 Is rewilding successful at Knepp?
4:18 Reintroducing white storks and beavers to the UK countryside
5:36 Why is rewilding important?
7:02 What is the future of rewilding?
Transcript
Intro
0:00 · أهلا بالجميع نحن في مجموعتنا من الرخويات اليوم مع الباحثة سوزان ويليامز، وقد اكتشفنا كل شيء عن نوع معين من الرخويات، نوع من الرخويات البحرية يسمى أرنب البحر.
0:12 · الآن، إذا لم تشاهد هذا الفيديو، تحقق منه، الرابط موجود على الشاشة وفي أسفل الوصف.
0:17 · لكن لدينا بعض العينات الأخرى الخاصة جدًا والتي سننظر إليها اليوم أيضًا.
0:22 · ولكن دعونا نبدأ مع تلك الأرانب البحرية سوزان ما الذي نتحدث عنه هنا؟ الرخويات البحرية؟ نوديبرانش، وهي من الرخويات البحرية وهم من الحلزونات البحرية الجميلة جدًا والملونة جدًا.
0:34 · إنهم لا يشبهون البزاقات الموجودة في الحديقة على الإطلاق.
0:36 · إنهم جميلون للغاية وهم متنوعون جدًا أيضًا أرنب البحر هو لقب واحد لنوع واحد من الرخويات العارية، ولكن هناك المزيد، أليس كذلك؟ نعم، لدينا في المملكة المتحدة، لدينا الليمون البحري، وهو لطيف للغاية.
0:54 · ولدينا أيضًا تنانين البحر، التي تعيش في المحيط المفتوح.
0:59 · إنهم يعيشون في أعلى سطح المحيط المفتوح وهم حيوانات مفترسة، سيأكلون الخلايا اللاذعة من قنديل البحر الرجل الحربي.
1:08 · لدينا أيضًا نوديبرانش بيكاتشو، ونوديبرانش شون ذا شيب.
1:14 · أنصحك بالاطلاع على Shaun the Sheep nuidbranchs. ابحث عنه على جوجل، إنه رائع للغاية.
1:19 · إنه، إنه لطيف جدًا.
1:21 · فكم عدد الأنواع المختلفة الموجودة؟ هناك حوالي 3000 نوع مختلف.
1:26 · هذا أمر لا يصدق.
1:27 · وأين نجدها؟ لدينا بعضها في المملكة المتحدة، في المحيط المفتوح. هل هي موجودة في كل مكان تقريبًا؟ إنهم موجودون في كل محيط، من الضحل إلى العميق.
1:35 · إنهم يعيشون على الحيوانات الطحلبية، والشعاب المرجانية الناعمة، والطحالب، والإسفنج.
1:40 · واو، هذا أمر لا يصدق.
1:41 · وهم، كما ذكرتم، جميلون جدًا جدًا.
1:44 · أعتقد أن بعضًا من أكثر الحيوانات الملونة في المحيط، أليس كذلك؟ فلماذا كل هذا اللون؟ حسنًا، إنه سؤال جيد.
What is the Knepp rewilding project?
1:52 · اللون مهم جدًا لبقاء العديد من الحيوانات ومع نطاطات البحر فهي واحدة من أفضل الأمثلة على التلوين التحذيري.
2:00 · تمتص العديد من الرخويات البحرية السموم من الطعام الذي تتناوله، من الإسفنج والشعاب المرجانية الناعمة، ويقومون بحجز تلك السموم داخل لحومهم ثم يقومون بعد ذلك بصنع ألوان زاهية للغاية لتحذير الحيوانات المفترسة المحتملة أنها غير مستساغة وربما سامة.
2:18 · بالتأكيد، من الصعب رؤية بعض الأمثلة لدينا اليوم، لكنها جميلة جدًا، وملونة جدًا.
2:25 · هل هو للدفاع فقط، أم أن هناك استخدامات أخرى لهذا اللون؟ حسنًا، اللون في الأنواع الأخرى مفيد للعثور على رفيق.
2:35 · ربما لا يكون هذا مناسبًا بالنسبة إلى الرخويات العارية لأن عيونها ضعيفة جدًا.
2:39 · يستخدمون حوامل الأنف والدرنات الصغيرة الموجودة على ظهورهم لاستشعار المواد الكيميائية في الماء للعثور على الشركاء والطعام والحيوانات المفترسة.
2:49 · ولكن الشيء الآخر الذي يستخدم اللون في كثير من الأحيان من أجله، اللون والنمط، هو التمويه.
2:54 · وتستخدم بعض الرخويات البحرية الألوان للتمويه.
2:58 · ولدينا مثال مثير للاهتمام بشكل خاص هنا، أليس كذلك؟ هل يمكنك أن تخبرنا قليلاً عن هاتين العينتين اللتين حصلت عليهما؟ نعم، هذه جميلة حقًا.
Is rewilding successful at Knepp?
3:07 · This is a sea cucumber, this is not a nudibranch.
3:11 · This is a nudibranch, this is Phyllidia varicosa.
3:16 · This is a very brightly coloured nudibranch in life, not in our Museum collection.
3:20 · Many colours fade in museum collections, so most of our collection is brown.
3:24 · But in life they’re very colourful.
3:27 · This sea cucumber, when it’s a juvenile and very small and the same size as the nudibranch it has the same colours and pattern, so it mimics these nudibranchs.
3:39 · these nudibranchs sequester poisons from the sponges that they eat so they’re toxic and unpalatable to predators and the sea cucumber just hitchhikes on this benefit by producing this same sort of colour and pattern.
3:51 · Of course, once they get bigger, it’s no longer able to pretend to be a nudibranch and it changes colour and actually sequesters its own toxins as well.
4:00 · It’s incredible, taking advantage of another poisonous mollusc.
4:08 · It’s brilliant.
4:09 · Are there any colours that are particularly rare in in sea creatures.
4:15 · Yes, it’s really interesting.
4:17 · Not all colours are equal.
Reintroducing white storks and beavers to the UK countryside
4:18 · You find that some colours and particularly blue and green are rare colours.
4:23 · So we have some green shells here for you to look at.
4:26 · And you would think that green is a fabulous colour for camouflage.
4:29 · Many snails particularly live in plants and this would be a great colour for hiding, but you don’t find very many green shells.
4:37 · And we think this is partly because green pigments may be hard to make and hard to incorporate into shells.
4:44 · Are there any green nudibranchs?
4:45 · There are. It’s really cool.
4:47 · There are a group of nudibranchs known as sacoglossans and they actually eat algae and they will take up chloroplasts from the algae that is still actively photosynthesising and they’ll incorporate them into their mantle tissues and then they use them to photosynthesise.
5:03 · So they will get energy from these chloroplasts that are photosynthesising just as a plant does.
5:10 · And if they’re in an area at a time when there’s not very much food or it’s a bit dark and it’s not working for photosynthesis, they can then just eat the chloroplasts so there’s benefit both ways.
5:25 · And also from camouflage because the animal is green.
5:27 · So it’s hiding in the plants.
5:29 · They are amazing animals.
5:30 · I had no idea that they were they were so complex and interesting.
5:34 · This has been absolutely fascinating.
Why is rewilding important?
5:37 · Thank you so much, Suzanne.
5:38 · Thank you. Yeah, brilliant.
5:41 · Thank you so much for watching.
5:43 · If you enjoyed that video, let us know in the comments and remember like and subscribe to keep up with our latest videos.
They recorded a rainforest in Indonesia before it changed forever
Scientific American, 07 15, 2026
Video (18:38)
Description
Indonesia is building a new capital city in the heart of Borneo to replace sinking Jakarta. As construction transforms one of the world’s most biodiverse rainforests, scientists and Indigenous communities are racing to record the sounds of the forest—and preserve generations of ecological knowledge before it’s lost.
This story was supported by a grant from @PulitzerCenter (https://pulitzercenter.org/)
It was published in partnership with @MongabayTV (https://news.mongabay.com/) and @ProjectMultatuli (https://projectmultatuli.org/en/).
Transcript
1:14 · My name is Abidin.
1:16 · I’ve lived in Pemaluan since I was born.
1:20 · I’ve never moved.
1:26 · This is the land of my ancestors from long ago.
1:33 · We are people who love farming in the mountains.
1:43 · I feel at peace being here, because the atmosphere is calm, safe.
1:54 · [But], after the construction of New Capital City…
1:59 · Life has slowly started to change.
3:22 · Indonesia, as a great nation must dare to take steps.
3:29 · We must be brave to have a big agenda and this is for the advancement of our country, for the progress of the nation.
3:47 · The New Capital City of Nusantara is a grand collective endeavor for the progress of the Indonesian nation.
3:54 · The forests of Ibu Kota Nusantara serve as a hub where residents and visitors can experience Indonesia’s rich biodiversity.
4:05 · This green city serves as a meeting point between Indonesia’s history and its aspirations for the future.
4:14 · A Smart Forest City.
4:27 · When we heard that Indonesia was moving the capital to Kalimantan, and I’ve been working in Kalimantan for ten years now, I knew immediately that building a new capital city there has the potential to have a huge impact on forests and animals there.
4:51 · We’re interested in documenting what’s here before all this big change happens.
5:00 · And we’re trying to do that all through soundwork.
5:22 · Sound is a unique kind of data.
5:27 · It becomes, in some ways, a time capsule of a place.
5:33 · We have recorders on top of mountains, We have recorders in mangrove areas, We have recorders right next to caves.
5:52 · We ended up sampling 20 different sites, and then from there we could do comparisons over time as we recorded across 18 months, as the capital’s being built, as this environmental change is happening, as this social change is happening, economic growth is happening.
6:12 · And could we see places where wildlife were being displaced?
6:19 · Maybe those are places where more investment could be made in conservation efforts.
6:27 · The question is, Can we tune our ears?
6:32 · Can we pay attention? Can we notice when the natural world is feeling a little sick?
6:45 · It’s a giant squirrel!
6:49 · They sound like bubblegum lasers.
7:10 · In Pemaluan, the most distinct sound is the sound of monkeys or gibbons.
7:22 · Back then, our ancestors used their sound as a sign.
7:31 · Usually, gibbons, at dawn, just before morning, they would call.
7:43 · If they call at… around nine or ten in the morning, and everything feels eerily quiet, that’s usually a sign… indicating that someone will pass away in the village.
8:09 · In the past, the most dominant sound came from the white-breasted waterhen.
8:16 · Then, hornbills, with their loud calls.
8:25 · The most iconic one is the great argus, the great argus is indeed a favorite of the Balik people.
8:38 · [Now], we can hear other sounds.
8:48 · Our people say that usually the chainsaw is the loudest.
9:13 · Personally, I’m very scared.
9:19 · because we have lost our tradition, our ancestral traditions from the past.
9:33 · For example, the great argus, even my child doesn’t know that.
9:45 · So, with these wildlife recording devices, we are preserving the knowledge of our ancestors.
9:59 · Then, from us, if possible, we’ll pass it down to our children and grandchildren.
10:07 · Swiftlets.
10:08 · -Swiftlets. -Don’t know their name.
10:10 · Because swiftlets like to eat.
10:15 · Another driving goal of our research is in the process of generating that knowledge.
10:23 · The local people are playing a central role in collecting the data, help us define the research problems, identify the research sites, understand the history of this landscape, and most importantly, the relationships between people and forest, people and place.
10:42 · This is besawan in our local language.
10:46 · In an emergency, we can…
10:50 · take the main stalk and prepare it as a side dish.
10:53 · But only in emergencies.
10:55 · Like when there’s no food in the forest.
10:58 · But does it taste good?
10:59 · -Of course, if it’s cooked. -Okay, okay.
11:04 · I think the science will be better off for it.
11:07 · And I think the local people will most importantly benefit from being a part of defining the problems and defining the solutions.
11:28 · Our ancestors once predicted something.
11:34 · The prophecy was like this.
11:42 · They said, “It’s okay.”
11:46 · Those who were once behind, one day will be ahead.
11:52 · It’s like the flow of a river.
12:04 · For so long, when the capital city was still in Jakarta, the flow from all of Indonesia converged there.
12:18 · This is the reversal.
12:22 · Our village, so to speak, has become bustling.
12:43 · What is your biggest fear when you see all this and imagine the future?
12:50 · It’s the future generations, the children and grandchildren.
12:54 · What I fear is what their fate will be later.
13:06 · In terms of education, they are far behind compared to our brothers and sisters from Sumatra, from Java.
13:17 · Especially in city life, you have to be smart, right?
13:27 · Meanwhile, they, so to speak, are still relying on the lifestyle of the past.
13:48 · What can we do in the city?
13:52 · I myself can’t live in the city.
13:57 · I don’t understand what I can do.
14:10 · If we become scavengers in our own hometown, it’s better to just die.
14:22 · As we started the research project, it looked like something but it wasn’t a city.
14:31 · Now it’s like, there’s apartment buildings, and there’s a Swiss-Belhotel, and there’s a palace.
14:39 · And, maybe this work, like, we can’t actually stop anything from happening, and sometimes that feels really sad and hard to sit with.
14:48 · Because maybe you’re like, we could do something, things could be different.
14:53 · But maybe they can’t, or maybe, like, it’s also not really our place to do that.
15:02 · Although we recognize that within our small team and our limited expertise we don’t have the ability to capture and preserve every aspect of their culture and their knowledge, there’s still a ton that we can do through this kind of soundwork, where we’re really thinking about the voices – whether that’s the voices of the forest, or whether that’s the voices of the community members who feel like nobody’s listening to them.
15:39 · I think what’s at stake is people losing their connectedness.
15:49 · My hopes for my children, when they’re my age, is that they don’t forget the culture of our tribe.
16:10 · I’ll keep trying to teach them not to let our own language disappear.
16:25 · I can teach my children… the sounds of animals in the forest.
16:39 · Even though there are changes now, I still feel that this is my home.
Thornforest Restoring the Wildlands of South Texas
Cornell Lab of Ornithology, 01 30, 2026
Video (14:42)
Description
The thornforest of Texas’s Lower Rio Grande Valley is one of the most biodiverse ecosystems in North America, attracting birdwatchers and wildlife enthusiasts from around the globe. It supports over 500 species of migratory and resident birds, 300 species of butterflies, 1,200 species of plants, and approximately 50 species of mammals, including the last remaining population of ocelots in the United States. This rugged, spiny habitat is emblematic of the region and closely linked to the cultures and communities that live there. But despite its importance to people and wildlife, the thornforest that historically covered most of the Lower Rio Grande Valley has been reduced to a mere 5-10% of its original extent, and many of the species that call it home are threatened or endangered. “Thornforest: Restoring the Wildlands of South Texas” weaves stunning wildlife footage with expert voices to share the story of this unique ecosystem and the organizations and communities that are coming together to save it.
Transcript
The unique thorn forest
0:02 · [SLOW, TWANGY, GUITAR MUSIC] RADIO VOICE: Hello, good morning.
0:09 · We are here broadcasting from Radio Poder de Dios at 100.7 FM.
0:16 · Looks like it’s going to be another beautiful day in the Valley.
0:21 · Don’t forget this weekend to go out and visit some of the green areas around us.
0:31 · BRAD PENICK: It’s beautiful, but it’s a harsh beauty.
0:35 · I mean, everything will stab you, prick you, cut you.
0:39 · Tamaulipas thornscrub, you fall down in it, you’re going to bleed.
0:44 · But it sure is beautiful.
0:47 · [SLOW, TWANGY, GUITAR MUSIC] [BIRDS CHIRPING] ALEJANDRO FIERRO: Thornforest, as the name implies, is a forest that is thorny.
1:01 · [UPBEAT, TWANGY, GUITAR MUSIC] SONIA NÁJERA: It is thorny.
1:05 · It’s not something you’re going to want to walk in barefoot, let’s say.
1:08 · [BIRDS CHIRPING] BRAD CHRISTOFFERSEN: So if you imagine walking through a forest, among trees, a thornforest is very different.
1:19 · Instead of growing up, trees and shrubs grow out.
1:22 · [UPBEAT, TWANGY, GUITAR MUSIC] SONIA NÁJERA: It’s a really unique plant community.
1:32 · Once you see it and you really get to know it, it just comes alive.
1:38 · [BIRDS CHIRPING] [CRUNCHING FOOTSTEPS] BEN MASTERS: Many people, when they think of amazing wildlife places, they think of Yellowstone, where you’re looking at a grizzly bear 1,000 yards away.
Biodiversity of the valley
1:50 · And in the thornscrub, you have to learn to appreciate the smaller details.
1:56 · And once you learn how to appreciate the Lower Rio Grande Valley and the thornforest, you realize it’s this magical place that is just teeming with wildlife.
2:07 · [SLOW DRUM MUSIC] MITCH STERNBERG: In the Rio Grande Valley, the level of biodiversity is great.
2:14 · It’s fair to say, in the continental United States, one of the most biodiverse areas that we have.
2:20 · [UPBEAT, TWANGY, GUITAR MUSIC] The Rio Grande Valley can be looked upon as being a bridge to the tropics because of where it’s located, just right here on the southern tip of Texas.
2:31 · We’re on the edge of the tropics.
2:34 · It’s created this very unique opportunity for a lot of species that are found only in South Texas.
2:39 · [BIRD WHISTLING] Over 500 species of birds that live in or migrate through the area.
2:44 · About 400 species of documented butterflies, dragonflies, and damselflies.
2:50 · There’s some good 48 species of mammals.
2:54 · One of the unique characteristics of thornforest is its density and diversity of plants, anywhere from 3,000 to 8,000 individual woody plants per acre.
3:06 · JON DALE: You’ve got about 30, 40, 50 different species growing in close proximity to each other, overlapping.
3:12 · Basically, their branches coming together to form this incredible thicket that all of these wildlife species utilize for cover, for habitat.
3:21 · Without that, all these species would not be able to be here.
3:25 · [BIRD WHISTLING] Thornforest once covered most of the Rio Grande Valley.
Historical habitat loss
3:31 · And then we get into the early 1900s.
3:33 · The story begins to change.
3:34 · [UPBEAT GUITAR MUSIC] FRANCISCO GUAJARDO: This region was marketed as a tropical paradise.
3:42 · And so ads were developed that were sent to St. Louis, Missouri; to Chicago, Illinois; to Milwaukee, Wisconsin; to New York State, selling this Magic Valley, this tropical paradise.
3:55 · JON DALE: The landscape is basically carved up for irrigated agriculture.
4:00 · From that point on, just this process of very intensive farming, which put us on the map.
4:07 · NARRATOR: Texas is a vast and wonderful state now additionally famous for its fine quality grapefruit grown in a relatively small area known as the Lower Rio Grande Valley.
4:18 · This now veritable garden spot was a vast wilderness of mesquite brush and cactus.
4:23 · Wild, desolate and uninviting.
4:26 · Then came the railroad, and in its wake, as has ever been the rule, progress and development.
4:36 · JON DALE: And then, come about 40, 50 years ago, then we start to see a transition into urbanization.
4:41 · [PENSIVE POP MUSIC] [VEHICLES WHIRRING BY] [RATTLING] We’ve lost approximately 90% of our original thornforest habitat.
4:54 · We’ve got essentially 5% to 10% of that left.
4:57 · What remains is very much a fragmented landscape.
