How To Save Our Forests and Rewild Our Planet

After centuries of clearing forest find out from Sir David Attenborough why we could soon have more forest than any of us have ever known.

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A Netflix original documentary series and groundbreaking collaboration between WWF, Netflix and Silverback Films, Our Planet showcases the world's natural wonders, iconic species and wildlife spectacles that still remain. We're all a part of this amazing planet, but we're changing it like never before. Discover the story of the one place we all call home.

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Most of us have a special memory with trees.

A childhood climb,
or their shade on a sunny day.

But we've taken trees for granted

and cleared nearly half
of our planet's forests.

Luckily, forests have an
extraordinary ability to recover.

Across much of the globe
lies a forest in the making.

Just the slightest opportunity,
and trees reveal their magical ability

to restore themselves and rewild the land,
seemingly for nothing.

This resilience stems from
a need to survive and recover

from the harshest conditions
nature can throw at them.

But forests have struggled to bounce back,
from us.

Nothing takes down trees
faster than humans.

We're devastatingly efficient.

In just 25 years,

we've lost over one million
square kilometers of forest.

We're still clearing
over ten billion trees a year.

Many of our ancient forests are gone,

where the variety of life
was most abundant and diverse.

We've also lost the forests' guardians,

the predators.

Who helped ensure that
plant eaters can't prevent the forests' return.

But we need trees.

Forests absorb carbon from our atmosphere,

and store it in their trunks,
roots and the soil.

They remove almost 15 billion tonnes
of carbon dioxide each year.

As we clear and burn forests,
we release dangerous amounts of carbon

back into the atmosphere,
increasing the rate of climate change.

We need to reverse this

and create a world of
expanding forests once more.

Luckily for us, the solution to how we
restore the planet's forests is simple.

We just need to give trees the opportunity

to draw on their natural resilience.

We can start by protecting those
last remaining ancient forests.

These precious places,
undamaged by humans,

still host their entire natural mix
of species, and trees, young and old.

From here, plants and animals can
radiate out to colonize new grounds.

These ancient places
need to remain standing forever.

Most of the other forests from our planet
have experienced some human impact.

Yet they can still be healthy and wild.

We can keep them this way

whilst carefully extracting
wood and other products

and valuing them as they are.

By managing them well,

we can work with their natural resilience
to keep them standing.

It's a fact that our
growing global population

will need to use more wood.

And that could be a good thing.

Wood is an extraordinary
renewable resource,

and taking it from well-managed sources
benefits forests and the planet.

But on their own, natural forests
can't provide all the wood that we need.

So we also have to farm trees,
just like we do other crops,

and create a new generation of plantations.

Plantations thus allow wildlife to
pass through natural forest corridors.

They benefit local communities
and economies,

and are planted on existing cleared land
so they don't replace natural forests.

Around the world, there are an estimated
two billion hectares of degraded land

where forests could be restored.

That's twice the size of Europe.

As we become more efficient farmers,
and adopt healthier diets,

we'll free up land for plantations.

And for our forests to return. To rewild.

Better farming.

More forests.

We could help nature to
accelerate this global restoration.

In many countries, people are
planting millions of trees by hand.

There are projects that
deploy extraordinary technology

to speed up the natural process.

Even shooting seeds to
rewild those hard-to-reach places.

If we do all these things,
just imagine our planet in the future.

We'll have protected
our amazing ancient forests.

We'll be able to harvest
all the timbre we'll ever need.

We'll have stabilized our climate.

And we'll have more natural forests
than any of us have ever known.

The best thing of all,
we could build a future

where our cities will be filled with trees,
giving us shade and cleaning the air.

This will make us all
healthier and happier.

Because just seeing trees from a window,
or walking past trees on our way to work

restores our minds and bodies.

That's the magic of trees.

And when you're in a forest,
you can feel it.

Go on.

Breathe.