Man Spends 30 Years Turning Degraded Land into Massive Forest – Fools & Dreamers (Full Documentary)

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Recommends elijahparker · 2019-09 · on “Bird populations have declined since 1970 across nearly all habitats”

Here’s an encouraging story for New Zealand: [this video] “Fools & Dreamers: Regenerating a Native Forest is a 30-minute documentary about Hinewai Nature Reserve, on New Zealand’s Banks Peninsula, and its kaitiaki/manager of 30 years, botanist Hugh Wilson. When, in 1987, Hugh let the local community know of his plans to allow the introduced ‘weed’ gorse to grow as a nurse canopy to regenerate farmland into native forest, people were not only skeptical but outright angry – the plan was the sort to be expected only of “fools and dreamers”. Now considered a hero locally and across the country, Hugh oversees 1500 hectares resplendent in native forest, where birds and other wildlife are abundant and 4

Recommends tastyfreeze · 2020-11 · on “Is it better to plant trees or let forests regrow naturally?”

I enjoy sharing the short film in this vein, "Fools and Dreamers", that follows a group that bought some land in New Zealand and let it return to forest over 30 years. [this video]

Recommends dfcowell · 2021-10 · on “Downsides to planting trillions of trees”

This is a great short film that goes into detail about the project and the challenges faced in getting it off the ground: [this video]

Recommends Aromasin · 2022-05 · on “Historic fertilizer crunch threatens food security”

Frankly, yes, they do fix themselves. You'd be utterly shocked at what landscapes look like if we leave them. Having been part of forest regeneration efforts across the UK for the past 8 years - from southern heathlands to rocky Welsh and Scottish outcrops, good for "nothing but sheep" - I can say with all certainty that every part of the country except the most extreme alpine regions is suitable for reforestation or some form of plantation dense rewilding, mooring, wild flower meadow, etcetera. The same can be said of much of Canada and America, with my peers over there having the same results when grazing stops. Hell, the Mongolian steppes are turning to results of goat herding, and the Go

Recommends Aromasin · 2025-10 · on “Warming climate–not overgrazing–is biggest threat to rangelands, study suggests”

There's a guy in New Zealand I met who spent the last 30 years rewilding what was previously agriculture herding land. He said his biggest frustration with land owners wasn't the push back on what he was doing, but the ignorance as to what could be achieved. Every single person he spoke to told him explicitely if the land was left to go to nature, it would be nothing but gorse and it was a waste of good grazing land. The actual result was a return of native rain forest with levels of species diversity that were almost 60% of untouched rainforest, which is pretty incredibly in such a short amount of time. This is the guy for context - it's a very interesting video that really highlights the i

Cites archibaldJ · 2021-07 · on “The Metaverse Has Always Been a Dystopian Idea”

Yup that's the other approach;) Can achieve impact in another way too (e.g. Hugh Wilson [this video] ) But then it gets harder/costlier to access opporunities, facilities (eg health care) and infrastructures, as well as social and monetray capitals and (economical and politcal) power.

Cites Aromasin · 2021-11 · on “Greening of the Earth Mitigates Surface Warming (2020)”

Same in the UK (barring the mammals point). The country was 60-80% temperate rainforest before human habitation, depending on what research you go by. I grew up in the countryside. I cannot tell you how impossible it is to convince someone, who is dead set on consuming animal products, that we could regenerate that land if only we got rid of the cattle/fodder though. It's always "that land can't be used for anything else" or "having animals grazing there is good for the land", and that is just demonstrably false in every way. It's baffling that there can literally be old growth forest just on the other side of the hill, and the farmers will be adamant that the land they're on would be useles

Cites myshpa · 2023-08 · on “Global risk of heat stress to cattle from climate change”

> My argument was simply that it's not enough on its own There is not a magic bullet at this point ... we have to do many things to correct the overshoot. > reforestation can help, but that's not synonymous with stopping animal ag, although of course there is overlap Animal agriculture occupies as much space as all our forests do. The overlap and deforestation that have occurred over millennia are highly significant. [LINK] > doing so at the necessary scales would be incredibly disruptive to world cultures and economies There are many reasons why we need that. Without abundant biodiversity we might see collapse of animal populations, and we might lose remaining pollinators, for example. We w