5:01 · Patches here and there, sometimes separated by distances of 20, 30, 40 miles.
5:08 · ALEJANDRO FIERRO: We’re talking about 5% remaining, but it’s not 5% in a single fragment.
Conservation challenges
5:13 · It’s 5% in many little fragments.
5:16 · So that’s not a good 5%.
5:18 · [PENSIVE POP MUSIC] BRAD CHRISTOFFERSEN: There is very good reason to be concerned about the status of thornforest today.
5:27 · We already know that there are over 40 federally threatened and endangered species that call the Lower Rio Grande Valley their home.
5:38 · And if we don’t act, that list will only continue to grow.
5:43 · SONIA NÁJERA: To me, South Texas is home.
5:45 · And this is habitat that I grew up with, and I want to see it conserved.
5:53 · JON DALE: If we don’t embrace restoration, if we don’t embrace conservation of the ecosystem and we let this ecosystem continue to disappear, we lose the right, we lose the ability to introduce future generations of our families to these species, to this incredibly rich landscape that is so special.
6:15 · [SCHOOL BELL] [CHATTER] TEACHER: OK, boys and girls, we are going to create our very own thornforest.
Connectivity strategy
6:28 · And you are going to select three.
6:31 · How many?
6:32 · STUDENTS: Three.
6:33 · TEACHER: Three pictures.
6:35 · It could be of a bird, a tree, something that we learned that lives in the– STUDENTS: Thornforest!
6:42 · TEACHER: That lives in a thornforest.
6:45 · [UPBEAT TWANGY GUITAR MUSIC] STUDENT: Please, can I cut them out now?
6:48 · [CHATTER] JON DALE: The objective of the Thornforest Conservation Plan is to build in regional connectivity for this ecosystem, restoring this ecosystem strategically.
7:06 · We’ve got this massive network of irrigation easements that were set in place 100 years ago for agriculture.
7:12 · So we have over 1,600 miles of it within the Rio Grande Valley.
7:16 · It’s not that much of a stretch to say, well, why can’t we work to actually introduce some habitat into those linear spaces and create connectivity?
7:27 · This is one of our main canals from one of our irrigation districts, and it actually comes through the heart of this refuge tract.
7:34 · The beauty of it is that we do have thornforest growing along the banks of this larger main canal.
7:39 · And so wildlife that are originating or having breeding territories inside of this refuge parcel, they will actually get into this corridor that the canal provides with that thornforest, and they’ll ride that north for dozens of miles.
7:50 · Eventually, they’ll run into those other fragments of thornforest that are further afield.
7:53 · And so it’s that concept.
7:54 · If you multiply that over this larger landscape, then you’ve got that concept of connectivity coming together.
8:00 · And that’s what we’re trying to restore over time.
8:03 · MITCH STERNBERG: Corridors are really important when you think of animals that really don’t have the ability to just get up and fly to the next patch.
8:10 · So for anything that’s really tied to the ground, such as bobcats, coyotes, Texas tortoises, indigo snakes, and even some of the birds that just don’t have that as part of their ecology, to fly large distances to another patch, are going to be challenged if there aren’t corridors that connect these habitat patches of thornforest.
8:29 · [UPBEAT TWANGY GUITAR MUSIC] JON DALE: You’re looking at areas that have been farmed, that were cleared of that thornforest originally, maybe 70, 80, 100 years ago.
Restoration efforts
8:41 · So now it’s the idea of us going back in and restoring habitat on those parcels.
8:46 · [BIRDS CHIRPING] BRAD PENICK: We’re going to the first plant site where we planted the 10 acres with the 10,000 trees.
8:55 · Part one.
8:57 · Part two would be right around here.
9:01 · JON DALE: It’s one thing to espouse the ability to conserve something, but it’s a whole other world to actually roll your sleeves up and to understand that you’ve got to do pretty much everything in your power to find a way to create more of that habitat, to restore it or conserve it.
9:15 · BRAD PENICK: Growing up with it, I never really thought of it as something that you’d want to restore.
9:20 · And I didn’t realize it was something that was being lost, until I was an adult.
9:24 · I jumped on the bandwagon as soon as I heard there was a movement to do this.
9:28 · I’ve known big-time guys that have bought land to turn it back into its natural state.
9:33 · And I thought, wow, what a great idea.
9:35 · I wish I could do that one day and maybe on a smaller scale.
9:38 · But if enough people like me do it, it matters.
9:42 · [BIRDS CHIRPING] [UPBEAT TWANGY GUITAR MUSIC] [WATER SPRAYING] JON DALE: From the time we restore an area to the time when we basically will have maximum usage for a lot of the species that we’re purposely trying to recover, it will be somewhere between about 15 and 25 years.
10:07 · We’re not talking about a process that takes hundreds of years.
10:10 · We don’t have hundreds of years.
10:13 · We grow approximately 200,000 seedlings here at the Marinoff Nursery annually.
10:18 · We actually go out into the different patches of thornforest out there on the landscape, and we do what we call our wild seed collection.
10:26 · WILD SEED COLLECTIVE VOICE: This right here, these are the seeds that we’re looking for.
10:33 · JON DALE: Those seeds in the bank, a certain portion of them, come out every year, and they turn into seedlings.
10:42 · And then those seedlings make it out onto the landscape.
Community impact
10:46 · That’s what we plant to create this habitat.
10:50 · [UPBEAT, TWANGY,GUITAR MUSIC] RADIO VOICE: Friends, if you’re looking for something exciting to do this weekend, join us this Saturday morning to help plant native trees at the “Rio Reforestation” event at Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge.
11:18 · Come join us!
11:24 · JON DALE: Rio Reforestation is our preeminent public planting event, and we invite essentially the entire community from the Valley to come out and do this planting with us.
11:32 · Whether it’s school districts, community groups, everyone’s invited, and it’s a sight to behold.
11:39 · [UPBEAT TWANGY GUITAR MUSIC] It is emblematic of the larger effort that we’re all putting in to restore this ecosystem.
11:48 · [INSPIRING MUSIC] MITCH STERNBERG: Seeing more and more people are learning to understand the value of this effort really gives me great hope.
12:00 · BRAD CHRISTOFFERSEN: If we build on the momentum over the past few decades of restoration work that has begun, we really have an incredible opportunity to preserve the biodiversity that’s here, or even increasing that biodiversity over time.
12:19 · BEN MASTERS: We’ve got landowners, state agencies, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, NGOs, the general public that have come together around rehabilitating a lot of that country.
12:31 · There were agricultural fields in the 1980s that you go out there today are amazing brush.
12:38 · So there’s a lot of proof that it can happen, that it can happen fairly quickly.
12:44 · FRANCISCO GUAJARDO: When we restore native habitats, we have a shot at reconnecting with the land, which is really what gave us the spirit to survive this part of the world.
12:54 · STUDENT 1: I drew a green jay, a Texas tortoise, and the prickly pear cactus.
13:01 · STUDENT 2: A Texas ebony.
13:03 · STUDENT 3: This is an ocelot.
13:05 · STUDENT 4: We have the Texas tortoise.
13:09 · STUDENT 2: This is my thornforest.
13:10 · STUDENT 5: This is my thornforest.
13:12 · STUDENT 3: This is my thornforest.
13:14 · STUDENT 6: This is my thornforest.
13:16 · STUDENT 1: This is my thornforest.
13:19 · PASTOR ARMANDO VERA: It gives me hope that this ecosystem can recover, can be saved, if we can motivate our community to see that this is something that belongs to them.
13:35 · BEN MASTERS: I look at the amount of conserved land that my parents’ generation, my grandparents’ generation, they set aside that for us.
Legacy and future
13:45 · And I am so thankful of that.
13:47 · And I feel like it’s really our responsibility and our duty to pass it on and give that to our kids.
13:57 · Give them a place that still has wild places.
14:00 · Give them a country that still has hope for endangered species to recover.
14:04 · Give them a thornforest that’s 20 years getting developed so that they don’t have to start from scratch.
14:10 · [MUSIC PLAYING]
We Built a Wildlife Corridor Through a City
Planet Wild, 09 15, 2026
Video (11:33)
Description
We’re building floating city wetlands to bring nature back to Bristol.
🌱 Join us to rewild the planet: https://planetwild.com/join/m43
Many cities, like Bristol, were built on wetlands. But to make space for us to live, huge drainage systems were created and the water was removed. This has led to some massive problems: less space for nature, more polluted water, and a greater risk of flooding.
That’s why, in our 43rd mission, we went to Bristol and partnered with WWT to bring wetlands back to the city. For this mission, we’re also joined by sustainability creator @itsSamBentley.
Together, we’re building floating wetlands in Bristol Hardor. We’re also helping develop a miniature “wetland-in-a-box” that enables anyone with a drainpipe to rewild their city.
Special thanks to FLYNN for providing a render of the upcoming “wetland-in-a-box”.
Copyright 2026 FLYNN Product Design - All rights reserved.
Check FLYNN out at https://flynn-product-design.com/
People in the video:
Cameron Nicoll is a documentary filmmaker and the Creative Director at Planet Wild.
Dr. Julia Newth is WWT’s Ecosystem Health & Social Dimensions Manager. She has been part of the organization for over 20 years.
Sam Bentley is a sustainability content creator and climate activist.
Make sure to follow WWT:
IG: https://www.instagram.com/wwtworldwide
Website: http://www.wwt.org.uk/wetland-cities
Chapters
0:00 Bringing nature back to the city
1:06 Why cities lost their wetlands
2:03 Meet our partner WWT
3:25 A special guest: Sam Bentley
3:45 Building floating wetlands in Bristol harbor
5:00 Our support
5:31 Building a “wetland in a box”
7:19 Good nature news from cities around the world
8:59 The impact of this mission
What is Planet Wild?
We’re a global community of people who care deeply about nature and want to help our planet bounce back – one mission at a time.
EVERY MONTH, we work with wildlife pioneers worldwide to
🦁 bring back endangered species
🌊 support oceans and aquatic life
🌳 revive forests and rewild landscapes
EVERY MEMBER can decide how their money is spent, connect with us on our Discord, and collect unique badges for each mission they support.
EVERY MISSION is documented in videos like this. 100% transparency.
EVERYONE can join. The bigger the community grows, the bigger these missions will get!
👉 Become a Planet Wild member: https://planetwild.com/join/m43
👉 Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/planetwild.official/
👉 Follow on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/planetwild-official/
Find all sources here:
https://planetwild.notion.site/Mission-43-Floating-Wetlands-Sources-3d769e032b19807dbe46d290c03e8201?source=copy_link
Transcript
Bringing nature back to the city
0:00 · What if there was a way to transform your city from this to this, replacing concrete with flowers and drains with rain gardens?
0:09 · What if we can make our towns resilient against floods, heat waves, and droughts, whilst boosting biodiversity and mental health?
0:17 · Right now, all around the world, people are finding incredible ways to bring nature back into our cities. And we’re here in Bristol to do exactly that.
0:26 · We’re literally kind of surfing on a wetland right now, and I never thought I would say that sentence. (laughs) Pockets of lush green wetlands have been popping up all over the city, and now there’s a plan to create a green corridor along the river’s embankment, and we’re gonna help make this dream a reality.
0:44 · Together with our friend Sam Bentley, we’ll explore just how easily we can upgrade our cities, and what that means for the future of urban environments all over the world. In this video, we’re gonna be checking out loads of genius innovations that are bringing nature back to the city piece by piece. We’re Planet Wild. Welcome to Mission 43.
1:05 · (upbeat music) More than half of the global population live in cities, and many of these places have one thing in common. They were built on water. Basically, where you see a city, there used to be a swamp or a wetland. Then we built huge drainage networks to remove the water and paved over the land so we could live there.
Why cities lost their wetlands
1:28 · Sometimes even burying entire rivers underground, like the Bievre in Paris, the Fleet in London, or the Frome here in Bristol. And predictably, removing all this water has led to some massive problems.
1:41 · Flash flooding. - Flash flooding.
1:43 · Flash flooding in parts of London.
1:44 · Urban heat island effect.
1:46 · Dangerous conditions to be outdoors.
1:48 · [Cameron] Turns out wetlands aren’t just incredibly important for wildlife, but they also keep temperature and water levels stable. You know, the kind of thing we humans really need to survive. And this is why all over the world, people are bringing wetlands back into our cities.
Meet our partner WWT
2:03 · When you start to instal wetlands across the city, whether that’s a small rain garden, a drain pipe wetland, right the way to a lake in your local park, it’s really sort of magical, and everyone in the city benefits from wetlands.
2:16 · This is Julia from WWT, the wetland charity. They’re kicking off a huge effort to turn Bristol into the UK’s first wetland city. By replacing old drainage systems with lush rain gardens, installing micro wetlands in backyards, and anchoring huge wetlands on the river, they’re creating little pockets of biodiversity everywhere. In fact, over the next few years, there’ll be 200 new projects here in Bristol to bring nature back. Just imagine the impact that this would have.
2:46 · It would completely transform public space across the city, creating habitat, absorbing flood waters, filtering toxic runoff, and cooling the city down. And the transformation has already begun. WWT and their partners are creating a wildlife corridor through the city centre, and this is the next piece of the puzzle. We are currently building and planting a futuristic structure called a floating wetland.
3:13 · We’ve got one platform which is 100 square metres and another smaller 16 square metre platform, specifically designed with these miniature staircases to save baby seagulls that are getting stuck in a corner of the harbour. But we are not doing this alone.
A special guest: Sam Bentley
3:28 · Hey, Cam. - All right, Sam?
3:29 · How’s it going? - How’s it going?
3:31 · This is Sam Bentley, founder and host of one of our favourite YouTube channels. If you’ve never heard of him, he reports good news stories from around the world, and is also making a video about the transformation of Bristol. So we asked him if he could help us with our new floating wetlands. This is that, and then this becomes there, and…
Building floating wetlands in Bristol harbor
3:50 · Huh?
3:52 · Okay, okay. This is how it works.
3:55 · Step one is putting all the pieces together and locking them in place. It’s a completely modular structure that can be built to any size, and every element is recycled, recyclable, or biodegradable. The frame and floats are old drinking water pipes that are wrapped in coconut husk, and instead of soil or mud that would just drift away, we’re using buoyant clay pellets as the plant bed.
4:17 · And step two is planting it with more than 20 species of native wetland plants.
4:24 · Mm. - What have you got?
4:26 · Ah, nice. Glorious.
4:31 · So above water, we have this layered planting system that creates an oasis for pollinators and a safe haven for nesting birds. But the real magic happens underneath. As these plants grow, their roots go super deep into the water, creating a refuge for marine life, cleaning the water, taking all those pollutants out, and also regulating water temperature too.
4:50 · There’s potential to instal up to 5,000 square metres of these floating wetlands here in Bristol, transforming the concrete embankment into a thriving nature corridor. So the Planet Wild community is completely funding the construction and installation of these two modules, as well as even more platforms in the future, to make this dream a reality.
Our support
5:12 · You know, with Planet Wild, we do projects all over the world, bringing nature back in different, like, remote, far flung places, but it’s just amazing to see that it can come back in the middle of our cities. So in addition to the floating wetlands, we’re also helping WWT to develop a miniature wetland in a box that can be attached to any ordinary drain pipe.
Building a “wetland in a box”
5:32 · To show you how it works, we’re gonna take a break from the harbour and visit a small garden nearby to build a prototype. We should probably get on with it though.
5:44 · Yeah.
5:44 · - Yeah. (laughs) (whimsical music) So this is a very ordinary drain pipe coming from the roof, and so when it rains, the water goes from the gutter, all the way down here, straight into the drain. But we are gonna catch this water and use it to create a wetland in a box. Well, it’s actually two boxes. The top box acts as a pond where aquatic plants can thrive as it fills up with rainwater.
6:07 · This eventually overflows into the bottom box, a miniature bog that insects and amphibians can call home. So, to make it yourself, you just need to follow these steps. First thing we need to do is make a hole in the bottom. This hole should be covered with a filter, and we use this permeable plant pot. Then add a layer of gravel, a fabric membrane, and a layer of soil.
6:31 · The membrane is there to stop the soil running down the drain. Step two, drill a hole into the side of the top box, allowing the water to flow into the bottom box. Step three, take a deep breath and cut the drain pipe so that the entire structure will be in the perfect position to catch the water. Step four, fill everything with native wetland plants and add a wall of loose bricks. And that’s it. We’re done.
6:56 · And within hours, you’ll start to get insects like dragonflies and damselflies coming back here. Spiders can make their homes in here. Frogs and newts can come and live in here. And it’s just incredible the amount of biodiversity that can come back just with this. The UK actually has 4,000 square kilometres of garden space just like this, and now we can actually start to use some of that and give it back to nature.
Good nature news from cities around the world
7:20 · (dramatic music) We have to interrupt this Planet Wild video to bring you some breaking good news from cities around the world. First up, we’re heading to Seoul, South Korea. For decades, the Cheonggyecheon stream was completely buried underneath a massive elevated highway, but in the early 2000s, the city actually tore that highway down and restored the natural river.
7:42 · Since then, biodiversity has exploded by over 600%, and the corridor is now home to hundreds of species of fish, birds, and insects. Now we’re heading over to the Netherlands where one company has found a way to turn lifeless concrete buildings into green space. Respire use a moisture retaining concrete layer to grow moss directly onto walls. Within 12 weeks, it forms a green surface that survives on rainwater alone, filtering air pollution while naturally cooling the building.
8:13 · Next up, we’re looking to China, where they’re creating huge sponge cities. Instead of using grey infrastructure like concrete pipes to drain storm water, they’re building sprawling urban wetland parks and permeable pavements that naturally soak up extreme floods like a giant sponge. But the ultimate nature city has to be Singapore.
8:33 · By making greenery a core part of their urban design, they’ve turned a dense metropolis into a city in nature, and their waterways are now so healthy that families of wild otters are happily swimming right through the middle of the central business district. You can see from these projects there’s not just one solution.
8:51 · In a city, you have to find little pockets and corners to bring nature back around human infrastructure, and that’s exactly what we’re doing in Bristol. (upbeat music) We’re literally kind of surfing on a wetland right now, and I never thought I would say that sentence. (laughs) This will be the permanent home of our new wetland. For centuries, it’s been a grey wall, but thanks to the Planet Wild community, it will soon look like this.
The impact of this mission
9:26 · This piece was installed just two years ago, and you can see the difference. It’s just, like, full of life. There’s families of birds in there. It’s full of insects. I’ve seen loads of fish swimming underneath. Just incredible what can happen in such a short space of time.
9:43 · And of course, this is just the beginning. You know, these plants will start to establish, they’ll start to grow, and it really will start attracting nature in.
9:51 · We haven’t even finished installing the wetland yet, and there’s this family of swans rocking up and checking it out. It can potentially be their new home. Like, that is just so perfect, so beautiful. (gentle music) Finally, we installed the second platform, and again, the effect was instant. So we literally just installed the floating wetland, and we’ve seen a baby seagull who is stuck in the water use the ramp and climb up onto the platform.
10:19 · And that’s just saved his life. It’s just unbelievable to witness. And that is the beauty of this project. Nature is just waiting beneath the concrete and the asphalt. And once you give it a chance, it’s immediately making our cities more biodiverse, safer, and simply nicer places to live. And because it’s such a simple solution, it can easily be copied around the world.
