The wildlife of
Britain and Ireland
rivals that of any
place I have visited.
Powerful predators
patrol our coastlines
and mountain tops.
Intrepid travellers journey for
hundreds of miles to visit us,
and thousands regularly assemble
to create some of the most dramatic
of wildlife spectacles.
For centuries, these wild spaces
have fired our imagination
and established our identity.
EXCITED CHATTER It is a
kingfisher! Yes, yes, yes!
Nature makes you feel calm.
It makes you feel really good.
It's very magical.
What I love most about nature is
the interconnectedness of all life.
For generations, we have celebrated
the beauty of the natural world
right here at home.
I think it all starts
with paying attention.
And, while you're there,
sometimes the most incredible
things will happen.
And yet, as it
gradually disappeared,
we barely noticed the change.
I can remember as a little boy,
the biodiversity on
farms was just amazing.
The birdlife was out of this
world compared to today.
And now, suddenly,
it is nearly gone.
All I see is houses,
buildings, people.
Today, one quarter of all
our species of mammals
are at risk of extinction...
..as are one third of our birds.
In just 20 years, our flying
insects have declined by 60%.
We are now one of the most
nature-depleted countries
on the planet.
Too often, we have regarded nature
as something it's nice to have.
But in fact, it underpins everything
that makes our lives possible.
In this film, we'll
meet inspiring people,
young and old, who are working
to restore the natural world.
There's undoubtedly the feeling
that it's either nature,
or it's food production - and
never the twain shall meet.
And I think it's the
complete opposite of that.
And we'll discover that we
all need to urgently repair
our relationship with
the natural world.
Nature is yours.
Nature is everybody's.
We now have a few short years during
which we can still make a choice.
It's now at a point where it's
too important to get it wrong.
Where just enough remains of the
natural world for it to recover.
This starts and ends with us.
CURLEWS CALL
The haunting call of the curlew.
Though these isles are still
home to around a quarter
of the world's curlews,
this once familiar sound
is rarely heard today.
Over their long lives,
these birds rely on the rich
winter feeding
grounds on the coast.
And in spring, curlew fly
inland to find the best place
to raise their young.
But each year, the land
beneath them changes.
It may be green and pleasant
seen from the ground,
but taking to the air
reveals a different truth.
It is green, but
this is not natural.
A curlew looking for a patch of
country wild enough to allow it
to make a nest finds mile
upon mile of identical fields.
In just a few decades,
our countryside has changed
beyond all recognition.
We have sprayed the
land with pesticides,
torn down miles of hedgerows,
and destroyed valuable
ancient woodlands.
Vast swathes of our countryside
that once thrummed with the sounds
of wildlife have
now fallen silent.
But against the odds, this curlew
finds a spot to make her nest
on a remote upland farm.
It's not just the changes in farming
practises that affect curlew.
An increase in predators
and changes in the climate
have also drastically
reduced their chances.
Only a quarter of all our curlew
chicks survive their first year.
ENGINE APPROACHES
CURLEW CALLS
Today, in order to feed the
increasing numbers of livestock,
our grasslands are
cut many times a year,
making it ever harder for
ground-nesting birds like curlew.
In her lifetime, the
curlew numbers have halved.
But there is cause for hope.
Some of our upland farms are
trying a different approach.
In the olden days, if I'd
seen a flower in the meadow,
that would've been a bad thing.
I was educated very conventionally,
and I worked on a lot of farms
through the '90s.
And I was motivated by what
all the other farmers around me
were motivated by, and
that was about producing
as many lambs as
I possibly could.
And the way we farmed was about
reducing the number of flowers,
and it was about getting as
much grass as we possibly could,
and it was about reseeding land
putting fertiliser on and spraying,
and all those kind of things.
My name is Neil Heseltine.
I'm a beef and sheep farmer,
and I farm here with
my partner, Leigh.
And we also have a
daughter, Violet.
Neil lives and works at
Hill Top Farm, in Malham,
on the southern edge of the
Yorkshire Dales National Park.
