(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.
♪ (guitar music) ♪
One estimate suggests
that between 2000 and 2030,
around 30 million hectares of land
will be vacated by farmers
♪ (guitar music) ♪
and that's an area the size of Poland.
♪ (guitar music) ♪
So maybe, we're being a bit unambitious
if we're talking about
just wolves and lynx and bison
and boar and beavers, which
are already spreading fast across Europe.
(various animal sounds)
Perhaps we should also
be thinking about bringing back
some of the lost megafauna.
It seems to me that rewilding
offers 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?
♪ (guitar music) ♪
Rewilding the ecosystem
offers us a chance
to rewild our own lives as well.