10:45 · So our funding here is not only transforming Bristol, but it’s also creating a blueprint for future wetland cities everywhere. Thank you so much for making it all the way to the end of the video. I hope you can tell that we put a lot of hard work into the missions and the mission videos, but we really couldn’t do any of it without our community. Right now, we’re more than 27,000 members.
11:07 · We’re actually growing really quickly, which is so exciting. Every single month, we go on a mission to bring back endangered species, to clean up our oceans, and to restore entire landscapes. So if that sounds good to you, you can join Planet Wild as a backup by following the QR code here or the link in the description. Thanks so much for watching, and catch you next time.
We Let Beavers Transform an Old Farm
Planet Wild, 07 15, 2026
Video (13:58)
Description
We’re turning an abandoned fish farm into a beaver paradise
🌱 Join us to rewild the planet: https://planetwild.com/join/m41
Beavers are nature’s ultimate engineers. By building dams, digging canals and keeping water in the landscape, they can turn dry land into thriving wetlands full of biodiversity.
They were nearly wiped out but against all odds, they’ve made an incredible comeback.
Our partner Rewilding Oder Delta is helping secure that return. That’s why we teamed up with them for our 41st mission, and purchased a 20-hectare abandoned fish farm in Poland to turn into a natural beaver paradise.
People in the video:
Markus Gilles co-founded Planet Wild in 2023 and is leading the organization as Co-CEO.
Frauke Bennett is on the board of Rewilding Oder Delta e.V. and heads the department “Nature for the People”.
Make sure to follow Rewilding Oder Delta:
IG: https://www.instagram.com/rewildingoderdelta/
Website: https://rewilding-oder-delta.com/
Make sure to follow Rewilding Oder Delta’s Polish partner Fundacja dla Klimatu i Bioróżnorodności:
Website: https://www.fdkib.com/
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@fdkib
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/FDKIB/about
Chapters
0:00 The Great Beaver Comeback
1:14 How beavers transform ecosystems
2:20 Meet our partner
3:01 Our new land for beavers
3:50 The history of beavers
6:45 Our support: Part 1
7:07 How beaver engineering works
11:11 How beavers cause conflict
11:48 Our support: Part 2
13:04 A new relationship with beavers
What is Planet Wild?
We’re a global community of people who care deeply about nature and want to help our planet bounce back – one mission at a time.
EVERY MONTH, we work with wildlife pioneers worldwide to
🦁 bring back endangered species
🌊 support oceans and aquatic life
🌳 revive forests and rewild landscapes
EVERY MEMBER can decide how their money is spent, connect with us on our Discord, and collect unique badges for each mission they support.
EVERY MISSION is documented in videos like this. 100% transparency.
EVERYONE can join. The bigger the community grows, the bigger these missions will get!
👉 Become a Planet Wild member: https://planetwild.com/join/m41
👉 Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/planetwild.official/
👉 Follow on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/planetwild-official/
Find all sources here:
https://planetwild.notion.site/M41-Beavers-Sources-39769e032b1980a593ecc70fdec76a30?source=copy_link
Transcript
The Great Beaver Comeback
0:00 · What if there was a surprisingly simple way to more than double biodiversity, boost water quality, and prevent catastrophic floods and droughts?
0:09 · Right now, a movement is taking shape to bring back long-lost ecosystems in record time using the power of beavers. And we thought, “Well, that looks like fun. Let’s try it ourselves.” This place we’re standing at, it used to be a giant fish farm until very recently. And now it’s abandoned and doing absolutely nothing for nature.
0:29 · But that’s going to change big time because the Planet Wild community is buying this entire dried-out piece of land and turning it into a massive beaver playground. A beaver population has already been spotted nearby, and if everything goes to plan, they will transform this barren wasteland into a thriving ecosystem much, much faster than any human construction crew ever could.
0:55 · Join me on a fascinating journey to learn all about nature’s number one ecosystem engineers, the crazy comeback story they’ve had after near extinction, and how they will turn all of this into this. We are Planet Wild. Welcome to Mission 41. (charming music) Everything you see here around me was created by one creature.
How beavers transform ecosystems
1:20 · (upbeat music) Introducing even a single beaver into a landscape creates an explosion of biodiversity far more than what we see with any other living thing. (upbeat music) And that’s simply because they bring water into the landscape, turning dry land into a mosaic of deep ponds, complex canals, and shallow wetlands. These are perfect breeding grounds for fish and amphibians. The wooden dams and the still water attract millions of insects, providing a feast for all kinds of birds.
1:58 · The abundance of water and diverse vegetation also attracts larger mammals like elk, deer, martens, and even wolves. All of this makes beaver wetlands pretty much impossible to replicate artificially.
2:11 · What beavers do can help restore our landscape much better than we can do with our engineering.
2:19 · This is Frauke.
Meet our partner
2:21 · She’s worked alongside beavers for the last 17 years, and she’s part of our friends at Rewilding Oder Delta who are doing pioneering work to bring back Europe’s most iconic wildlife species, including lynx, sea eagles, elk, and even the European bison. But now it’s the beavers’ time. Three years ago, together with their Polish partner, they purchased a piece of land to turn it into a nature reserve and restore its lost wetland.
2:48 · The plan: create a protected area and then simply step back and let the local beavers take the reins. And as I got to see firsthand on my exploration with Frauke, the plan actually worked. But now we have our eyes on a new piece of land just a few miles away that desperately needs a makeover. A long time ago, this was a natural marshland.
Our new land for beavers
3:11 · Then, like with so many wetlands, it was completely drained to be used for agriculture. Years later, the opposite happened. This concrete lock was installed, damming up the drainage water to create a gigantic artificial pond with millions of farmed fish where chemicals, growth hormones, and fish food polluted the water. After all of this, the land is in a pretty bad state, but that’s going to change soon.
3:37 · The beavers are already taking a curious look at this area. I am very sure they already made some plans, what they can do there.
The history of beavers
3:50 · The fact that we even have beavers living here is an absolute miracle. Just 70 years ago, beavers were considered functionally extinct in the wild here in Poland. Today, the population here has grown to over 100,000 individuals, making it one of the largest beaver populations in all of Europe. But this is still a tiny number compared to the hundreds of millions. Yes, hundreds of millions of beavers that used to cover almost the entire northern hemisphere.
4:21 · Just imagine that world for a second. It looked something like this. In fact, studies have shown that the presence of beavers in an area can triple the biodiversity there. And yet we came this close at wiping them out completely. And it was all because of this. In the 1600s, it became super fashionable across Europe to wear hats and coats made from beaver fur. Which style you chose actually said a lot about your status in society.
4:49 · What’s even weirder, beavers produce a vanilla-smelling scent from a gland right next to their butt that people turned into perfume and ice cream. I promise I’m not making this up. And sadly, for these reasons, demand for beavers absolutely skyrocketed. Once the European beaver population was depleted, the fur industry expanded to North America. And over the course of around 200 years, 99.9% of the world’s beavers were hunted and killed.
5:21 · And at the turn of the last century, only 1,200 individuals remained in Europe. The impact on nature was catastrophic. Without beavers and their dams, that complex biodiverse landscape was drained away and with it all the life that depended on it. But there is hope, because in recent decades, beavers have made a remarkable comeback, and it’s largely thanks to some unconventional projects.
5:50 · In 1948, conservationists in Idaho packed 76 beavers into wooden crates, strapped them into World War II parachutes, and literally air-dropped them into the wilderness to restore the wetlands. And the crazy plan actually worked. In Scotland, beavers were completely extinct until a few of them mysteriously appeared in the wild. Nobody’s entirely sure if these beavers were illegally released or if they escaped from captivity, but today, nearly all Scottish beavers are descendants from this guerrilla population.
6:23 · All over Europe, beavers have bounced back in one way or the other from those 1,200 individuals to over 1.5 million. And yet wetlands are still disappearing way faster than beavers can rebuild them. So every piece of land that we can give back to them is a win for nature as a whole. (lively music) That’s why the Planet Wild community is helping to purchase 20 hectares of degraded land and turning it into a gigantic beaver playground.
Our support: Part 1
6:55 · And the best part, we don’t actually have to do anything because the beavers know much better than us how to do it.
7:02 · But how are they actually doing it?
7:05 · Let’s take a look. (playful music) It all starts with the surrounding trees. Beavers love to eat the inner bark of tree branches, but instead of learning to climb up, beavers decided to bring the trees down to them. Using their self-sharpening iron-enforced teeth, they can fell a tree in a single night, strategically cutting the trunk so the tree falls into the water where it can easily be cut up and transported.
How beaver engineering works
7:33 · And because beavers only eat a small portion of the tree, there’s a lot of building material left to create this: dams. And they are really good at them. In Canada, they’ve built a dam twice the length of the Hoover Dam. Just chew on that for a moment. I mean, look at this dam right here. It’s fairly new, and its construction is absolutely remarkable. Like with any good construction site, beavers follow a clear plan.
8:01 · First, they search for a perfect location to maximise the dam’s impact, choosing narrow streams in flat valleys so that even a small dam will flood a large area. Then they start digging big logs into the riverbed and anchor them with rocks to build a foundation. This then gets layered with branches, mud, and leaves to create a sturdy wall. Beavers actually monitor the sound of the water as an indicator of how well the dam stops water flow.
8:31 · If they still hear running water, they must keep building until it’s done. All of this is absolutely fascinating, but one question remains.
8:40 · Why?
8:42 · Why go through all of that work just to flood a valley?
8:46 · Well, take a look at this mediaeval castle. It’s not just protected by strong walls, but by moats of water. Beaver dams create exactly such moats to protect them from wolves and other predators. And right in the middle of it sits the beaver’s lodge like a castle.
9:04 · In German, we actually call them beaver castle, Biberburg, and there is one right over there. (peppy music) The German name really is on point as this thing is built with a multi-room layout and mud-plastered walls that are impenetrable to predators. Beavers enter through a secret tunnel that opens into a lower wet chamber for shedding water. In my anthropomorphizing mind, that’s where they take off their rubber boots and hang their raincoats.
9:35 · From here, they retreat to a dry upper living area where the family sleeps and stays warm, including, wait for it, a built-in ventilation shaft that acts like a chimney. In winter, you can even see steam rising out from the top because their body temperature and the decomposition of the organic walls act like a central heating system while the water below is used as an in-house fridge to keep the food fresh during winter.
10:01 · If they see something that they really like, they dig it up and they transport it closer to their mound, sometimes even in front of the mound, and they stick it into the soil there. So they have their little garden around their beaver mounds.
10:19 · By the way, if you ever encounter a beaver or a beaver lodge in the wild, absolutely don’t approach it. These are wild animals that should be left alone. The only reason why we could get so close was because we were on location with an expert, making sure we would not disturb them. Okay, back to the video. (playful music) We’re back at the fish farm, and we are already seeing the first signs of beaver activity.
10:45 · You can see right here that they have started damming up the old lock again.
10:49 · What did I say?
10:50 · No human construction crew needed. It’s incredible to see how quickly things are happening already. Just a few weeks ago, all of this was just brown. With the beavers coming back and raising the water levels, it’s already turning green again.
11:05 · Seeing how effectively beavers are restoring landscapes, we were asking ourselves, why isn’t this being done much more?
How beavers cause conflict
11:13 · Well, it turns out beavers are a bit too good at claiming land.
11:18 · Beavers are causing problems.
11:20 · Beavers. - Beavers.
11:21 · Beaver…
11:22 · Is causing quite a few problems.
11:24 · As beaver populations expand, they can clash with local communities, blocking drainage ditches, flooding agricultural fields, and chewing down trees that we prefer kept standing. Often this doesn’t go down too well. So if we want beavers to survive, we have to actively help humans to live alongside them. Luckily, Frauke has a plan for that too. We’re going to broker a peace between beavers and humans by planting 9,000 willow trees.
Our support: Part 2
11:53 · Willows are a preferred snack of beavers, distracting them from old-growth trees. They never fully eat them, instead leaving small stumps that quickly sprout again, providing an ongoing food source. In fact, the number of willows will naturally grow over time. On top of that, we’re helping locals to protect their property by providing them with non-toxic anti-bite glue, low voltage electric fencing, and these wire cages to protect valuable trees.
12:21 · In the long run, our 20 hectares of land will positively impact about 400 hectares of surrounding land by hydrating the forest ecosystem, preventing wildfires, filtering the water, and creating a vital stepping stone habitat from the smallest to the biggest species.
12:39 · For me, personal, it’s always joy.
12:45 · It fills me immediately with joy when I see beavers being there, doing what beavers do, and I can fully trust them that they do everything for a good reason. (inspiring music) For centuries, our relationship with beavers was defined by hunting and conflict. But looking at this project, you can see what happens when we finally decide to become their allies. By allowing beavers to return, we aren’t just saving a species. We are letting them save our landscapes.
A new relationship with beavers
13:24 · And if you want to become part of projects like this, join Planet Wild as a backer. Every month we go on a mission to bring back endangered species, clean up our oceans, and rewild entire landscapes. And it’s all community funded. As a backer, you’re directly supporting people at the front lines of nature protection. And you can see your own impact here on our channel. There’s a QR code over here and a link down in the description.
13:50 · See you all again next month, over and out. (chiming music)
We’re Building a Continent-Wide Wildlife Corridor - Differently
Planet Wild, 08 15, 2026
Video (15:55)
Description
We’re flying a Jaguar across Argentina to help protect the species.
🌱 Join us to rewild the planet: https://planetwild.com/join/m42
Every year, tens of thousands of wild animals get moved across the world for conservation.
Argentina has only 200 to 250 jaguars left, split into small, isolated groups. This shrinks their gene pool, and over generations, raises the risk of disease and can eventually wipe out a population entirely.
That’s why in our 42nd mission, we partnered with Rewilding Argentina to move Mimbi, a young female jaguar, across Argentina, to a region where introducing new genes is critical to saving the local jaguar population from inbreeding and extinction.
This translocation is part of a bigger plan: connecting isolated jaguar populations by creating a safe, continuous corridor in the South American region, so jaguars can move and mix on their own again.
People in the video:
Trishala Naidu is a South African biologist with 10 years of experience. She’s been hosting Planet Wild missions since 2024.
Guadalupe Molinaro is Rewilding Argentina’s Community Program Coordinator at El Impenetrable National Park.
Pablo is Rewilding Argentina’s Reintroduction Center Coordinator at Iberá Park and a wildlife conservation field technician.
Make sure to follow Rewilding Argentina:
Website: https://rewildingargentina.org/
IG: https://www.instagram.com/rewilding_argentina/
Thanks to Wild Earth, Ami Vitale and Mike Parkei for providing additional footage.
Chapters
Watch a high-stakes jaguar rescue mission to relocate Mimbi across Argentina. See the intense 15-hour race against the clock.
This video documents the complex logistics required for wildlife transport as conservationists attempt to reintroduce a jaguar into its new habitat. We follow the operation from the initial crate transfer to the final release, highlighting the strict timing and planning necessary for such a delicate animal relocation.
Transporting a predator like Mimbi is a massive conservation project that involves navigating multiple transit stages, including trucks and aircraft. When the mission hits unexpected complications, the team must adapt quickly to ensure the safety of this majestic endangered species. This footage provides an unfiltered look at the reality of wildlife logistics when a plan goes wrong.
Subscribe for weekly wildlife conservation breakdowns, and comment below what you think is the biggest challenge in animal relocation.
0:00 Saving the Jaguars of Argentina
2:18 Meet Mimbi, a wild jaguar
2:31 Why Argentina’s jaguars need our help
3:41 The plan to move Mimbi
5:15 Meet our partner
6:30 Our support: Making Mimbi’s move possible
7:22 The 15-hour countdown begins
9:54 Why animal translocations matter
11:46 Five hours left
13:10 Our support: Protecting jaguars long-term
13:55 Mimbi’s release
What is Planet Wild?
We’re a global community of people who care deeply about nature and want to help our planet bounce back – one mission at a time.
EVERY MONTH, we work with wildlife pioneers worldwide to
🦁 bring back endangered species
🌊 support oceans and aquatic life
🌳 revive forests and rewild landscapes
EVERY MEMBER can decide how their money is spent, connect with us on our Discord, and collect unique badges for each mission they support.
EVERY MISSION is documented in videos like this. 100% transparency.
EVERYONE can join. The bigger the community grows, the bigger these missions will get!
👉 Become a Planet Wild member: https://planetwild.com/join/m42
👉 Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/planetwild.official/
👉 Follow on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/planetwild-official/
Find all sources here:
https://planetwild.notion.site/Mission-42-Re-wilding-Argentina-3ba69e032b1980a4a507cf2ee5e7f430?source=copy_link
Transcript
Saving the Jaguars of Argentina
0:00 · We’re using this plane and this box (Mimbi growling) to transport this Jaguar called Mimbi from here to here as a part of a race against the clock to restore this majestic species across Argentina. So, we need to move her from the box to the truck, from the truck to the airstrip, into the plane, out of the plane onto another truck, and then into a new home in less than 15 hours.
0:24 · But it’s not going according to plan.
0:25 · (Mimbi growling) (pen clangs) (Mimbi growls) What the (beep)?
0:30 · (pen scraping) Hold on a second.
0:33 · Did you know that every single year, tens of thousands of animals are moved across the world in the name of conservation?
0:41 · If you search for wildlife transport on YouTube, you’ll find some truly bizarre videos. Some of them are almost hard to believe. But how did we get here? (text clicking) Well, in this video, we’re gonna do a deep dive into the bizarre world of animal translocations, from the first wildlife train rides in 1907 to the cutting-edge genetic science driving the mission today.
1:01 · (air whooshes) We’re partnering with a crew of conservation heroes who are orchestrating this entire journey from the lush heart of Argentina deep into the impenetrable forest. Like, literally, this place is called- [Narrator] El Impenetrable.
1:18 · If this plan works, we’ll connect isolated patches of nature into an enormous continent-wide jaguar corridor. We’re Planet Wild, welcome to Mission 42. (subtle ethereal music) This is Ibera National Park. It’s one of the world’s largest wetland areas, and it’s very, very special. Just on our first day, we encountered so many different animals.
1:45 · It felt unreal.
1:47 · Oh, what a sweet face. I do love me a capybara. Is that a fox? (laughs) Ibera is a beautiful mosaic of grassland, forest, and wetland, and this is Mimbi’s home. (vehicle humming) (Trishala gasps) I just saw it. I just saw a jaguar. (subtle playful music) Oh my God. (Trishala laughs) (jaguar growling) This is Mimbi. Mimbi is a 20-month-old female jaguar. She was born here in the wild wetlands and is super identifiable by her kinky tail.
Meet Mimbi, a wild jaguar
2:26 · But the fact that there are any jaguars here at all is a massive rewilding success story. (pensive ambient music) Up until recently, jaguars were locally extinct here in Ibera. The last free-roaming wild jaguar was killed in 1950. Currently, there’s only 200 to 250 jaguars in all of Argentina, and their range has decreased by 95%. These isolated jaguar populations can’t mix, so the gene pool in each gets smaller and smaller.