The Hill Top Farm is where
I was born and brought up
with my four sisters.
It's where my dad moved to when
he was 17, with his parents.
This is one of our most
beloved landscapes.
Shaped by nature and
centuries of farming,
it epitomises our image of
a green and pleasant land.
But, despite the view,
the outlook for wildlife
here has been bleak.
Sheep farming has dominated the
Yorkshire Dales for centuries.
Left unchecked, sheep can graze
plants down to the ground before
they've even had a chance
to establish themselves.
At its peak, Hill Top Farm was
home to more than 800 sheep -
and nature suffered as a result.
But 15 years ago, a local
conservation project
presented Neil with an opportunity
which was revolutionary.
It was that Limestone Country
Project that changed our whole
philosophy of how we farmed.
Neil reduced the
flock to just 100,
and found some new recruits
that transformed his farm -
Belted Galloway cattle.
When they first came to the
farm, they did come with a bit
of a reputation, and I remember
the first eight arriving,
and we drove onto this 100-acre
field, and the back door
of the trailer went down, and
these h*ifers just shot out of
this trailer, ran across
a field, over the horizon.
I just thought, "We'll never
see those cattle again."
Neil's sheep had to be
kept inside over winter.
But Belted Galloways
are a hardy native breed
and are able to live
outdoors year round,
drastically reducing his costs.
What we've realised is
just how important they are
to everything that we do here.
We try and manage the Belties
as naturally as we possibly can.
We treat them in a way where they
are just part of the wildlife.
So, there's calves being born
out on the hill at the moment,
and there's leverets among them.
And there are other benefits.
Cows are less fussy than sheep.
They pull clumps of grass,
disturbing the
ground as they do so,
and that allows wild
flowers to prosper.
This creates
habitat for wildlife
and has been a revelation
for the Heseltines.
It just allowed nature
to express itself.
That was either botanically -
so we got more species
of flowers on the land,
and we also got more birds that
were able to use the habitat
that was on the farm.
By moving the herd
around in the summer,
the meadows have a chance
to grow tall before Neil
does a single late
cut in August.
The undisturbed summer months are
crucial to the breeding success
of endangered
ground-nesting birds.
And, much to the
family's delight,
the call of the curlew
has returned to the farm.
It's just giving nature
that opportunity.
It has to be
completely in balance,
and that's what we're
absolutely after here.
But what we started to realise
was that the more we put nature
at the forefront of what we did,
we realised that the profitability
of the farm improved, as well.
Not only is the farm
more profitable,
but by working with nature,
it now captures more
carbon than it releases.
And obviously, beef in particular,
but red meat in general
gets a bad reputation, in terms of
its impact upon the environment.
And we just feel that here,
we're bucking that
trend a little bit.
We actually think it's a
multiple-win situation -
whether that be the
business side of it,
whether that be the
environment, the climate change,
or even the animals themselves.
The Heseltines have shown
that farming can be profitable
while at the same time increasing
biodiversity and storing carbon.
But with a population
as large as ours,
small farms by themselves
can't feed everyone.
A third of our agricultural
land is used to grow crops.
Here in Suffolk, the Barker
family have been working the land
on a vast scale for decades.
We are a proper,
intensive arable farm.
Patrick and his cousin Brian
farm 1,300 acres of arable land.
We grow wheat, barley, herbage,
rye-grass, spring beans.
All those crops either go into the
food chain or go into industry.
As well as their high-yielding
crops, the Barkers have another way
by which they measure
success on the farm.
Biodiversity.
For us, the natural
environment is at the forefront
of everything we think about.
Our environmental impact is
assessed on every operation we do.
Barn owls came back in 2009, and
now we have five pairs breeding.
So, this year, they've all
successfully raised chicks.
Another healthy barn
owl on the farm.
In any year, I would expect to
record 400 species on this farm,
and that is birds, butterflies,
moths, dragonflies, bumblebees,
mammals - you name it, we're
looking for it and recording it.
