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

What people said

Aromasin · 2025-10 · Recommendation

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 impact that over-grazing has: [VIDEO]

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Aromasin · 2022-05 · Recommendation

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 Gobi desert is though to have been cause by the same. In the UK for example, people are completely ignorant to how the place looked before we levelled it for grazing, viewing the 70% ecologically barren agricultural land (of which 80% of that is used for grazing or agriculture to feed cattle) as the norm and the 2.5% old growth forest as a more novelty, and something strangely "unique to that area". The country was 60-80% temperate rainforest before human habitation, depending on what research you go by. This video is especially poignant, and really shows the dramatic impact simply doing nothing has: [VIDEO]

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dfcowell · 2021-10 · Recommendation

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

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