Why Argentina’s jaguars need our help
2:57 · A lack of genetic diversity is dangerous because animals, including us humans, carry harmless single copies of disease-causing genes. In a shrinking population, mating jaguars are much more likely to pass down matching copies of these bad genes, leading to sickness and eventually population collapse. But by bringing new genes into a population, we don’t only help the jaguar survive. We help those jaguars thrive. That is where Mimbi comes in, and I know what you’re thinking.
3:28 · It seems cruel to move her from her home into a completely unknown territory, but the sad truth is, because of hunting and habitat destruction, this is currently the only way to ensure the jaguar’s survival. And we are going to make sure that Mimbi’s translocation is as smooth as possible. So, here’s the plan.
The plan to move Mimbi
3:48 · We need to translocate Mimbi from Ibera to El Impenetrable, a wilderness area about 450 kilometres away, which mostly has solitary males and desperately needs a female to anchor those males to the area and increase the local population. Mimbi has already been lured into this large enclosure, where she has settled and gotten comfortable. Now, the trick is going to be getting her from this large pen into this small pen, and then into that box.
4:18 · (groovy percussive music) So, it’s just past 4:00 AM in the morning, and we are getting ready to bait Mimbi and capture her for her big travel over to El Impenetrable. Over the past week, we have gotten her used to collecting food from inside the box, but this time, it’s different. Now, the food is attached to a mechanism that triggers the door to close when she grabs it.
4:42 · Once we set the trap, it could be hours of waiting before Mimbi takes the bait. But when that happens, we will receive an alert that sounds like this. (Trishala mimicking device beeping) Yeah.
4:54 · But here’s the thing.
4:55 · It will be a race against the clock because Mimbi will not be sedated for the trip. Anaesthesia can be dangerous and unpredictable for an animal her size, so to minimise the stress, we want the whole translocation to happen in less than 15 hours. And the clock starts the moment that door closes. (door rattles and thuds) But we’re not doing this alone.
Meet our partner
5:17 · For this project, we’ve partnered with our friends at Rewilding Argentina, who are at the forefront of jaguar conservation.
5:24 · Rewilding Argentina make me feel that I’m on the right side of this fight against extinction, and we do it honestly with all our hearts.
5:35 · This is Pablo.
5:36 · He’s the manager at Rewilding Argentina’s Jaguar Reintroduction Centre here in Ibera. It’s an incredible base of operations where scientists like Pablo have orchestrated an incredible jaguar comeback. In 2021, Rewilding Argentina released their first female, Mariua, and her cubs into the park, making history as the first jaguars to roam freely in Corrientes in over 70 years. Since the first release, they’ve recorded over 50 wild jaguars here. Remember, at first, there were none.
6:10 · But what was done here is just the beginning. The bigger plan is to link these isolated populations of jaguars and other important species by establishing safe, continuous corridors along the waterways of the South American region. This would mean that jaguars would be able to freely move between Bolivia, Paraguay, Brazil, and Argentina, making animal translocations less and less necessary.
Our support: Making Mimbi’s move possible
6:34 · So, we’ve got a plan, but who’s making it all possible?
6:38 · You, the Planet Wild community, is funding the whole operation. Every single month, we go on a mission to restore nature, funded by our community, which now has over 26,000 members. And you can join to support our next mission by following this QR code. But now, back to Mimbi. (low tense music) With everything in place, it’s time for the hardest part, waiting.
7:04 · [Pablo] She is very confident during the night, so now she’s going in maybe to see what we did.
7:13 · Yeah. - Mm.
7:14 · Clearly, Mimbi is interested in the bait. She circles and watches.
7:19 · And then…
The 15-hour countdown begins
7:22 · (door rattles and thuds) (device beeping) Or now it is active. That’s meaning you’re getting down. - The door closed.
7:31 · Closed. - Closed.
7:32 · (device continues beeping) Maybe she’s inside.
7:38 · (chuckles) Now what?
7:40 · She’s gone in almost, like, within two minutes of us setting the trap. We could hardly believe it. Mimbi had been watching us from nearby. And once we stepped away, she made her move faster than we anticipated. Now, the clock is ticking, (timer beeping) and we need to head back into the enclosure. (Mimbi growling) The next step (Mimbi roars) is to quietly cover the box and give Mimbi a chance (Mimbi growls) to settle down.
8:04 · (Mimbi growling and snarling) It’s the safest, least stressful thing we can do for her immediately after being caught, even though it eats into our already tight 15-hour window. (timer beeping) (subtle intense music) (pen scraping) So, as you can tell and probably hear, she’s not super relaxed. The worst part of it is when she’s being moved. Once she’s in the box and there’s no light, it’s all good.
8:42 · She can be relaxed, so that’s why they’re putting the blanket over her now because we’re gonna drive her from here to the airstrip, because remember, that clock is ticking. (Mimbi roars) I feel okay, but I will be completely relaxed and chill when she’s going to El Impenetrable and stay stable there. (people speaking in foreign language) (pen scraping) (timer beeping) Mimbi is going to be travelling in style. (aeroplane humming) El Impenetrable, here we come.
9:12 · This is it.
9:13 · Here we go. (laughs) (aeroplane roaring) It was such an eye-opening experience to see what it takes to get something like this done. Remember how much time, (device beeping) and I think I’m gonna switch over to voiceover. (gentle music) That’s much better. Sitting in this plane with Mimbi and having a bit of time to reflect on what we’re doing, I have to admit, it feels wrong. This jaguar doesn’t belong in a box or in a plane.
9:43 · Mimbi is a wild animal that should be left alone. I can’t imagine how she must feel right now and how scary this must be for her. But animal translocations like this are necessary and actually way more common than you think. (subtle enigmatic music) In South Africa alone, hundreds of thousands of wild animals are translocated every single year.
Why animal translocations matter
10:04 · This is largely driven by a commercial model of ecotourism and wildlife ranching, where private reserves control over 17 million hectares of land and animals are exchanged to manage the ecosystem balance. But it also goes back a long time. The very first translocation happened in 1907 when 15 North American bison were transported by rail from the Bronx Zoo to the Wichita Mountains, where the species had been completely wiped out.
10:31 · Across the US, bison have now bounced back from just 500 individuals to half a million. (tinkling tune) More recently, we had to start moving animals away from poaching zones into highly protected reserves, making sure species like the black rhino still exist today.
10:48 · And wild animals are also moved in emergencies, like in this case in Kenya, where torrential rains were sinking an island that was home to eight critically endangered Rothschild giraffes, so conservationists built a custom raft to transport them safely to the mainland. I think this makes our translocation kind of look easy. But we are only halfway there. (aeroplane roaring) (upbeat music) We have just landed now in Castelli. It is freezing cold.
11:19 · So, so cold.
11:20 · And we’re just getting the truck ready because Mimbi is going to move into the truck now, and we’re gonna start driving. But that means we have to say goodbye to Pablo, but we get to meet Guadalupe, and Guadalupe is part of Mimbi’s team at El Impenetrable.
11:34 · When I came across this organisation, yeah, it was like, “They are crazy.
11:40 · What are they doing?”
11:41 · Yeah.
11:42 · [Trishala] And now you’re part of it.
11:43 · And now I’m part of it, yeah. (laughs) (timer beeping) (lively music) We still do have, like, a three to four-hour drive ahead of us, so we’re gonna push, push, push, but also, the ground is super muddy, the roads are pretty bad, so we’ve got to be careful. We’ve got a literal, live, endangered species in the back of the vehicle. (lively music continues) We’ve got about 30 (timer beeping) to 40 minutes before the sun sets.
Five hours left
12:12 · But the most important thing is that Mimbi is doing well. She seems to have been falling asleep for a little bit, which is amazing. Once we arrive, Mimbi will be released into another large enclosure before then being released fully into the wild. But we can’t protect jaguars if the local communities don’t want them here, so Guadalupe and her team are working on the ground to transform the locals’ fear of jaguars into pride.
12:37 · (calm music) They are not frightened anymore with jaguars. Actually, yesterday, for example, I was telling a local cooker that we were going to bring Mimbi, and she was actually happy. If we tell her probably five years ago that we were bringing a female to get cubs over here in El Impenetrable, she’s going to be afraid of it, of their cows and their cattle and either of themself.
13:04 · They are feeling proud of jaguar and all the wildlife of the El Impenetrable. (relaxing music) To ensure the success of this whole vision, the Planet Wild community is supporting this mission into the future. That includes supporting the salaries of the staff at Ibera and El Impenetrable, as well as specialised GPS collars so we can monitor the jaguar population as it begins to grow. The light is slipping away at a rapid, rapid pace.
Our support: Protecting jaguars long-term
13:35 · (calm music) (truck rumbling) (timer beeping) (calm music continues) (door scrapes) (calm music continues) (calm music continues) (calm music escalating) (singer vocalising) (uplifting music)
Mimbi’s release
14:38 · (group vocalising) (uplifting music continues) We did it! (Trishala cheering) Mimbi is at her new home here in El Impenetrable. (Guadalupe chuckles) (Trishala laughs) The moment that you open the door and the animal go out is the moment where all that energy go out every moment, every second that you see them inside the pen disappear. And it’s freedom for them, for me, for all the people that we work in this.
15:09 · (group vocalising) (uplifting music continues) Thanks for making it to the end. We really try our hardest with our small team to not only bring you facts and practical solutions, but hope, too. And of course, we couldn’t do that alone. Thanks to the support of our over 26,000 members, we keep going.
15:27 · And every single month, we go on a mission to clean up our oceans and waterways, rewild entire landscapes, and like here in Argentina, give endangered species a fighting chance. So, if creating a positive impact and restoring nature sounds good to you, follow the QR code here and the link in the description so you can be part of the solution with us. Thanks for watching, and we’ll see you again next time. (calm music) (badge chimes)
We’re creating the world’s biggest wildlife corridor
Planet Wild, 02 15, 2026
Video (12:18)
Description
We’re contributing to one of the biggest wildlife corridors in the world, a huge network of wildlife crossings, tunnels and fencing systems in North America.
🌱 Join us to rewild the planet: https://planetwild.com/join/m36
For centuries, wildlife moved freely across the Rocky Mountains. Now, roads cut through animal habitat across North America, turning simple movement into something dangerous. There are millions of wildlife collisions every year, claiming countless lives and costing billions of dollars in damages.
We went to the Rocky Mountains and partnered with Yellowstone to Yukon (Y2Y) to contribute to a massive wildlife corridor that’s reconnecting these areas and making sure wildlife can move freely again.
But big infrastructure projects like this take extensive bureaucracy, government permits and a huge amount of public funding. And none of that happens without evidence.
That’s why, in our 36th mission, we helped Y2Y gather the data and information needed to plan future crossings and shape a landscape where humans and wildlife can coexist.
Thanks to Sean Konkolics, Government of Alberta, Miistakis and Nature Conservancy of Canada, Darryn Epp, Biodiversity Pathways, Dan Rafla and Parks Canada for providing additional pictures, and to Siobhan Williams/Wildsight for additional drone cinematography.
Chapters
0:00 Reconnecting Yellowstone to Yukon
1:07 Welcome to the Rocky Mountains
2:12 How habitats were fragmented
3:45 Meet our partner
5:06 The solution: Wildlife crossings
8:02 The challenge of Highway 3
8:51 Our support
10:18 Wildlife camera footage
What is Planet Wild?
We’re a global community of people who care deeply about nature and want to help our planet bounce back – one mission at a time.
EVERY MONTH, we work with wildlife pioneers worldwide to
🦁 bring back endangered species
🌊 support oceans and aquatic life
🌳 revive forests and rewild landscapes
EVERY MEMBER can vote on how we spend the money, connect with us on our Discord, and collect unique badges for each mission they support.
EVERY MISSION is documented in videos like this. 100% transparency.
EVERYONE can join. The bigger the community grows, the bigger these missions will get!
👉 Become a Planet Wild member: https://planetwild.com/join/m36
👉 Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/planetwild.official/
👉 Follow on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/planetwild-official/
Find all sources here:
https://planetwild.notion.site/Mission-36-Wildlife-Crossings-Sources-30269e032b1980559c97e4e717f0b682?source=copy_link
Transcript
Reconnecting Yellowstone to Yukon
0:00 · This is not a normal highway bridge.
0:03 · Oh, my God.
0:04 · It’s actually part of a massive effort to build one of the biggest wildlife corridors in the world: the Yellowstone to Yukon region, spanning five U.S. states, two Canadian provinces, and more than 75 indigenous territories. It’s the size of a large country. Now, a hidden network of bridges, tunnels, fences, and whatever these are, has started to connect 11 huge national parks within this region, allowing wildlife to roam freely for the first time in generations.
0:35 · This is not only saving animal and human lives, but it will save billions of dollars of taxpayer money in the process. And it’s only possible ’cause of a small team of scientists and nature lovers. So I’m here in the Rocky Mountains to find out how research and engineering emerging into one of the biggest rewilding projects in the world. And we’re going to use this to capture the insane collection of creatures that are already using these passageways.
1:02 · We are Planet Wild. Welcome to Mission 36. (tense inspirational music) The Rocky Mountains, the largest mountain range in North America, a vast, largely untouched expanse. I just have to take a second to fully appreciate where I am, because I’m surrounded by forest and by mountain peaks like I’ve never seen before in my entire life.
Welcome to the Rocky Mountains
1:28 · And it’s incredible.
1:31 · (tense music continues) (graphic chimes) But I’m also a little bit worried about grizzly bears (quirky music) ’cause this is grizzly bear territory. And last week I was talking to a bear expert for some research and he said I wouldn’t have a problem.
1:48 · You won’t have a problem.
1:50 · But he also said some stuff that made me a little bit more worried.
1:53 · I thought I was going to die.
1:54 · (Clayton laughs) Thanks, Clayton. We’ll come back to you later. Grizzlies used to be found all the way from the Arctic Circle in the north to down in Mexico. And just 200 years ago, (projector whirring) this landscape was completely uninterrupted, which is the blink of an eye in evolutionary terms. But now the range of the grizzlies has shrunk to just this corner of North America. And this is why.
How habitats were fragmented
2:18 · (train horn blaring) (track rattling) (truck horn blaring) This is the Canada Pacific Railway built in 1881, and during the colonisation of North America, this connected the east and the west coast of Canada. But it cut straight through this valley. And now imagine if you are a grizzly bear and you have to travel from this side of the valley to this side.
2:42 · And if a train goes past once an hour, imagine trying to cross a highway where a car goes past on average once every three seconds. (melancholic music) It makes the world smaller for grizzly bears, and they have to increasingly navigate around those barriers. What it means is these bears basically never get old and die, like, there’s essentially no natural mortality.
3:06 · If a bear’s going to die in the Elk Valley, it’s unfortunately gonna be at the hand of people. And half of the grizzly bears that died in our study were due to collisions with vehicles or with the train.
3:19 · [Cameron] Recently there was a report of a young bear named Lingenpolter, who spent months trying to get across a highway. In fact, he tried and failed 45 times, only managing on the 46th attempt.
3:34 · It’s a real challenge to navigate this landscape.
3:37 · We’ve got power lines, canals, railways, highways, and housing developments, right?
3:42 · So it’s a very complex landscape.
Meet our partner
3:45 · [Cameron] This is Bill Hunt from the Yellowstone to Yukon initiative, or Y2Y. Bill has spent his life working in Canada’s wilderness, first as a park warden and then a conservation manager, always with the goal of protecting wildlife. Today with Y2Y, he’s trying to create the biggest corridor for wildlife in North America and possibly the world.
4:06 · The scale of Y2Y is huge.
4:09 · It’s a big vision. It’s a big, it’s very ambitious, but it’s completely achievable.
4:13 · Y2Y has been working for more than 30 years to create a massive interconnected area starting from Yellowstone Park in the south, tracing the range of the Rocky Mountains around over 100 existing protected areas, including 11 national parks all the way up to the Yukon Territory in northern Canada. So the Y2Y vision is a massive interconnected area of 1.3 million square kilometres.
4:39 · And I was just looking up, trying to get an idea of how big that actually is. And apparently, if it was a country, it would be in the top 20 biggest countries in the world, right in between Peru and Mongolia. I mean, just look at it compared to the size of Europe, the scale of that, it’s just huge. But in order to make this dream a reality, we need to get rid of all these roads.
5:04 · Okay, we obviously can’t do that, but we can build new infrastructure for wildlife. So this behind me is a wildlife crossing, and it’s specially designed to get animals over the highway safely. This bridge is basically built to carry a small forest. Thousands of tonnes of soil are piled on top, and then native bushes and trees are planted, so it blends perfectly into the landscape. And you might be thinking, that looks really expensive.
The solution: Wildlife crossings
5:30 · Who’s gonna pay for it?
5:32 · Well, it’s actually more expensive without it. Every year in the U.S., there’s around 2 million collisions with animals, and as well as the countless lives that are lost in these collisions, it also costs people $8 billion a year. But a wildlife crossing like this can reduce collisions by over 90%. (graphic clicking) How it works is that there’s miles of fencing along here that funnelled the animals over the crossing.
6:00 · And honestly, I never thought I would get into fence design. But this is not just any old fence. (soft music) One of the key elements is that there’s a buried apron of chain-link fencing actually dug into the earth, and this keeps bears and wolves from digging tunnels underneath the fence, which would defeat the whole purpose. And then going up, this is the page wire, and you’ll see that it’s what we call graduated page wire.
6:23 · And so the spacing at the bottom is smaller to prevent small animals from getting through. And then when you get higher on the fence, we’ve widened that out so that you’re saving on weight and cost. So it makes it as affordable as possible. And then right on the very top of this, you’ll see that there’s a high tensile cable supported on the top of the posts.
6:44 · And that’s so that if a tree falls onto the fence, it doesn’t damage the page wire. In the old days, we didn’t have that. If a tree blew on, this would all get crumpled and mushed up. And it was really hard to get it back together. And now the tree just sits on the cable, you come with a saw, you can cut that off and everything’s still working.
7:00 · Yeah. - It seems subtle, but each of these things saves tonnes of maintenance over the long run.
7:04 · Yeah.
7:04 · - Yeah.
7:06 · (bell chimes) But to make our lives a bit harder, not every animal likes to go over the highway. And this is like an old highway bridge that is retrofitted with fences along the side to guide the animals down here. It’s actually kind of peaceful almost, the noise of the highway is reduced significantly. And you can tell why some species like cougars and black bears actually prefer to cross underneath the highway.
7:34 · And you can tell that loads of animals are coming through here. There’s deer tracks everywhere, and you can tell that these crossings really just work. And there are many more types of crossings, like there’s tunnels for toads, canopy bridges for squirrels, and even this amazing little crossing built especially for salamanders. Throughout the Y2Y region, more than 200 crossings have been built so far, but there’s still one stretch of road that’s causing serious problems.
8:01 · (contemplative music) This is Highway 3. Its location makes it really strategically important. It’s currently blocking the movement of wildlife, both from north to south and east to west. In fact, this highway is separating two populations of grizzly bears, which is bad news because with a smaller gene pool, these populations become way more vulnerable to environmental changes and disease.
The challenge of Highway 3
8:27 · In a case like this, Y2Y brings all the necessary people together to identify where the crossings are needed and to build them. (soft electronic music) So the vision is to instal 27 new crossings, including three new overpass bridges that would connect these two grizzly populations and allow all kinds of wildlife to roam freely through here. Creating big infrastructure projects like this takes a huge amount of bureaucracy and massive amounts of government funding.