And the way all these species
fit together, it's all part
of this whole farm ecosystem,
which just makes for a
really healthy landscape.
And that is at the heart of
everything the Barkers do
at Lodge Farm.
They've nurtured old hedgerows
and planted new ones.
They've restored ponds...
..and have planted wild
flowers on margins and meadows.
They know that thriving
wildlife also helps the farm
with its primary focus
- growing healthy crops.
I believe we can have a
farm that is productive,
that grows food or grows crops for
industry, and at the same time,
we can have a farm
that's full of wildlife.
So, I don't accept anyone saying
to me, "It's one or the other."
This is about creating
a whole balance
where the natural environment
and the farming environment
can be in harmony together.
This balance is particularly
vital when it comes to
the farm's most precious
resource - its soil.
Healthy soil supports
greater biodiversity.
It stores carbon, and it helps
to prevent flooding and drought.
But deteriorating soil health
is one of the biggest problems
facing farming today.
The soil is an ecosystem on its
own, and if that's working for us,
rather than us
working against it,
it's going to be better
to farm, easier to farm,
we can grow better
crops as a result.
The Barkers have encouraged
good soil structure
by reducing the
amount they plough
and minimising their
use of pesticides.
We've kind of got into a bit
of a bad habit as an industry
of using pesticides
where we MIGHT need them,
not where we really
do need them.
The ladybirds are doing
the work for us here.
You know, they are
our farm workers.
If we went through here with
an insecticide to spray off
these black bean aphids,
we could be taking out all those
other insects that we actually need
as part of this farm landscape.
And the ladybirds themselves become
food for wildlife on the farm.
For us, this is a farming system
that's good for our
farmland wildlife,
good for our bank balance,
it's good for our
carbon footprint.
It's good for us as people,
because we actually really enjoy
coming to work every day.
The Barkers are running
a profitable business
growing healthy, wholesome food,
and showing it's possible
to farm intensively
whilst also restoring
our wild isles.
Absolutely every farm in the
country can do some of what we do.
It's now at a point where it's
too important to get it wrong.
If we do things that
are to the detriment
of the natural environment,
actually, there'll probably
be no coming back for a lot
of the species that rely on it.
OK, so let's have a look what
we've found on our walk around.
But their work
doesn't stop there.
Does anyone know what noise
a green woodpecker makes?
EXCITED CHATTER
They regularly invite local
schoolchildren to the farm
to learn about and
enjoy the wildlife.
The Barkers hope that showing the
next generation how their food
is grown will strengthen their
connection to the natural world.
I think there's something really
important about being able to be
in touch with everything
that's going on around you.
If you go into a supermarket, the
ease at which you can go and buy
something that was shipped from
thousands of miles away kind of
really detaches you from the
organic process of growing things
or rearing animals, or
kind of appreciating
how the world exists
in its natural form,
rather than how we perceive it.
And I think it's nice to be
able to go out and be free,
and connect yourself
to that kind of fun
natural anarchy that exists.
Jutalla is a member
of Flock Together -
a bird-watching group
for people of colour.
That is a kingfisher!
Yes, yes, yes, yes! Where?
Just went underneath where
the mistle thrush is.
Let's see if we can see it.
It's right in there, yeah.
My name is Nadeem Perera.
I am an avid bird watcher,
I'm a youth football coach,
I'm a wildlife film-maker,
and I'm also co-founder
of Flock Together.
I really honestly do believe
that if you spend time in nature,
the mind is wired to
automatically relax.
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah!
You will be afforded
perspective,
and you will then begin to
truly appreciate the value
of the natural world.
Just spotted
something over there.
There's something there!
Oh, gosh, yeah. Don't need your
binoculars for that, do you?
Oh, beautiful.
I didn't know that it had
that yellow marking on its,
like, under-beak.
Gorgeous.
But access to our wild
spaces is far from equal.
People of colour are more
likely to face prejudice
in the countryside.
I grew up in in Somerset, and...
You can see that I'm a Black woman,
and when I was a kid, I was...
