(birds chirping}
{lion growling)
(birds chirping}
♪ (guitar music) ♪
Rewilding means reversing the destruction of the natural world
and attempting a mass restoration of ecosystems.
(sound of bulldozer passing)
(birds chirping)
♪ (guitar music) ♪
Why is it that trees are so amazingly resilient
that you can smash them, you can twist them and splinter them,
but they still come bounding back?
And why is it that understory trees
like box and holly and yew are so much tougher
than the big trees like oak and beech and ash in the forest canopy.
♪ (guitar music) ♪
I think the same answer applies to both
and that is elephants.
Does that sound crazy? I'm sure it does, but elephants were everywhere.
♪ (guitar music) ♪
Our ecosystem was dominated by giant straight-tusked elephants
and if trees could not resist them, they would be wiped out.
♪ (guitar music) ♪
And the elephants in Britain, they were driven out
by the ice into the southern Europe
and they persisted there till about forty thousand years ago.
So did rhinos and hippos.
Lions and hyenas lasted much longer.
But they were all eventually wiped out by human hunters.
♪ (guitar music) ♪
We live in a shadow land, in a dim, flattened relic of what there once was.
(sheep bleating)
And rewilding offers us this fantastic opportunity
to start restoring systems or
allowing them to restore themselves. I see it as reintroducing missing plants and
animals, then stepping back and letting nature get on with it.
One estimate suggest that between 2000 and 2030, around 30 million hectares of
land will be vacated by farmers, and that is an area the side of Poland.
So maybe, we're being a bit unambitious if we're talking about just wolves and lynx
and bisons, and otters and beavers, which are already spreading fast across Europe.
Perhaps, we should also be thinking about bringing back some of the lost Megafauna.
it seems to me that, REWILDING offer us more than just the restoration of
the ecosystem; it brings back into our lives a lot of thrill, and wonder and
enchantment. And wouldn't it be amazing if everybody had a Serengeti on their
doorstep.Rewilding the ecosystem offers us a chance to rewild our own lives as well.