Our support
8:59 · So Y2Y needs lots of hard data to get the ball rolling. And that is where these come in. Camera traps lay the groundwork. They allow us to show how effective certain crossings are for different species, and they show us where animals are already trying to cross the roads.
9:15 · So the Planet Wild community is funding six extremely durable professional trail cameras to support the Highway 3 project, along with 15 of these new GPS wildlife collars for four different species. That’s elk, mule deer, bighorn sheep, and, of course, grizzly bears. With the GPS data from these collars, researchers can pinpoint the critical places where new crossings should be built to ensure separated populations can find each other better.
9:43 · And whilst we’re installing the cameras, I’m gonna tell you how we made this possible. Planet Wild is a global community of nature protectors. And every month we go on a mission to clean up our oceans, to bring back endangered species, and to rewild entire landscapes. And everything is community-funded. So if you wanna support projects like this, join Planet Wild as a backer. There’s a QR code here and a link in the description.
10:09 · There we go.
10:11 · Done. - Perfect.
10:12 · Amazing.
10:13 · (wind blowing) (feet thudding) Future Cam here. So Y2Y just sent me over some of the footage from the wildlife cameras, and I’m sitting here watching it, and I’m just thinking like, it’s just… Okay, you know what, we’re just gonna have to roll it. (bright enthralling music) Research has proven more than 150,000 animal crossings through these new structures, and it really hits you when you just take a second to watch the footage from these cameras.
Wildlife camera footage
10:50 · (bright enthralling music continues) If they can find a safe spot, like an underpass or an overpass, they memorise that, they learn that, and they’ll come back to that spot time and time again. (bright enthralling music continues) (bright enthralling music continues) This footage is gonna push forward at the Highway 3 project. But it’s not just about one highway, this is about reimagining how entire landscapes can work.
11:31 · And this vision is gonna take a lot of work, a lot of collaboration, and probably many decades to complete. For every single data point, every crossing and every animal that makes it across the highway safely is one step closer to making that vision a reality.
11:47 · So what can you do next?
11:48 · Well, join Planet Wild as a backer at the QR code here, or subscribe to catch our next mission. Thanks, and see you next time. (bright enthralling music continues) (bright enthralling music continues) (music fades)
What happens when you set a river free BBC News
BBC News, 10 20, 2024
Video (3:37)
Description
Virtually all the UK’s rivers have been physically altered in one way or another – straightened, dammed, dredged or restrained by barriers in some way along their course.
Which is why the National Trust decided to do a radical experiment, to see if it is possible to the ecological equivalent of a complete reboot.
They filled a river in west Somerset in and let it take its own course through the landscape.
Our climate editor, Justin Rowlatt, has been finding out how the project worked out.
Producer: Harriet Bradshaw
Shoot/Edit: Gwyndaf Hughes
Subscribe here: http://bit.ly/1rbfUog
For more news, analysis and features visit: www.bbc.com/news
Transcript
The radical river project
0:00 · like most of the UK’s Rivers the all had been interfered with it had been artificially straightened to keep the land dry but it left little room for nature so here’s the question is it possible to do the ecological equivalent of a complete reboot to reset the river and let it find its own course through the landscape other projects in the UK have re wiggled Rivers using diggers to
0:27 · reconstruct the curves they used to have but here in Somerset The National Trust decided to do something much more radical they completely filled the river in with Earth and rubble and then waited to see what would happen next we went to see the project just after the heavy work had finished a year on and things have
First year transformation
0:52 · changed it really is foggy now it’s absolutely brilliant it is absolutely phenomenal it is just transformed it is green it’s messy it’s noisy you walk through and the insects go up and then you stop and listen and the bird song is just amazing cuz what’s so interesting about this is you didn’t actually know what
Project uncertainty
1:17 · was going to happen did you no it’s like yeah it’s one of the kind of yeah the first projects that really has been done like this on this scale in in England there’s a lot of uncertainty and kind of you know what’s going to happen what’s going to look like is is it going to do what we think it’s going to do um which is both a little bit scary but also you know brilliantly exciting scientists have been using drones to help monitor the
Wetland ecosystem
1:46 · changes the images from the air prompt a fundamental question freed from the constraints of its banks is this really still a river at all you no longer have that single Channel what we think of as a river what you have inste is a complex messy Wetland environment you can’t even see when the original channel was you have multiple flads multiple ponds multiple Wetland areas it is that complex network of different environments which brings the explosion
2:15 · of Life the scientists say they’ve recorded here not just Birds but mammals too including endangered water vs they’d better be careful though because there are predators here too what happens down river The Villages regularly flood so there was a lot of concern about the impact that changes would have and a lot of anxiety in the National Trust team especially when last winter turned out to be one of the wetest on record post restoration we had
Flood prevention results
2:47 · some really significant rainfall events you know unprecedented really the site responded really well we didn’t get any Downstream flooding other villages in and around Somerset you know really badly flooded you know and here in in Alford and Bingington you know no flooding and the data’s back that up now we’ve got from sort of extra and Nottingham universities you know we’ve we’ve we’ve significantly reduced the flood Peak and helped protect Downstream communities from that extreme weather restoring Wetlands is a priority for the National Trust it estimates the UK has lost 90% of its wetlands in the last 100
Future implications
3:18 · years alone River resets like this won’t work everywhere but the results here in Somerset have been so good the trust is already considering sites where it could be repeated Justin roll at BBC News West subet
Why This Unusual Pattern May Save the Rainforests
PBS Terra, 09 12, 2024
Video (9:34)
Description
Check out In the Margins on @pbsorigins : https://youtu.be/Y1cJCowMz9M?feature=shared
Check out Roots of Resistance on @pbsorigins : https://youtu.be/rUCrmh58GrU?si=b6HPENjsnEKYPrzK
The Choco region in northwest Ecuador is hosting a groundbreaking experiment to try and help it’s rainforests recover from rampant deforestation. A multinational team is planting small “tree islands” to attract natural seed dispersers. It’s an innovative approach that we’ll take a close look at, from above and within.
Hosted by Joe Hanson from Be Smart, Overview uses stunning 4k drone footage to reveal the natural and human made marvels shaping our planet–from a 10,000-foot view–literally.
PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. To support your local station, go to: http://to.pbs.org/DonateTerra *****
Subscribe to PBS Terra so you never miss an episode! https://bit.ly/3mOfd77
And keep up with PBS Terra on:
Facebook: https://facebook.com/pbsdigitalstudios
Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@pbsterra
Instagram: https://instagram.com/pbsterra
Transcript
0:05 · (light music) Hidden along the equator lies a rainforest like no other.
0:13 · The Choco is a kaleidoscope of life.
0:17 · An enchanting home to an astonishing array of species many found nowhere else on Earth.
0:24 · But like most of Earth’s tropical rainforests, The Choco is under threat.
0:29 · Widespread deforestation for agriculture, logging, and human settlements has pushed this incredible ecosystem to the brink of disappearing.
0:37 · But, there is hope, thanks to these.
0:41 · These are tree islands, small patches of trees replanted within larger deforested areas.
0:47 · Scientists think this groundbreaking idea could change the world’s forest recovery efforts by allowing the forest to regrow itself thanks to one surprising ingredient, animal poop.
1:06 · (gentle music) Here in Ecuador, the Choco Rainforest covers approximately 7,000 square kilometers, nearly one and a half times the size of Grand Canyon National Park.
1:18 · Separated from the Amazon by the towering Andes, The Choco is a world unto itself.
1:25 · It’s also one of the wettest places on Earth.
1:29 · Some spots receiving upwards of 400 inches of rain per year.
1:35 · It’s also one of the world’s most biologically diverse places.
1:39 · A home for over 800 species of birds, 140 species of mammals, and 9,000 species of plants.
1:50 · Here, inside a 100-meter square, you can find nearly as many tree species as in all of Europe.
1:58 · Rainforests like The Choco are critical for preserving Earth’s biodiversity.
2:10 · These are some of the determined researchers on a mission to save this remarkable ecosystem.
2:20 · (Leighton speaking in foreign language) - They contain more than half of all of the species in the world, even though they occupy a relatively small proportion of the Earth’s land surface.
2:29 · There’s new species being discovered in tropical rainforests every year, including here in Northwestern Ecuador.
2:35 · Every year, an area of tropical forest gets cut down that’s about the size of Lake Michigan.
2:43 · (orchestral music) - The Choco is considered one of the most threatened ecoregions in the world.
2:48 · In Ecuador, only about 2% of the original forest cover remains.
2:54 · As more and more of it is converted to palm oil plantations, countless species of plants and animals are at risk of extinction.
3:09 · (Fernando speaking in foreign language) Fernando is now fighting to restore his native lands.
3:29 · (Fernando speaking in foreign language) But saving a rainforest is not an easy task.
3:34 · Although scientists know what a healthy tropical forest looks like, they still know very little about how to regrow them.
3:54 · (Fernando speaking in foreign language) (light music) At this point, maybe you’re thinking, why not just plant trees?
3:58 · One new tree to replace every old one?
4:01 · Well, the cost, for starters.
4:03 · Additionally, many traditional replanting efforts have focused on replanting only a small number of tree species.
4:10 · But this allows only a few fast growing species to dominate the regrown forest, and it really fails to recreate the complex diversity of species in natural rainforests, which can contain upwards of 400 tree species in an area the size of a Manhattan city block.
4:29 · Regrowing a forest by only replanting a few species is like trying to paint a Picasso with only primary colors.
4:39 · But here, scientists are trying something new, an idea that harnesses the power of nature itself.
4:47 · Instead of planting rows of seedlings in a large scale plantation, the researchers are creating small, strategic patches filled with a diverse mix of native trees.
4:58 · They hope that over time these empty spaces will be filled by the same natural processes that keep healthy rainforests lush and diverse.
5:08 · [Leighton] The idea is that these small patches of trees will kickstart a natural regeneration process.
5:13 · [Joe] And here’s where things get interesting, because the team’s secret weapon is poop. (bright music) The trees planted in these islands produce fruit. In a healthy rainforest, animals act as nature’s gardeners. As creatures like howler monkeys and toucans feast on that fruit, their droppings disperse seeds far and wide, planting new forest with every trip to the bathroom. Up to 80% of tree species rely on birds and mammals to spread their seeds in this way.
5:46 · When a patch of rainforest falls, it’s these animal gardeners that hold the key to bringing it back to life. Eating fruits, carrying the seeds far and wide, and ultimately, planting the forest of tomorrow.
6:00 · One of the big questions is, what are the best kinds of trees to plant?
6:05 · How many of them do you need to plant and what kinds of spatial configurations?
6:09 · [Joe] The scientists are betting that by planting trees with mouthwatering fruits, they’ll attract a bunch of hungry critters like monkeys, birds, and bats to help this forest regrow itself. Who knew that the key to saving the rainforest could be as simple as a well-stocked fruit buffet. To test the idea, researchers pack half of their plots with trees that produce a bounty of animal attracting fruit, while the other half offer fewer delicious treats.
6:42 · At the same time, we’re also monitoring animal populations to identify what bird species are coming and visiting plots. (Fernando speaking in foreign language) [Leighton] We’d like to be able to connect the dots between what animals are present and what seeds they’re bringing into the restoration plots.
7:12 · [Joe] The project has captured the imagination of the local community.
7:17 · [Leighton] A lot of the success that FCAT has enjoyed is due to the tight bonds that they have with the local communities that are here. (Fernando speaking in foreign language) [Joe] The experiment is still young, but the team is already seeing promising signs. (Fernando speaking in foreign language) (light music) If it works, this approach could revolutionize reforestation efforts not just in The Choco, but in threatened rainforests worldwide.
8:08 · Ecological restoration is not a silver bullet.
8:12 · It’s not the solution to all of our environmental problems. In order to prevent mass extinction, we have to stop destroying intact habitats. And restoration can’t do that. But restoration is part of the solution as well. Ecological restoration allows us to build back some of the habitat that’s been lost.
8:29 · [Joe] Only time will tell if their tree islands will take root. But in the battle to save our rainforests, every seed of hope matters, and in The Choco, those seeds are starting to sprout. Hey guys, we’re out here working on the next episode of Overview. But before you go, if you’re a fan of history, we want to tell you about two new series over on PBS Origins.
8:55 · Roots of Resistance is a series which shows how history is often made through defiance. And In the Margins explores the kind of lesser-known stories that they maybe don’t teach you in school. We’re gonna put a link to their latest episodes down below. We hope you consider subscribing too. It helps all of us over at PBS.
Why This Unusual Pattern May Save the Rainforests
PBS Terra, 09 12, 2024
Video (9:34)
Description
Check out In the Margins on @pbsorigins : https://youtu.be/Y1cJCowMz9M?feature=shared
Check out Roots of Resistance on @pbsorigins : https://youtu.be/rUCrmh58GrU?si=b6HPENjsnEKYPrzK
The Choco region in northwest Ecuador is hosting a groundbreaking experiment to try and help it’s rainforests recover from rampant deforestation. A multinational team is planting small “tree islands” to attract natural seed dispersers. It’s an innovative approach that we’ll take a close look at, from above and within.
Hosted by Joe Hanson from Be Smart, Overview uses stunning 4k drone footage to reveal the natural and human made marvels shaping our planet–from a 10,000-foot view–literally.
PBS Member Stations rely on viewers like you. To support your local station, go to: http://to.pbs.org/DonateTerra *****
Subscribe to PBS Terra so you never miss an episode! https://bit.ly/3mOfd77
And keep up with PBS Terra on:
Facebook: https://facebook.com/pbsdigitalstudios
Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@pbsterra
Instagram: https://instagram.com/pbsterra
Transcript
The Choco rainforest
0:05 · (light music) Hidden along the equator lies a rainforest like no other.
0:13 · The Choco is a kaleidoscope of life.
0:17 · An enchanting home to an astonishing array of species many found nowhere else on Earth.
0:24 · But like most of Earth’s tropical rainforests, The Choco is under threat.
0:29 · Widespread deforestation for agriculture, logging, and human settlements has pushed this incredible ecosystem to the brink of disappearing.
0:37 · But, there is hope, thanks to these.
Introducing tree islands
0:41 · These are tree islands, small patches of trees replanted within larger deforested areas.
0:47 · Scientists think this groundbreaking idea could change the world’s forest recovery efforts by allowing the forest to regrow itself thanks to one surprising ingredient, animal poop.
1:06 · (gentle music) Here in Ecuador, the Choco Rainforest covers approximately 7,000 square kilometers, nearly one and a half times the size of Grand Canyon National Park.
1:18 · Separated from the Amazon by the towering Andes, The Choco is a world unto itself.
Biodiversity and risks
1:25 · It’s also one of the wettest places on Earth.
1:29 · Some spots receiving upwards of 400 inches of rain per year.
1:35 · It’s also one of the world’s most biologically diverse places.
1:39 · A home for over 800 species of birds, 140 species of mammals, and 9,000 species of plants.
1:50 · Here, inside a 100-meter square, you can find nearly as many tree species as in all of Europe.
1:58 · Rainforests like The Choco are critical for preserving Earth’s biodiversity.
The challenge of restoration
2:10 · These are some of the determined researchers on a mission to save this remarkable ecosystem.
2:20 · (Leighton speaking in foreign language) - They contain more than half of all of the species in the world, even though they occupy a relatively small proportion of the Earth’s land surface.
2:29 · There’s new species being discovered in tropical rainforests every year, including here in Northwestern Ecuador.
2:35 · Every year, an area of tropical forest gets cut down that’s about the size of Lake Michigan.
2:43 · (orchestral music) - The Choco is considered one of the most threatened ecoregions in the world.
2:48 · In Ecuador, only about 2% of the original forest cover remains.
2:54 · As more and more of it is converted to palm oil plantations, countless species of plants and animals are at risk of extinction.
3:09 · (Fernando speaking in foreign language) Fernando is now fighting to restore his native lands.
The power of natural recovery
3:29 · (Fernando speaking in foreign language) But saving a rainforest is not an easy task.
3:34 · Although scientists know what a healthy tropical forest looks like, they still know very little about how to regrow them.
3:54 · (Fernando speaking in foreign language) (light music) At this point, maybe you’re thinking, why not just plant trees?
3:58 · One new tree to replace every old one?
4:01 · Well, the cost, for starters.
4:03 · Additionally, many traditional replanting efforts have focused on replanting only a small number of tree species.
4:10 · But this allows only a few fast growing species to dominate the regrown forest, and it really fails to recreate the complex diversity of species in natural rainforests, which can contain upwards of 400 tree species in an area the size of a Manhattan city block.
4:29 · Regrowing a forest by only replanting a few species is like trying to paint a Picasso with only primary colors.
4:39 · But here, scientists are trying something new, an idea that harnesses the power of nature itself.
4:47 · Instead of planting rows of seedlings in a large scale plantation, the researchers are creating small, strategic patches filled with a diverse mix of native trees.
4:58 · They hope that over time these empty spaces will be filled by the same natural processes that keep healthy rainforests lush and diverse.
5:08 · [Leighton] The idea is that these small patches of trees will kickstart a natural regeneration process.
5:13 · [Joe] And here’s where things get interesting, because the team’s secret weapon is poop. (bright music) The trees planted in these islands produce fruit. In a healthy rainforest, animals act as nature’s gardeners. As creatures like howler monkeys and toucans feast on that fruit, their droppings disperse seeds far and wide, planting new forest with every trip to the bathroom. Up to 80% of tree species rely on birds and mammals to spread their seeds in this way.
Nature’s gardeners
5:46 · When a patch of rainforest falls, it’s these animal gardeners that hold the key to bringing it back to life. Eating fruits, carrying the seeds far and wide, and ultimately, planting the forest of tomorrow.
6:00 · One of the big questions is, what are the best kinds of trees to plant?
6:05 · How many of them do you need to plant and what kinds of spatial configurations?
6:09 · [Joe] The scientists are betting that by planting trees with mouthwatering fruits, they’ll attract a bunch of hungry critters like monkeys, birds, and bats to help this forest regrow itself. Who knew that the key to saving the rainforest could be as simple as a well-stocked fruit buffet. To test the idea, researchers pack half of their plots with trees that produce a bounty of animal attracting fruit, while the other half offer fewer delicious treats.
Measuring success
6:42 · At the same time, we’re also monitoring animal populations to identify what bird species are coming and visiting plots. (Fernando speaking in foreign language) [Leighton] We’d like to be able to connect the dots between what animals are present and what seeds they’re bringing into the restoration plots.
7:12 · [Joe] The project has captured the imagination of the local community.
7:17 · [Leighton] A lot of the success that FCAT has enjoyed is due to the tight bonds that they have with the local communities that are here. (Fernando speaking in foreign language) [Joe] The experiment is still young, but the team is already seeing promising signs. (Fernando speaking in foreign language) (light music) If it works, this approach could revolutionize reforestation efforts not just in The Choco, but in threatened rainforests worldwide.
Future of reforestation
8:08 · Ecological restoration is not a silver bullet.
8:12 · It’s not the solution to all of our environmental problems. In order to prevent mass extinction, we have to stop destroying intact habitats. And restoration can’t do that. But restoration is part of the solution as well. Ecological restoration allows us to build back some of the habitat that’s been lost.