Going out in nature then
always felt a little bit like
people looked at me, like,
"What are you doing here?
"This space isn't for you."
And I can only speak
from my own experience,
but I never want anybody
else to feel that way.
And so, coming on our
walks with Flock Together,
it helps to eliminate
some of that barrier,
and it also helps other people
who aren't Black or Brown,
or Indigenous to get used to seeing
that nature is for everybody.
We all come from nature,
and we all ought to
make time for it.
Not only is it good for us,
it's also good for nature.
Because as we know, nature is fast
disappearing, it's under threat in
so many parts of the world,
if not all of it, and it needs
all of us on board
to protect it.
So, everybody needs to
chip in and do their bit.
In the last few decades, we have
all lost something precious.
Our lives have become disconnected
from the rhythms of nature,
the seasons, and the places
from which our food comes.
And as island nations
where none of us can live
more than 70 miles from the sea,
this is especially true for
our connection to the ocean.
The shores of
Britain and Ireland
are globally important
for sea birds.
Our waters are home to 65%
of the global population
of northern gannets,
and almost all of the
world's Manx shearwaters.
Perhaps the most charismatic
of our sea birds is the puffin.
Their challenges clearly
reflect the problems confronting
many of our other
marine species.
After months at sea
during the winter,
puffins return each spring to
mate and raise their young.
This female puffin has a secret
hidden away below ground.
A puffling, only two weeks old.
She will only raise
one chick this year.
She and her partner must feed
their chick five times a day.
The delicate touching of beaks
strengthens the bond between them
before she leaves.
She must now make a long
journey to the feeding grounds.
Puffins' favourite
prey are sandeels...
..which are packed with
rich oils and nutrients.
They account for a quarter of
all the fish in the North Sea...
..and form a large proportion
of the puffin's diet.
But today, sandeels are
disappearing at an alarming rate.
Warming seas have reduced the
availability of the plankton
on which the sandeels feed.
And fishing on an industrial scale
has further reduced the shoals.
Our puffins are now having to
fly further and work harder
for every meal.
And the very survival of their
chicks is hanging in the balance.
It's predicted that our puffin
population could have dropped
by as much as 90% in
the next 25 years -
a loss of over a million birds.
Life on the seafloor
is not safe either.
In places, our seabeds are
richer and more diverse than
any habitat on our land.
Some underwater communities
are extraordinarily beautiful.
Colonies of brittle
stars proliferate.
Beds of maerl, a type
of hard, fragile seaweed
that take hundreds
of years to form.
They provide a
home for scallops.
Each of these shellfish
has about 200 small eyes.
They live by filtering out
plankton from the ocean currents
that swirl around them.
Starfish prey on scallops.
But to do so, they have to get
inside the shells undetected.
Missed it.
Scallops are
surprisingly mobile,
and they can live
up to 20 years.
But today, there are threats
that they cannot escape.
LOW RUMBLING
The scallop dredge.
Rows of heavy metal teeth
dragged behind a boat
bulldoze their way
across the seabed,
leaving behind them
destruction and death.
95% of our scallops are
collected in this way.
And for every scallop caught,
four other species are k*lled and
collected by the dredge as by-catch.
In the long term, this
destructive, indiscriminate harvest
is as damaging to local
fishing communities
as it is to the
marine life itself.
Yet, there is an alternative.
Scallops can be harvested
sustainably and without damaging
the seafloor by divers,
who pick them up by hand.
Today, around a third of UK
fish stocks are overfished.
In places, we're removing
life from the ocean faster
than it can replenish itself.
But there is another way.
50 years ago, off the
coast of North Devon,
local people got together
to create the UK's first
voluntary marine nature reserve.
The sea changes every hour.
Lundy has its own microclimate.
And quite often, you go there
and you can't find the island
because it's covered in fog.
It's called the Misty
Island for good reason.
Lundy Island, in
the Bristol Channel,
is just three miles long...
..but the sea around it has
the third-largest tidal range
in the world, and warm
waters from the Gulf Stream
create excellent
conditions for marine life.