8:29 · [Joe] Only time will tell if their tree islands will take root. But in the battle to save our rainforests, every seed of hope matters, and in The Choco, those seeds are starting to sprout. Hey guys, we’re out here working on the next episode of Overview. But before you go, if you’re a fan of history, we want to tell you about two new series over on PBS Origins.
Conclusion and credits
8:55 · Roots of Resistance is a series which shows how history is often made through defiance. And In the Margins explores the kind of lesser-known stories that they maybe don’t teach you in school. We’re gonna put a link to their latest episodes down below. We hope you consider subscribing too. It helps all of us over at PBS.
Why we should be destroying more dams
DW Planet A, 09 18, 2026
Video (11:51)
Description
Thousands of dams are being destroyed, bringing life back to its rivers. Migratory fish are returning to waterways, habitats are reconnecting, and entire ecosystems are being restored. While many dams remain vital for drinking water, irrigation, and flood management, Europe is
rethinking its relationship with its rivers, one dam at a time.
CREDITS
Reporter: Janek Speight
Camera: Mikel Bereziartua
Video Editor: Markus Mörtz
Supervising Editor: Adam Baheej Adada, Kiyo Dörrer, Michael Trobridge
Fact Check: Jeannette Cwienk
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Consequences of Large Dam Decommissioning Project in Europe: The Case of Enobieta
https://addi.ehu.es/bitstream/handle/10810/62662/TESIS_ATRISTAIN_VEGA_MIREN.pdf
Stream macroinvertebrate communities improve quickly after large dam decommissioning
https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1365-2664.14656
Dam Removal Europe Progress Report 2025
https://damremoval.eu/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/DRE-Progress-Report-2025.pdf
IEA Global Electricity Demand Report 2025
https://www.iea.org/reports/electricity-2025
EMBER Global Electricity Review 20206
https://ember-energy.org/app/uploads/2026/04/Global-Electricity-Review-2026.pdf
CHAPTERS
0:00 Intro
0:32 Enobieta Dam
2:41: Global Dam Problem
5:07: Rivers Returning
8:55: Global Balance
10:33: Conclusion
We’re destroying our environment at an alarming rate. But it doesn’t need to be this way. Planet A explores the shift towards an eco-friendly world — and challenges our ideas about what dealing with climate change means. We look at the big and the small: What we can do and how the system needs to change. We’ll take a truly global look at how to get us out of this mess.
Follow Planet A on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dw_planeta
Transcript
Intro
0:00 · “I’ve been told they’re going to tear this down.
0:02 · So I’m here to find out why.”
0:05 · This is the Enobieta dam.
0:07 · Huge dams just like it can be found around the world and more are being built every year.
0:13 · They provide clean drinking water, irrigation for farming and flood protection.
0:17 · And they’re one of the most important sources of renewable electricity on the planet.
0:22 · But in Europe, something is changing.
0:24 · Environmental groups want to remove thousands of dams just like this.
0:28 · So why do they want them gone?
Enobieta Dam
0:32 · “By the time you see this video, this big chunk of the dam will be gone.”
0:36 · The Enobieta Dam is named after the river it crosses.
0:40 · This wall of concrete was built in the late 1940s to secure drinking water for San Sebastian, in northern Spain.
0:46 · But the dam already looks different to what I expected.
0:51 · “To me and my untrained eye, this just looks like it’s a forest.
0:55 · But what are we looking at here here?”
0:57 · “It’s indeed a forest, but all this was covered with water.
1:02 · Here we had a reservoir which was 30-32 meters deep.”
1:07 · After San Sebastian city council decided to dismantle the dam, the reservoir was emptied in 2019.
1:13 · Arturo Elosegi led the research into how its removal would affect the river, and the Artikutza forest that surrounds it.
1:21 · The dam had operated for around 30 years, but it quickly became clear that there were geotechnical issues with the location.
1:28 · Its storage capacity had to be reduced and there were also issues with iron and manganese contamination in the water.
1:34 · And in 1976, it was abandoned altogether when a new, larger dam replaced it nearby.
1:41 · “So they basically built this massive structure…” “In the worst place.”
1:44 · “It was obsolete almost immediately.”
1:46 · “Yeah, that’s it.”
1:51 · “So we’re now in the former reservoir and it seems mad that only a few years ago, this would’ve been just a tonne of water.”
2:01 · “Here we would be like five meters under water.
2:05 · You can see there these big trees are the ancient ones, and the new ones, which are growing in what was the former reservoir.”
2:15 · Five years was all it took to transform the former reservoir from this… into this.
2:20 · And then something else happened.
2:22 · “The stream started to carve again a channel.
2:26 · And in most of the places, it carved exactly the same channel as it had before.”
2:31 · “So the rivers returned to the exact same place… it knew where to go?”
2:37 · “Yeah. It has memory if you want.”
2:42 · Humans have harnessed the power of water for centuries.
2:45 · Dams have transformed modern life.
2:47 · And hydropower remains the world’s largest source of renewable energy, supplying around 14% of global electricity.
2:56 · In Norway, hydro accounts for 95% of its electricity.
3:00 · Its ability to reliably generate huge amounts of power means demand is still growing, even as wind and solar expand rapidly.
3:10 · But that comes at a cost.
3:13 · Dams interrupt the movement of fish.
3:15 · They trap sediment, alter water temperatures and transform entire aquatic ecosystems.
3:21 · And it’s not just giant hydroelectric dams that can do this.
3:25 · Weirs, culverts, watermills — are all barriers that can disrupt or block a river system.
3:31 · “In Europe there are 1.2 million, at least, barriers.”
3:36 · That’s Kerry Brink, who works with Dam Removal Europe, a coalition of environmental organizations working to restore free-flowing rivers across the continent.
3:45 · “These barriers — and a large part of them are small — are really basically cutting up our river systems.
3:52 · The water quality reduces, water is not flowing in a natural way.
3:58 · So you really get changes in the water chemistry.
4:01 · We have declining fish populations, our freshwater biodiversity and freshwater species are the highest impacted species globally.”
4:14 · Dam Removal Europe estimates that around 200,000 barriers are already considered obsolete.
4:19 · Although the true number is likely much higher.
4:23 · It’s these structures, which no longer have a societal or financial benefit anymore, that they want to tear down.
4:31 · “We are really not wanting to remove the functional barriers.
4:37 · We are truly wanting to remove the barriers that actually have a flood risk, which actually have no purpose.”
4:47 · Across Europe, the push to remove obsolete barriers is gathering pace.
4:51 · In 2025 alone, at least 600 came down across the continent.
4:56 · And the European Union wants to restore at least 25,000 kilometers of free-flowing rivers by 2030.
5:02 · But why does removing them make such a difference?
5:08 · Part of the reason can be seen at Enobieta.
5:11 · Because when the reservoir here was drained, an entire ecosystem returned.
5:20 · “A small stream, in a place like this one, lives from the forest.
5:24 · In the first year, when there was still no forest, the water was quite hot because the sunlight reached it directly.
5:33 · But then the forest was closing and the water gets cooler.”
5:39 · As the forest returned, the food chain started to rebuild.
5:43 · “Especially what you have is leaves.
5:46 · And you see, this leaf is eaten by insects.
5:48 · There are some fungi, microscopic fungi which grow on top of the leaves.
5:55 · The insects start to eat these leaves, they grow, the fish eat the insects.
6:02 · And so everything is fueled by these leaves.
6:06 · The recovery has been astonishing.”
6:09 · But that recovery can only be complete when the dam itself is out of the way.
6:21 · Instead of demolishing the whole dam, engineers and the San Sebastian City Council decided it would be enough to cut out a seven-meter section.
6:29 · The partial removal has limited the amount of concrete taken out, minimizing heavy traffic and construction and overall disruption to the surrounding Artikutza forest.
6:38 · It also helped protect a bat population that had colonised the dam’s internal chambers.
6:43 · And, it was significantly cheaper — costing around €1.6 million.
6:50 · When the removal is finished and the river is reconnected, another big change will occur.
6:56 · The river itself will start to behave naturally again, including how it moves sediment downstream.
7:02 · Upstream there’s a diverse mix of sediment, including cobbles, sand and gravel, which is distributed by the river.
7:08 · But the dam continues to block that natural flow downstream.
7:13 · “What you see here, these are not boulders or cobbles, these are blocks of concrete.
7:20 · Which were thrown here when they lowered the spillway.
7:26 · So this is totally artificial.
7:29 · The new channel will go through there and then new sediments, natural sediments will come.
7:33 · We can see also downstream from the dam, the river habitat was very very poor because all these sediments were retained by the reservoir.”
7:43 · When the river is allowed to pass through again, it will carry a more diverse range of sediments downstream — helping to rebuild banks, the riverbed and the habitats around it.
7:54 · “Everything will change and we’ll have again forest, the sediments will be much more natural.
8:00 · The habitat is something that is created by the river itself when it moves the sediments.
8:05 · And they will be created again.”
8:08 · At Enobieta, removing the dam is helping to restore this forest’s unique ancient ecosystem.
8:13 · But reconnecting rivers have other benefits too, particularly for migratory fish.
8:21 · Which is what happened at Hiitolanjoki in Finland.
8:24 · Three small hydropower dams had blocked movement access for the endangered landlocked Ladoga salmon.
8:30 · Authorities decided it made sense to remove the plants and restore the rivers.
8:35 · “What we’ve seen is straight after the removals, in actual fact, a week or two weeks after the removals, there was footage of these landlocked salmon spawning in the region just upstream of the barrier.
8:50 · So it really is something that you can actually visibly see.”
8:55 · “At this point, it all sounds and looks pretty convincing.
8:58 · Remove the barriers, the rivers reconnect, and nature returns.
9:02 · But it’s not always that simple.”
9:05 · Because while Europe is removing dams that have outlived their purpose, parts of the world are still building them.
9:11 · Much of the Global south still needs to meet growing demands.
9:14 · In the Democratic Republic of Congo only 1 in 5 people have access to electricity.
9:19 · The proposed Grand Inga hydropower project could eventually generate about 42 gigawatts of power — that’s about 15 times the DRC’s current capacity.
9:32 · “In many cases, there are barriers that need to be developed.
9:39 · We do need barriers, but we just want to make sure that the barriers that are there are well functioning.”
9:46 · Meanwhile in India, the issue is more than just electricity.
9:49 · The country of more than 1.4 billion is investing heavily in its dam network.
9:54 · The government says they’re being built to secure water supplies, support agriculture and to help control flooding.
10:00 · But many communities, particularly in the Himalayas, have fought these new developments.
10:05 · They claim that these dams are a threat to fragile ecosystems and disrupt the lives of local residents.
10:10 · And as drought and flood risk increases, questions are being raised about how long some of these new dams and reservoirs can even remain effective.
10:20 · “We need them. We have to survive.
10:23 · So the question is to try to have as few dams as possible and to keep them working for as long as possible.”
10:33 · Some dams will remain essential for decades to come.
10:36 · And new dams will still have to be built.
10:38 · But Enobieta shows us that our relationship with dams needs a major rethink.
10:43 · “Wherever you build something, you have to take into account the whole life cycle.
10:47 · You have to take into account that someday this will be considered obsolete, it will be a danger, a hazard or whatever, and will be removed.
10:58 · When we first started out removing this reservoir, we didn’t believe we would see it.
11:02 · I work in the environment and mostly we give bad news.
11:06 · We look at the environment and we see problems: climate change, pollution, extinction, whatever.
11:14 · And to see something that was barely imaginable some years ago and that’s happened.
11:22 · That’s really a nice thing.”
11:31 · “Are there obsolete dams or barriers close to where you live?
11:33 · And how do they affect your river systems?
11:36 · Let us know in the comments, and if you wanna see more videos like this, you know what to do — hit subscribe.”
Wild Horses America’s Most Beloved Invasive Species
PBS Terra, 10 22, 2020
Video (8:15)
Description
Thank you to Target for supporting PBS. You can learn more at: https://target.com/community
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Wild horses made their home on the islands of North Carolina centuries ago, supposedly descendants of horses brought by shipwrecked colonizers. Today, they are celebrities on these islands, creating a tourist frenzy and drawing thousands of people every summer to the northern beaches of North Carolina.
But the situation is complicated. The horse population needs to be managed because they can cause serious damage to the ecosystem. How can we respect these horses and keep them wild while protecting the islands?
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Transcript
The wild horses debate
0:01 · [Narrator] Thank you to Target for supporting PBS. These are the wild horses of the Outer Banks. Locals call them Banker horses. They’ve managed to survive here for more than five centuries, but they’re not technically supposed to be here. Some view these horses as symbols of the American spirit, others as a beloved landmark of the local community. But many view them as an invasive pest, and one that’s damaging a fragile landscape.
Survival on the coast
0:33 · So what do we do when an invasive species becomes an Instagram star?
0:37 · [soft music] [seagulls calling] Ah, living by the ocean sounds pretty nice, but surviving on this thin sliver of sand off the coast of North Carolina isn’t easy. Banker horses endure powerful storms and hordes of summer tourists.
0:59 · But how did they get here?
1:01 · Horses have a curious origin story. Fossils tell us their ancestors actually originated in North America around 30 million years ago and spread to other continents over the Bering land bridge. But then the ancestors of horses died out in North America. The modern day species only returned to the continent thousands of years later when European colonizers brought them back.
Origins and ecology
1:25 · Europeans also brought with them pigs, cattle, and rats, along with a host of dangerous germs, none of which were native to the continent. Over the past five centuries these species have wreaked havoc on the landscapes, ecosystems, and people that were already here. But the way we treat wild horses is very different from the way we treat wild pigs, for example. Okay, you are very cute, but you’re also a scourge and a nuisance.
Famous feral animals
1:57 · Wild horses and wild pigs are both feral, meaning they were once domesticated animals that broke free to live in the wild. And they can both cause a lot of destruction to landscapes when there’s too many of them. On the Outer Banks, wildlife officials shoot feral pigs from helicopters to control their numbers. In contrast, these horses all have names and are famous on Instagram.
2:22 · They’re island celebrities.
2:24 · And they even have a cool origin story. Supposedly the descendants of horses that swam ashore from Spanish shipwrecks in the 15th century, populating this chain of islands that hugs the North Carolina coast.
2:37 · So are horses a reintroduced native species, or are they invasive?
2:43 · Those are questions without clear answers.
2:46 · [Meg] You sorta have to stop and ask yourself at what point does a species become, maybe not native, but they’re not invasive.
Environmental impact
2:54 · [Narrator] Meg Puckett manages the Corolla herd, one of three large herds that roam the Outer Banks. It’s her job to decide what happens to these horses. Horses pose a unique challenge on barrier islands. Barrier islands are the first line of defense against hurricanes, but they’re increasingly threatened by sea level rise and human development. Some of these islands are only a mile wide, yet population growth around here is twice the national average.
3:23 · So human development is pushing from one direction and sea level rise from the other, causing what’s called a coastal squeeze. Now take all the pressures these islands already face and add a herd of dune-trampling, plant-eating horses. You see, plants are vital to barrier islands. They clean the water, help anchor the dunes from erosion, and provide habitat for birds and fish.
3:48 · Too many horses can mean serious damage to the vegetation, and that makes the island more vulnerable to erosion and storms. There’s a cautionary tale out West, where a different population of problematic ponies, the beloved wild mustangs, have gotten so numerous that they’re gobbling up resources from other species, and costing the federal government more than $80 million to manage every year. Here in the islands, the herds are smaller, but there’s another problem. More horses attract more tourists.
The human-horse conflict
4:20 · And humans really want to get close to them. It’s illegal to approach a wild horse because if a horse feels threatened, well, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a horse kick, but it’s not a fun time. You could get seriously hurt. And humans put the horses in danger too. Almost every summer, a wild horse is either hit by a car, or fed something that makes them seriously ill.
4:45 · [Meg] I got sent a tech TikTok video yesterday of a girl sitting crouched down in front of a horse with her hands around his head. I really doubt that she meant anything bad by it. I don’t think, you know, she didn’t realize that she was being harmful, but she was.
Managing the herd
5:00 · [Narrator] Social media has fueled the public’s fascination with wild animals, not just here, but around the world. On one hand, it raises awareness of potentially threatened or endangered species, but it also creates pressure to exploit or sometimes even remove animals from their habitat to serve as props for selfies. This desire to be close to wild animals has led to injury and death for some of these very horses. Meg’s challenge is to manage both horses and people.
5:31 · [Meg] It’s one of those things where you just have to find that balance. And we know that if the horses are left to breed uncontrolled, number one, we’re gonna have a population that’s not sustainable. Number two, you start to see really bad inbreeding. We were starting to see really bad genetic issues and birth defects with the foals.
5:48 · [Narrator] Part of that management is horse birth control. Meg can keep the herd’s numbers down with contraceptive darting. Essentially, she uses a dart gun to shoot fertile mares with birth control. [dart gun snaps] It stings a little, but not more than a fly bite. The humans are a little harder to control.
6:07 · [Meg] We’re seeing so many more people visit the north beaches that have never been here before. And so they don’t know the history, they don’t really know the rules, and the reasons why we have those rules, and why they’re so important. So our education and public outreach efforts have really been stepped up the past couple years.
Future sustainability
6:25 · [Narrator] Unlike feral pigs or rats, humans have decided it’s worth the effort to keep these sort of wild horses around. The solution is essentially to keep them from being too wild.
6:38 · [Meg] Yeah, your definition of wild might have to change a little, but we still work to do everything we can to let the horses live a natural life.
6:48 · For now, it’s up to the humans and the horses to keep a healthy distance. Not too far and not too close. And find a balance so that we can preserve this place, and make sure that in a hundred or 500 years from now, there are still islands to call home, for us and the horses. We’d like to thank Target for being a proud supporter of PBS.
7:11 · Since the first Target opened in 1962, their mission has been to help families discover the joy of everyday life. In all 50 states, Target is dedicated to being a good neighbor, and working with their communities and neighbors to make life a little better. There are over 350,000 team members employed by Target to continue their mission every day. To learn more about Target’s commitment, you can check out target.com/community, or click the link in the description.
7:36 · PBS is asking you to share your stories, experiences, and ideas on your life in America today. PBS American Portrait is a nationwide storytelling project, a chance to be seen, heard, and give a glimpse into your own life. Everyone has a story. Share yours at pbs.org/americanportrait. [dynamic music] Hey guys, thanks so much for watching this episode of “Overview”. We’d love to know what you thought, so leave us a comment down below.
8:05 · And if there’s something cool in your backyard that we should come film with drones, well, let us know in a comment too. All right, see ya next time.
Films
Managing Moose Colorado’s Most Dangerous Animal
Rocky Mountain PBS, 09-17-2026
Documentary Film (26:40)
Description
Moose have flourished in Colorado in recent decades, leading to more attacks on people, overgrazing in key valleys and declining ecosystems. On top of that, the question of the animal’s native status has started a contentious debate that could have large impacts on the future of moose in Colorado. Now the question becomes how to manage the population as moose enter the spotlight.
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Transcript
0:00 · (MUSIC PLAYING) I LOVE MOOSE.
0:05 · I JUST LOVE THEM.
0:06 · YOU KNOW, THEY’RE AMAZING CREATURES.
0:09 · IT’S BECOME ONE OF THE MOST EXCITING THINGS FOR PEOPLE TO SEE IN THIS AREA, FOR SURE.
0:16 · MOOSE ARE EXTREMELY POPULAR, BUT THEY’RE ALSO THE MOST DANGEROUS ANIMAL IN COLORADO. [SCREAMING] HERE IT COMES.
0:23 · GET AWAY!
0:24 · IF THEIR EARS GO BACK, IF THEIR HACKLES RAISE UP, IT’S PROBABLY A GOOD INDICATOR THAT YOU’RE TOO CLOSE.
0:29 · I TURNED AROUND AND IT WAS A MOOSE, AND IT WAS IN FULL CHARGE. COMING UP THE TRAIL BEHIND US.
0:36 · THEY LOOK DOCILE, BUT DON’T LET THAT FOOL YOU. THAT’S JUST HOW THEY DEAL WITH THREATS.
0:43 · AS MOOSE POPULATION INCREASES, AS HUMAN POPULATION INCREASES, ALL OF THOSE ARE LEADING TO PROBABLY MORE ENCOUNTERS AND CONFLICTS.
0:50 · MOOSE WERE TRANSLOCATED TO COLORADO IN THE 1970S, AND SO I THINK PEOPLE WILL GET THE WRONG IDEA ABOUT WHETHER MOOSE BELONG IN THE STATE OF COLORADO.
1:01 · SINCE THOSE TRANSPLANTS, THE POPULATION HAS STEADILY INCREASED. BUT YOU CAN HAVE TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING.
1:08 · AND YOU CAN SEE, WE ALSO HAVE A LOT OF WHAT WE CALL ZOMBIE WILLOWS OUT HERE. THEY’VE BEEN BROWSED BY ELK AND MOOSE TO THE POINT WHERE YOU CAN SEE MOST OF THEM ONLY HAVE A FEW REMAINING LEAVES.
1:20 · JUST IN 20 YEARS, WE KNOW WE’VE LOST ABOUT 98% OF THE TALL WILLOW. AND WE ATTRIBUTE THAT TO THE FACT THAT MOOSE MOVED INTO THE PARK FROM THE WEST.
1:27 · THERE WAS A BIG SORT OF WAVE OF NEWS STORIES ABOUT… THE IDEA THAT MOOSE ARE NON-NATIVE OR SOMETIMES YOU EVEN SEE THE WORD INVASIVE. BUT WE HAVE IDENTIFIED MOOSE HAVE BEEN HERE FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS.
1:40 · IT’S IRRELEVANT THAT IF THERE WERE 1 OR 100 MOOSE HERE, 500 YEARS AGO OR SOMETHING IN THE VALLEY. LIKE WHAT MATTERS AS THE WAY THINGS ARE FUNCTIONING, WE’RE LOSING ECOSYSTEM SERVICES AND CHARACTERISTICS THAT MIGHT TAKE DECADES TO RECOVER.
1:55 · EVERYBODY HAS AN OPINION ON WILDLIFE MANAGEMENT.
1:59 · BUT I HOPE WE CAN CONTINUE TO MANAGE MOOSE AT THE APPROPRIATE NUMBER TO PREVENT THEM FROM PEAKING AND CRASHING. (MUSIC PLAYING) IT SOUNDED LIKE SHE’S, MAYBE A LITTLE FURTHER UP ENDO. WE’RE TRYING ONE LAST SPOT IN HORSESHOE PARK BEFORE WE HEAD UP VALLEY.
2:20 · IT SOUNDS GOOD.
2:21 · WE’LL HEAD YOUR WAY AND SEE YOU SHORTLY. SO WE HAVE SOME MOOSE THAT ARE WEARING A COLLAR THAT MAKES A BEEPING NOISE, AND HE CAN USE THAT ANTENNA TO FIND THEM.
2:32 · YEAH, SO IN THIS CASE, WE’RE LOOKING FOR AN ADULT COW WHO WE CAPTURED LAST YEAR AND FIT WITH A COLLAR. BASED ON THE SIGNALS IT’S GIVING ME, IT’S SOUNDING LIKE SHE’S KIND OF DIRECTLY BEHIND ME. KIND OF HEADING TOWARDS THAT BARE HILLSIDE BACK THERE. SOMEWHERE BETWEEN ME AND THERE IS WHERE IT SOUNDS LIKE SHE’S COMING FROM.
2:51 · SO THEY’RE RIGHT OVER HERE.
2:53 · AND WE’RE GOING TO GO–WE’RE GOING TO MEET THEM OVER HERE BECAUSE SHE MOVED THAT WAY A LITTLE BIT. THIS IS THE WORK WE OFTEN DO, WHICH IS THAT WE WANT TO SEE IF SHE HAS A BABY. AND SO WE’D GO A LITTLE CLOSER, BUT WE’RE JUST, LIKE BEING QUIET IS A BIG THING BECAUSE SHE MIGHT JUST STAND UP. AND LIKE, WALK INTO THE BRUSH.
3:13 · FOR MOOSE IN ROCKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK, IT BECAME CLEAR THAT WE NEEDED SOME MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THEIR BEHAVIOR, THEIR SURVIVAL, SOME THINGS ABOUT THEIR POPULATION. AND SO WE HAD A FEW COLLARED IN 2017 AND THEN EVERY YEAR SINCE THEN.
3:29 · OH, THERE SHE GOES.
3:34 · AND THERE’S THE CALF, YEAH.
3:37 · SO A BIG QUESTION THAT IS IMPORTANT FOR UNDERSTANDING HOW MOOSE ARE ACTING IN THE PARK IS JUST UNDERSTANDING HOW MANY THERE ARE. AND SO IT’S ACTUALLY A BIG CHALLENGE TO ESTIMATE MOOSE ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD BECAUSE THEY TEND TO BE FAIRLY ELUSIVE.
3:51 · THEY’RE MOSTLY SOLITARY.
3:53 · THEY’RE NOT SEEN IN BIG GROUPS IN BIG MEADOWS. AND SO WHAT WE DO IS WE USE A HIGH-FLYING FIXED WING AIRCRAFT THAT USES INFRARED TO SEE MOOSE ON THE LANDSCAPE.
4:06 · LAST YEAR WE DID THE VERY FIRST PARK-WIDE SURVEY OF MOOSE AND WHAT WE FOUND IS THAT THE POPULATION’S AT ABOUT 240 INDIVIDUALS. ONE THING THAT THAT SHOWED US IS THAT THE POPULATION INCREASED ALMOST 50 PERCENT IN JUST FIVE YEARS.
4:19 · ROCKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK IS HOME TO HUNDREDS OF ANIMAL SPECIES. THE PARK COVERS 415 SQUARE MILES OF VARYING MOUNTAIN ENVIRONMENTS. THIS INCLUDES WETLANDS, WHICH ONLY MAKE UP 4% OF THE PARK, BUT ARE CRUCIAL HABITAT FOR THE MANY PLANTS, BIRDS, AND MAMMALS THAT LIVE THERE.
4:39 · IN RECENT YEARS, WE’VE SEEN DRAMATIC LOSSES OF TALL WILLOW. AND TALL WILLOW IS THE PLANT THAT IS MOST IMPORTANT TO A FUNCTIONING WETLAND IN ROCKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK.
4:50 · WE ALSO HAVE A LOT OF WHAT WE CALL ZOMBIE WILLOWS OUT HERE. THESE WILLOWS SHOULD BE 10 TO 12 FEET PLUS TALL. AND OVER THE RECENT DECADES, THEY’VE BEEN BROWSED BY ELK AND MOOSE TO THE POINT WHERE YOU CAN SEE MOST OF THEM ONLY HAVE A FEW REMAINING LEAVES.
5:07 · DURING THE SUMMER, ONE MOOSE CAN EAT AS MUCH WILLOW AS 15 ELK, CONSUMING UP TO 60 POUNDS A DAY. ON THE WEST SIDE OF ROCKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK, THIS HAS BEEN A MAJOR FACTOR IN THE DEGRADATION OF THE WILLOW POPULATION.
5:22 · HERE’S AN EXAMPLE OF SOME OF THESE.
5:24 · THIS TOO, THESE WERE WILLOWS AND OVER MANY DECADES OF JUST GETTING ALL OF THEIR NEW SHOOTS EATEN. THESE WERE SOME OF THE WILLOWS THAT DIDN’T MAKE IT BETWEEN 1999 AND 2019 THE ACREAGE OF TALL WILLOWS THAT IS WILLOWS TWO METERS OR TALLER DECLINED BY 98 PERCENT. SO THAT’S WHAT WE’RE TRYING TO REVERSE.
5:49 · AS PART OF THE ELK AND VEGETATION MANAGEMENT PLAN, THE NATIONAL PARK SERVICE INSTALLED SIX-FOOT-TALL FENCES IN HOPES OF RESTORING WILLOWS IN THESE IMPORTANT WETLAND AREAS. THE FENCES KEEP ELK AND MOOSE OUT WHILE ALLOWING SMALLER CREATURES LIKE BEAVER TO WIGGLE UNDERNEATH A GAP LOW IN THE FENCE.
6:07 · THIS FENCE HAS BEEN INSTALLED SINCE 2011 AND IT’S ABOUT 16 AND A HALF ACRES AND WE’VE SEEN MARKED WILLOW GROWTH AS YOU CAN SEE HERE. IT’S ALL-NATURAL REGROWTH AFTER JUST EXCLUDING BROWSING.
6:22 · SO BACK BEHIND ME YOU CAN SEE PRETTY HEALTHY STAND OF WILLOW. IT’S NOT QUITE TO THE POINT THAT WE’D CALL RECOVERED, BUT IT’S MAKING GREAT PROGRESS INSIDE THE FENCE. YOU CAN SEE THE CONTRAST IS PRETTY STARK BETWEEN THESE AREAS THAT ARE GREEN AND PRETTY WET AND THE AREA RIGHT NEXT TO IT THAT’S SUPER DRY.
6:43 · MOOSE NOW ARE ADDING TO THE STRESSORS OF THESE AREAS. SO, WHEN WE FIRST STARTED THE ELK AND VEGETATION MANAGEMENT PLAN, IT WAS VERY MUCH FOCUSED ON ELK. WE KNOW THAT THE MOOSE POPULATION IS BURGEONING IN THE PARK AS WELL AS OUTSIDE OF THE PARK. SO, LOOKING AT JUST AN ADDITIONAL STRESSOR, FUTURE WETLAND RIPARIAN RESTORATION INCLUDES MOOSE AS PART OF THE EQUATION NOW TOO.
7:07 · MOOSE HAVE SHOWED US THAT MUCH OF COLORADO, PARTICULARLY THE CENTRAL ROCKY MOUNTAIN SPAN OF COLORADO, MUCH OF THAT IS EXCELLENT MOOSE HABITAT.
7:17 · ANDY HOLLAND IS THE BIG GAME MANAGER FOR COLORADO PARKS AND WILDLIFE. PART OF HIS JOB IS TO LOOK AT THE MOOSE POPULATION AND ECOLOGICAL IMPACTS AROUND THE STATE TO KEEP THINGS IN BALANCE.
7:28 · MOOSE ARE DOING REALLY WELL IN COLORADO.
7:31 · THEY’VE BEEN ON THE INCREASE AND PIONEERING NEW HABITATS FOR THE LAST 30 YEARS.
7:36 · FOR MUCH OF THE 20TH CENTURY, SEEING A MOOSE IN COLORADO WAS RARE. IN THE 1970S, WHAT WAS THEN KNOWN AS THE COLORADO DIVISION OF WILDLIFE STARTED A PROGRAM TO BRING MOOSE INTO THE STATE AND ESTABLISH A BREEDING POPULATION. BEFORE THAT POINT, WITH NO OFFICIAL SYSTEM IN PLACE TO TRACK MOOSE, IT’S UNCLEAR HOW MANY WERE IN COLORADO.
7:57 · I THINK AND FROM WHAT I GATHER FROM OLD REPORTS AND WHATNOT. THERE IS HISTORICAL RECORD EVIDENCE OF MOOSE IN COLORADO, AND THEY WERE EXTIRPATED LIKE A LOT OF BIG GAME IN THE LATE 1800S. BUT EVERYBODY LOVES MOOSE. AND SO, THERE WAS AN INTEREST IN HAVING MOOSE BROUGHT BACK BOTH FOR THE HUNTING OPPORTUNITY AND FOR THE WILDLIFE VIEWING OPPORTUNITY.
8:21 · THE FIRST RELOCATION IN 1978 BROUGHT 12 MOOSE FROM UTAH TO NORTH PARK, COLORADO. WHERE AN ABUNDANCE OF WILLOW MADE THE PERFECT HABITAT FOR A BUDDING MOOSE POPULATION.
8:33 · IN NORTH PARK, THE NATURAL HABITAT UP HERE IS VERY STRONG IN THE NUTRIENTS. I DON’T CARE IF IT’S CATTLE, SHEEP, THEY THRIVE ON IT. WE JUST SIT UP IN THE VERY NORTHWEST CORNER OF COLORADO, AND IT’S JUST A BOWL UP HERE. MOUNTAINS ALL THE WAY AROUND. AND WALDEN IS THE ONLY INCORPORATED TOWN IN THE COUNTY. MY NAME IS TOOTIE CROWNER, AND I’M BORN AND RAISED HERE.
9:01 · I WAS ELECTED TO MAYOR IN THE 90S, AND I WAS MAYOR TO 95, AND THEN I WAS A COUNTY COMMISSIONER FOR EIGHT YEARS. IN THE BEGINNING, THE TOWN WAS ONE OF THE 10 ENDANGERED TOWNS IN THE UNITED STATES IN THE 95, RIGHT IN THROUGH THERE. AND WE SAID WE NEEDED SOME HELP TO HELP OUR TOWN. AND IF WE WERE GOING TO HAVE THE MOOSE HERE AND IT WAS A TOURIST THING, WE NEEDED TO CAPITALIZE ON IT.
9:22 · AND SO THEY CHANGED IT TO BE CALLED THE MOOSE VIEWING CAPITAL OF COLORADO. I LIVE RIGHT IN TOWN HERE, A BLOCK FROM THE MAIN STREET HERE. AND WE ALWAYS WOULD SAY, JUST DRIVE AROUND TOWN AND YOU’LL SEE A MOOSE OUT THERE.
9:40 · STARTING WITH THE FIRST TRANSFER OF MOOSE TO NORTH PARK IN 1978, COLORADO DIVISION OF WILDLIFE BROUGHT IN 215 MOOSE FROM NEIGHBORING STATES OVER THE NEXT SEVERAL DECADES. THE MOOSE THRIVED IN THEIR NEW ENVIRONMENT. TODAY, THE OVERALL MOOSE POPULATION IS ESTIMATED TO BE 3400.
10:01 · MOOSE HAVE BEEN PIONEERING ON THEIR OWN AND FILLING IN VACANT HABITAT AND EXPANDING BEYOND WHERE WE PUT THEM. WHICH IS OFTEN WHAT HAPPENS WITH REINTRODUCED POPULATIONS, THEY HAVE ABUNDANT FORAGE BECAUSE THAT SPECIES HAS NOT BEEN THERE FOR A LONG TIME. BUT YOU CAN HAVE TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING. OK, I’M JUST GOING TO WALK OVER HERE. I CAN SEE HER. IT’S AMAZING HOW MUCH THEY DISAPPEAR IN EVEN GRASS LIKE NOT THAT TALL.
10:31 · YOU KNOW?
10:32 · ON THE ONE HAND, I LOVE SEEING MOOSE.
10:34 · THEY’RE SO COOL.
10:35 · THEY’RE THESE HONESTLY PRETTY ODD-LOOKING ANIMALS. AND THEN ON THE OTHER SIDE, AS AN ECOLOGIST, I KNOW THAT WE HAVE TO SOMETIMES INTERVENE AND BALANCE SPECIES WITH THEIR ENVIRONMENT.
10:46 · AND SO, WHAT WE’RE TRYING TO PREVENT IS MOOSE POPULATIONS FROM PEAKING, OVER BROWSING SENSITIVE WILLOW AND ASPEN COMMUNITIES AND THEN CRASHING.
10:55 · AS THE IMPACT OF MOOSE ON THE ENVIRONMENT HAS BECOME MORE EVIDENT, SCIENTISTS AND SOME MEDIA OUTLETS QUESTIONED WHETHER THE SPECIES IS NATIVE AND BELONGS HERE.
11:05 · THE LAST YEAR OR TWO, THERE WAS A BIG WAVE OF NEWS STORIES ABOUT MOOSE THAT WERE KIND OF CENTERED AROUND THE PREMISE THAT MOOSE HAVE BEEN INTRODUCED TO COLORADO BUT ARE NON-NATIVE, OR SOMETIMES YOU EVEN SEE THE WORD INVASIVE AND I STARTED TO DIG INTO, YOU KNOW, WHAT IS THE SCIENCE BEHIND THIS CONCLUSION?
11:29 · I’M WILLIAM TAYLOR.
11:31 · I’M AN ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, A CURATOR OF ARCHAEOLOGY. SO I SPEND A LOT OF MY TIME DIGGING INTO MUSEUM COLLECTIONS ACROSS THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN WEST HERE. SOMEWHERE IN THIS LAB, WE’VE GOT ALMOST EVERY ANIMAL THAT’S LIVED IN COLORADO AT LEAST IN THE LAST 20,000 YEARS. SO, WHAT WE’RE LOOKING AT HERE IS JUST ONE OF OUR MOOSE FROM OUR COLLECTION.
11:55 · AT CU’S MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY, WILLIAM TAYLOR AND HIS TEAM HAVE BEEN CHALLENGING THIS IDEA THAT MOOSE ARE NOT NATIVE TO COLORADO. THEY’VE BEEN DIGGING THROUGH WRITTEN ARCHIVES, MUSEUM COLLECTIONS, AND ARCHAEOLOGICAL RECORDS TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE HISTORY OF MOOSE IN THE STATE.
12:12 · IT’S THAT ONE, SO THERE’S, UH, YEAH, SOME GRAND COUNTY MOOSE. IT’S THE ONE THAT SAYS 6745 ON IT. SO WE’RE SITTING HERE IN THE MAMMAL’S COLLECTION OF THE DENVER MUSEUM OF NATURE AND SCIENCE AND WE’RE LOOKING HERE AT THE PARTIAL PELT HERE OF A MOOSE THAT WAS HARVESTED IN THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS NEAR GRAND LAKE IN THE STATE OF COLORADO. SO HERE YOU CAN SEE THE TAG, THE FIELD NUMBER, THE DATE OF COLLECTION HERE IN 1944.
12:41 · SO, THIS IS JUST A NICE VISUAL REPRESENTATION OF THE PRESENCE OF MOOSE IN THE MID 20TH CENTURY. SO, THE FIRST TAKEAWAY FROM OUR MOOSE RESEARCH, PRETTY MUCH FROM THE BEGINNING OF ACCESSIBLE RECORD KEEPING IN THE STATE OF THE COLORADO. THERE IS A CONTINUOUS AND PERSISTENT RECORD OF MOOSE.
13:01 · SO, WHO’S TO SAY MOOSE WERE NOT HERE BEFORE?