I've been visiting Lundy
just over 50 years now -
as a young child, and then,
eventually when I was
working as a fisherman.
I'm Andrew Bengey, I'm
the owner of Lundy Diving.
We run dive charter or snorkel
charters to the island of Lundy,
in the Bristol Channel.
In 2003, the waters around
the east coast of Lundy
were given protection and declared
to be Britain's first No Take Zone.
Fishing or collecting sea life
of any kind is prohibited.
20 years on, the wildlife
here provides Andrew
with a different livelihood.
The things that keeps me going back
to Lundy is that you never know
what you're going to see.
Dolphins, porpoises,
minke whales, pilot whales.
We've had tuna recently.
And obviously the wildlife on
the island changes continually,
depending on what season it is.
As you get to the island, you get
more diverse with the birdlife -
you've got puffins there
from March through to July,
and then you've got Manx
shearwaters coming in to shore,
you've got all the cormorants.
So, it always changes
all the way through.
OK? Yep. Good, good.
Five, four, three, two...
Sharing the sea with seals and
other wildlife is just amazing.
Everything is on their terms.
When they realise
you're not a threat...
..and you're not nervous,
and you're quiet and still,
they'll come and play.
Sheltered reefs, when protected
from trawling and fishing,
become the home of rare
and special species.
All the divers comment on
how abundant and colourful
the underwater sea life is.
And especially that
none of it's damaged/
We've got pink sea fans around
the island on the protected sites,
you can't put
anchors and shots in.
Some of those are
over 100 years old,
and they just look amazing because
they're not disturbed at all.
Andrew's son, Ben,
is a local fisherman
and works alongside scientists
to monitor the wildlife
in the No Take Zone.
Lobsters are a keystone
species... 102.
..playing a vital role in
the health of an ecosystem.
Female.
Remarkably, their population has
quadrupled in the No Take Zone -
and they're growing
bigger than ever before.
A mature female can produce as many
as a million eggs in her lifetime.
And once hatched, her
larvae will disperse,
restocking the surrounding seas.
Ben and the local fishing community
have found their lobster catch
on the edge of the zone has
significantly increased.
You've got to remember that
the marine-protected area
was put in originally by a voluntary
scheme for all the fishermen
to try and help the
ecosystem around the island.
The changes that have occurred
over time have been really good,
because things have improved,
the numbers have gone up.
I feel very hopeful about marine
life and marine protection.
The No Take Zone
at Lundy is tiny,
little more than a square mile.
And across the whole
of the British Isles,
we have only four of them -
less than 1% of our seas.
Although there's some protection
in some areas
beyond these zones,
unsustainable fishing practises
are still allowed
in over 95% of our waters.
We are an island nation.
Our past and future is
intimately connected
to the health of the ocean.
With meaningful protection,
we can replenish our seas,
allowing them to thrive and
ensuring that we can rely on them
for generations to come.
But protection alone
isn't always enough.
We also need to restore at
least some of what we have lost.
This is sea grass.
It captures carbon up
to 35 times more quickly
than a tropical rainforest.
These underwater
meadows are safe havens,
providing both shelter and nurseries
for a great variety of marine life.
But seagrass meadows are one of the
world's most threatened habitats.
In the UK, we've lost
more than 90% of them...
..through dredging, pollution,
and development.
Lush beds should
surround our isles,
but only 32 square miles remain.
Here, on the coast
of North Wales,
volunteers are trying
to put things right.
What we need is lots of seeds,
and so it's really great
to get people down.
Project Seagrass is regenerating
areas of the damaged seabed...
..part of an ambitious movement
to restore at least 15%
of the UK's seagrass by 2030.
Teams of snorkelers collect
seeds from this surviving meadow
to plant in other
suitable areas.
It's painstaking work.
But in just a few years'
time, new, healthy meadows -
and all the benefits they bring
- could be thriving once again.
On land, woodlands are our most
complex and diverse habitat.
They provide food, shelter,
and a place to breed for
thousands of species.