13:06 · I MEAN, THE PROBABILITY OF THEM BEING AROUND IN COLORADO IS PRETTY GOOD. YOU KNOW, THERE COULD BE A TIME WHEN MOOSE WERE HERE, AND THEN THEY LEFT AGAIN, AND THEN THEY CAME BACK.
13:20 · SO, WHO’S TO SAY THAT’S NOT HAPPENING?
13:23 · CRYSTAL C’BEARING IS THE TRIBAL HISTORIC PRESERVATION OFFICER FOR THE NORTHERN ARAPAHO TRIBE. AND WORKED WITH WILLIAM TAYLOR ON HIS STUDY ABOUT THE HISTORY OF MOOSE IN THE SOUTHERN ROCKIES.
13:35 · FOR THE MOOSE, YOU KNOW, THEY WERE THOUGHT AS IN ARAPAHO HINENIHII. IT’S LIKE, HE’S LIKE A BIG MAN. HE LOOKED LIKE A BIG MAN. YOU KNOW, MOOSE ARE SO HUGE AND THEY PROVIDE A LOT OF MEAT. (MUSIC PLAYING) IT WAS ANOTHER SOURCE OF RESOURCES FOR US AS A FOOD SOURCE, AS CLOTHING, AS MAKING ITEMS, MATERIALS. WHEN YOU THINK ABOUT TRIBES, WE WERE A NATURAL PREDATOR AS WELL.
14:08 · AND SO, WE HUNTED THEM AND WE KEPT THEM AT CONTROLLED WHEN WE WERE THERE.
14:15 · YOU KNOW, WITHOUT HUNTING IN COLORADO, THE ANIMALS WOULD BECOME OVERPOPULATED OVER TIME FOR THE AMOUNT OF HABITAT WE HAVE LEFT. SO, THERE ARE AREAS THAT, YOU KNOW, JUST CANNOT SUSTAIN THE WILDLIFE UNCHECKED.
14:30 · SCOTT LIMMER RUNS COMANCHE WILDERNESS OUTFITTERS BASED IN NORTHERN COLORADO. THIS IS HIS 36TH SEASON AS A BIG GAME HUNTING GUIDE. HE PROVIDES FOOD, CAMPING GEAR, HORSES, AND DECADES OF INSIGHT TO HUNTERS WHO DRAW LICENSES FOR A VARIETY OF BIG GAME ANIMALS, INCLUDING MOOSE.
14:50 · OH,THERE’S ONE, I THINK.
14:56 · OH, THERE HE IS. HE JUST WENT UP THROUGH THAT OTHER MEADOW. WHAT WE WOULD SAY IS A RECORD BOOK QUALITY TYPE BULL THERE. YOU KNOW, EVERY AREA IS A LITTLE DIFFERENT HOW YOU DO THE HUNT AND HOW MANY MOOSE THERE ARE IN THE AREA. SO AS THE MOOSE PIONEER OUT AND BECOME MORE POPULATED IN NEW AREAS, THEN THE STATE WILL START A SEASON IN THOSE AREAS TOO.
15:17 · BIG GAME HUNTING IS HIGHLY REGULATED IN COLORADO AND THROUGHOUT THE WEST. AND THE ONLY THING THAT’S KEEPING THEM FROM OVERPOPULATING. IS OUR FEMALE HARVEST. AND WE’VE INCREASED OUR COW MOOSE HUNTING LICENSES FOURFOLD IN THE LAST 13 YEARS.
15:35 · TO REGULATE HUNTING, CPW DIVIDED THE STATE INTO GAME MANAGEMENT UNITS, OR GMUS. OF COLORADO’S 185 GMUS, 74 ARE OPEN TO MOOSE HUNTING, WITH A LIMITED NUMBER OF LICENSES ALLOTTED TO EACH UNIT. BASED ON MOOSE POPULATION AND STATUS OF THE HABITAT IN THAT AREA. CPW ISSUES TAGS THROUGH A LOTTERY SYSTEM, SO IT’S THE LUCK OF THE DRAW.
15:59 · FOR 2026, WE HAD 761 MOOSE LICENSES AND 66,000 APPLICANTS FOR THOSE 761 LICENSES. IT’S ESSENTIALLY THE POWER BALL OF BIG GAME HUNTING. PEOPLE GO THEIR WHOLE LIVES LITERALLY WITHOUT EVER DRAWING. -GIANT BULL I’VE BEEN PUTTING IN SINCE THEY OFFERED THE LICENSES THE FIRST YEAR, ALMOST 30 YEARS AGO.
16:21 · I’VE NEVER DRAWN.
16:23 · YOU KNOW, IT’S VERY TOUGH TO GET. THERE’S THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE APPLYING FOR THOSE TAGS.
16:27 · YOU SEE THAT ROCK?
16:28 · HE WAS RIGHT BELOW THAT ONE.
16:33 · ALL OF OUR BIG GAME MANAGEMENT IS BASED ON HERD MANAGEMENT PLANS FOR EACH LOCAL INDIVIDUAL HERD. THOSE HERD MANAGEMENT PLANS HAVE BOTH BIOLOGICAL AND SOCIAL FACTORS TO CONSIDER. IN ADDITION TO NOT OVER BROWSING THE HABITAT, THEY ALSO HAVE A CONFLICT COMPONENT WITH MOOSE.
16:50 · AS COLORADO’S MOOSE POPULATION HAS INCREASED, MORE PEOPLE HAVE MOVED INTO THE STATE, LEADING TO MORE CONFLICTS WITH THE ANIMAL. (MUSIC PLAYING) HERE HE COMES, GET AWAY! [SCREAMING] THE PERSONALITY OF A MOOSE IS DECEIVING, I THINK. THEY LOOK DOCILE, BUT DON’T LET THAT FOOL YOU. THAT’S JUST HOW THEY DEAL WITH THREATS. (MUSIC PLAYING) THEIR PREDATOR AVOIDANCE STRATEGY IS USUALLY TO STAND THEIR GROUND AND USE THEIR FRONT HOOVES TO STOMP WHATEVER IS COMING THEIR WAY.
17:27 · AND SO, THEY’RE THE MOST DANGEROUS ANIMAL IN COLORADO.
17:31 · SINCE 2019, MOOSE HAVE ATTACKED AND HURT AT LEAST 31 PEOPLE IN COLORADO. THAT’S ABOUT THE SAME NUMBER OF MOUNTAIN LION AND BEAR ATTACKS COMBINED IN THE SAME TIME PERIOD. AND THAT’S ONLY WHAT HAS BEEN REPORTED TO CPW, LIKE THE ATTACK CHRIS RAY SURVIVED IN 2023.
17:49 · IT WAS SEPTEMBER OF 2023.
17:52 · MY DOG AND I WERE ON A HIKE IN THE MORNING UP A TRAIL RIGHT NEAR MY HOUSE.
17:57 · -COME, NALA.
17:58 · I WOULD FILL A BIG CONTAINER OF WATER, PUT IT IN MY BACKPACK. THAT BOTTLE OF WATER IN THAT BACKPACK DEFINITELY SAVED ME. WE DO THAT TRAIL EVERY MORNING OR WE USED TO. SO, THIS DAY I HEARD AN ANIMAL CROSSING THE CREEK AND I TURNED AROUND AND IT WAS A MOOSE AND IT WAS IN FULL CHARGE COMING UP THE TRAIL BEHIND US. THIS IS THE SPOT. SHE WAS COMING FROM THERE.
18:28 · YOU KNOW, SHE WAS MAYBE 30 FEET AWAY WHEN I SAW HER. AND I WENT ‘NO!■ AND I WENT LIKE THIS TOOK A COUPLE STEPS AND WENT OVER THAT BARBED WIRE. I THOUGHT, WELL, SHE’S GOING TO BE ON ME. AND SURE ENOUGH, SHE HIT ME, ALL FOUR HOOVES RIGHT ON MY BACK. AND I THOUGHT AT THAT MOMENT, WELL, MAYBE I’M A GONER.
18:53 · AND AS I LIFTED MY HEAD UP, I COULD SEE SHE WAS WHEELING AROUND TO COME BACK. AND I PUT MY HAND OVER MY HEAD BECAUSE I WASN’T THERE YET. AND SHE GOT MY ARM THAT TIME AND MY LEG. AND SO, I THOUGHT, I HAVE TO GET OUT OF HERE. I HAVE TO GET SOMETHING. AND I COULD BARELY MOVE. BUT I GOT MYSELF BEHIND THAT TREE SOMEHOW.
19:11 · WHEN SHE LEFT, SHE WENT THAT WAY AND BACK ACROSS THE CREEK. I COULD HEAR HER SPLASHING ACROSS. AND THEN LUCKILY, SHE NEVER CAME BACK. SHE ENDED UP BREAKING MY BACK IN THREE PLACES, BROKE A RIB, AND BROKE MY STERNUM, EVEN THOUGH THAT WAS FACE DOWN ON THE GROUND. I WAS JUST SO INCREDIBLY LUCKY, JUST LUCKY THAT I WAS CARRYING THAT WATER.
19:33 · THAT’S THE KEY.
19:38 · A COW MOOSE WITH A CALF IS FOR SURE THE MOST DANGEROUS ANIMAL WE HAVE IN COLORADO. AND PEOPLE NEED TO KEEP THEIR DISTANCE AND KEEP THEIR DOGS ON A LEASH, OR THE MOOSE WILL SEE THE DOG AS A THREAT TO ITS CALF.
19:55 · I’M DEFINITELY AFRAID NOW, AND I TAKE PRECAUTIONS. I STILL CARRY BEAR SPRAY AND A HORN BUT I DON’T HAVE ANY GRUDGE AGAINST MOOSE AND THEY’RE AMAZING CREATURES SO MUCH MORE CAPABLE THAN I AM. I HAVE TO HAVE GREAT RESPECT FOR THEM.
20:11 · AS MOOSE POPULATION INCREASES AS ITS HUMAN POPULATION INCREASES AND AS WE ARE ALL ENJOYING THE OUTDOORS MORE. ALL OF THOSE ARE LEADING TO PROBABLY MORE ENCOUNTERS AND CONFLICTS. I HOPE THAT WE CAN CONTINUE TO MANAGE MOOSE AT AN APPROPRIATE LEVEL WHICH IS THE HARD, GETTING THAT NUMBER IS THE HARD PART.
20:30 · MANAGING MOOSE IS A CHALLENGE ACROSS THE STATE, BUT IT CAN BE ESPECIALLY DIFFICULT WITHIN THE BORDERS OF ROCKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK, WHERE HUNTING IS PROHIBITED BY FEDERAL LAW.
20:41 · FOR MOOSE IN ROCKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK, THE POPULATION HAS CLIMBED TO A HIGHER-THAN-NORMAL LEVEL. AND THE BIGGEST REASON FOR THAT IS BECAUSE WE DON’T HAVE SOME OF THE APEX PREDATORS THAT TYPICALLY MANAGE UNGULATE POPULATIONS. SO, THE KEY THING HERE IS THAT WE HAVEN’T HAD WOLVES AND WE HAVEN’T HAD GRIZZLY BEARS. AND WITHOUT THOSE TWO NATURAL PREDATORS, WE HAVEN’T HAD REGULATION OF THE POPULATION.
21:05 · ONE PART THAT I THINK ABOUT IN TERMS OF MOOSE MANAGEMENT IS ROCKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK SHOULD BE WORKING WITH TRIBES ON HELPING CONTROL THIS MOOSE POPULATION. C’BEARING BELIEVES THERE COULD BE A SOLUTION TO THE OVERPOPULATION OF MOOSE IN ROCKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK. SHE THINKS AN AGREEMENT COULD BE REACHED BETWEEN TWO GOVERNMENTS, NORTHERN ARAPAHO AND THE UNITED STATES, TO ALLOW TRIBAL HUNTING ON NATIONAL PARK LAND.
21:33 · THERE’S SO MANY THINGS THAT YOU CAN UTILIZE, JUST LIKE THE BUFFALO. YOU KNOW, EVERY PART OF THE BUFFALO WAS USED, BUT EVERY PART OF THE MOOSE, YOU KNOW, AND REGARDLESS OF WHAT ANIMAL IT IS TOO.
21:43 · WHY CAN’T THEY LET TRIBES EXERCISE THEIR TREATY RIGHTS TO HARVEST THOSE MOOSE?
21:49 · THE MOST OBVIOUS SORT OF PREDATOR HERE THAT HAS BEEN REMOVED FROM THE EQUATION IS PEOPLE. AND I THINK ROCKY MOUNTAIN HAS SOME CHOICES TO MAKE ABOUT HOW THEY NAVIGATE MOOSE.
22:02 · IN JUNE 2026, THE JOURNAL OF BIOGEOGRAPHY PUBLISHED WILLIAM TAYLOR’S PEER-REVIEWED STUDY ABOUT THE HISTORY OF MOOSE IN THE SOUTHERN ROCKIES. THE STUDY DETERMINED THAT MOOSE HAVE BEEN PRESENT IN COLORADO FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS. AND THAT IT’S SCIENTIFICALLY INACCURATE TO FRAME MOOSE AS NON-NATIVE. THE NATIONAL PARK SERVICE DISAGREES WITH TAYLOR’S CONCLUSION.
22:27 · ONE THING THAT THE PARK HAS BEEN REALLY CONSISTENT ON IS SAYING, WE KNOW THERE’S BEEN MOOSE RARELY IN COLORADO. BUT WE DON’T THINK THERE’S ANY EVIDENCE OF A SUSTAINED BREEDING POPULATION. AND EVEN WITH NEW INFORMATION THAT’S BEEN GATHERED, NATIVITY ALONE ISN’T A VERY IMPORTANT FACTOR FOR OUR MANAGEMENT.
22:45 · FOR MOOSE, I THINK IT’S PRETTY CLEAR THAT WHETHER THEY WERE LABELED NATIVE OR NON-NATIVE, WE WOULD STILL BE WRITING A MANAGEMENT PLAN FOR THEM BECAUSE WE SEE THEM HAVING A MAJOR ECOLOGICAL EFFECT.
22:56 · THE REASON THAT I’VE ENTERED THIS DISCUSSION IS NOT BECAUSE IT’S IMPORTANT TO GET THE ACADEMIC NUANCES JUST RIGHT.
23:03 · IT’S THAT THAT LANGUAGE ENTERING THE MEDIA LANDSCAPE GIVES ME A LOT OF EXTRAORDINARY CONCERNS THAT YOU CAN DO EXTREME– SORT OF NO-HOLDS-BARRED MANAGEMENT CHOICES, RIGHT?
23:16 · AS PART OF TAYLOR’S STUDY, HE POINTS TO INSTANCES WHERE THE NATIONAL PARK SERVICE HAS REMOVED ANIMALS, THEY’VE LABELED AS INVASIVE IN AN EFFORT TO PROTECT THE ECOSYSTEM. WHILE ROCKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK SAYS THEY ARE WORKING ON A MOOSE MANAGEMENT PLAN, THEY AREN’T READY TO RELEASE DETAILS.
23:34 · IN A LOT OF OTHER PLACES THAT HAVE TACKLED THIS ISSUE, PEOPLE TURN TO THE SAME TOOLS. SO FENCING IS A COMMON TOOL. REPRODUCTIVE CONTROL IS A COMMON TOOL. CULLING IS USED IN SOME PLACES. THOSE ARE THE COMMON TOOLS THAT WE SEE TIME AND AGAIN.
23:49 · BUT WE WANT TO MAKE SURE THAT ALL THE MANAGEMENT ACTIONS THAT WE TAKE IN THE PARK ARE ON A REALLY STRONG SCIENTIFIC FOOTING BECAUSE THIS ISN’T SOMETHING THAT WE’LL DO FOR ONE OR TWO YEARS. THIS COULD BE SOMETHING INFLUENCES THE PARK FOR DECADES TO COME.
24:04 · THIS IS ONE OF THE LAST FEW PLACES WHERE WILDLIFE AND NATURAL PROCESSES CAN OCCUR. AND SO, IT’S IRRELEVANT THAT IF THERE WERE 1 OR 100 MOOSE HERE 500 YEARS AGO OR SOMETHING IN THE VALLEY, LIKE THE WAY THINGS ARE FUNCTIONING, WE’RE LOSING ECOSYSTEM SERVICES AND CHARACTERISTICS THAT MIGHT TAKE DECADES TO RECOVER IF THEY CAN BE RECOVERED.
24:27 · WE DEFINITELY WANT TO PROTECT SENSITIVE ASPEN AND WILLOW COMMUNITIES FROM OVERBROWSING OF MOOSE AND ELK BECAUSE IT CAN TAKE DECADES FOR OVERBROWSED HABITAT. IT CAN TAKE 30, 40 YEARS TO RECOVER.
24:42 · WE’RE VERY PLEASED BY THE EARLY OUTCOMES OF THIS PROJECT. YOU’LL EVEN BE ABLE TO SEE SOME OF OUR WILLOW PLANTINGS PRODUCING NEW LEAVES. SO, IT’S NICE WHEN YOU SEE THE POSITIVE OUTCOME AFTER MANY YEARS.
24:54 · ESPECIALLY WITH LARGE CHARISMATIC ANIMALS, IT’S MOSTLY WORKING WITH PEOPLE. BECAUSE PEOPLE ARE PASSIONATE ABOUT ANIMALS AND IT’S MEANINGFUL FOR PEOPLE TO KEEP THESE ANIMALS ON THE LANDSCAPE, KEEP THEIR POPULATIONS HEALTHY.
25:07 · THERE’S A LOT OF SOCIAL ASPECTS OF WILDLIFE MANAGEMENT, OF WHO WE’RE MANAGING FOR AND WHY, AND EVERYBODY HAS AN OPINION ON WILDLIFE MANAGEMENT. I MEAN, WE’RE ALL SCIENTISTS AND WE BASE A LOT OF OUR DECISIONS ON DATA. BUT A BIG COMPONENT OF THOSE DECISIONS IS THE HUMAN ELEMENT.
25:27 · I THINK THE HOPE FOR THE FUTURE OF MOOSE IS THEY’RE ALLOWED TO THRIVE AND NOT COMPETE. AND SO, TRYING TO FIND A GOOD SOLUTION, BRAINSTORMING AND REALLY FIGURING OUT WHAT’S THE BEST SOLUTION HERE FOR EVERYBODY.
25:45 · OUR CLIMATE AROUND US IS CHANGING. IN 2026, OUR CLIMATE IS DIFFERENT THAN IT’S GOING TO BE IN 2036. AND MOOSE ARE ADAPTING AND RESPONDING TO THOSE CHANGES. SO LIKE EVERYONE ELSE, I’M WATCHING WITH CURIOSITY AND HOPE THAT A THOUGHTFUL AND SUSTAINABLE SET OF CHOICES WILL BE MADE HERE. (MUSIC PLAYING)
Rebuilding The Herd Rewilding The Future
Episode 8/13/2026 of Conservation Works (Season 2026) - Released: 2026-08-13 - Duration: 00:27:27
Description
Explore Nebraska’s bighorn sheep comeback, Zoo Schools’ Earth Day event, the beauty of Scotts Bluff.
Transcript
- textbook Habitat destruction: death by a thousand cuts
- textbook Habitat fragmentation and landscape change
- slide Habitat Loss & Fragmentation