And for us, they offer a
place where we can reflect
and connect with nature.
But today, only 13% of the British
Isles are covered by woodland -
a fragment of what we once had,
and amongst the lowest coverage of
any country in the whole of Europe.
Much of that is low quality -
monocultures that offer
little sanctuary for wildlife.
In contrast, our
ancient woodlands,
which have taken hundreds of
years to grow and develop,
are complex and
rich communities.
What we need now are visionary,
long-term initiatives
to begin to restore some
of what we have lost.
Scotland.
But not as it should be.
These barren slopes were
once covered by trees.
The Great Caledonian Pine Forest
stretched across much
of the highlands.
Over thousands of years,
changes in the climate,
logging and grazing by sheep
and deer have reduced it
to just a few isolated pockets.
Today, just 1% remains.
But an ambitious new restoration
project aims to change that.
High within the
Cairngorms National Park,
a team of volunteers are
planting young willow trees.
They've been specially grown
from cuttings collected nearby
to withstand the harsh
mountain conditions.
They won't all make it,
but thousands are planted
and many will endure.
Each additional tree
helps this remote glen
to regain its ancient splendour.
They are just one small part
of Britain's largest
landscape restoration project.
The Cairngorms Connect partnership
has a 200-year plan to restore
habitats across 230 square miles
of the Cairngorms National Park.
From pine forests,
bogs and peatland,
to fast-flowing rivers
and subarctic plateaus,
it offers us a
glimpse of the past
and a hope for the future.
And it is home to some
of our rarest wildlife.
More than 5,000 species
have been recorded here.
Land managers are working together
across this vast connected area
to provide animal
species big and small
the chance to thrive in
healthy, resilient ecosystems.
Restoring a landscape of
this size is a team effort.
Ronan Dugan is part of the
team at WildLand Cairngorms,
one of the partners
restoring the landscape.
Many people thought it would take
50 or 100 years, but in reality,
you can implement change very
quickly here in the Highlands
of Scotland by simply
reducing the number of deer.
It is quite a drastic measure,
and it's perhaps not
the nicest thing to do,
but that's the reality.
We have no apex predators.
The lynx and the wolf have gone.
Deer should exist here,
but in much lower numbers
than they do today.
With no natural predators, the size
of their herds must be controlled
by us to give the
forest a chance.
With fewer deer, seeds
lying dormant in the soil
take root very quickly,
and the forest starts
to regenerate naturally.
We've got the oak, the
aspen, we've got the pine,
we've got the birch, rowan -
all of these species are
regenerating naturally
and moving further out the hill.
The team here have also planted
over five million trees,
benefiting the wildlife and
the communities downstream.
So, you've got, you
know, flooding issues,
and as the climate changes, you
know, the increase in vegetation
and woodland up in the
catchment, in this area,
that's going to slow
down the rate of flow.
Restoring the peatland,
that's sequestering carbon.
So that's going to help with the
climate crisis in the future.
So, it's not just benefiting the
local people or the local wildlife,
it's benefiting the nation.
Creating a mix of habitats can
also help the species most at risk.
Hen harriers are now one of our
most threatened birds of prey
as a result of
ill*gal persecution.
Hen harriers, they require open
grassland and open moorlands
so that they can hunt for prey such
as field voles and small birds,
and they will even take things
like lizards, and so on.
So they're, yeah, a very,
very adaptable species,
but they need those wide-open spaces
where they can breed successfully.
The team are now
seeing hopeful signs -
hen harriers are
breeding here once more.
But it's not just the
charismatic predators they study.
They also investigate the
other end of the food chain
to discover more about how
the whole ecosystem functions.
And you can't tell whether
it's working if you don't know
what you've got.
I think it all starts
with paying attention.
It is really easy to
miss the small things.
We tend to look at the
big, exciting species
when we're out and about.
As soon as you start to look in
tiny scale of one particular group,
all of a sudden, it opens
up entire new worlds
which otherwise you might
never have encountered.
My name's Ellie Dimambro-Denson,
and I'm the monitoring officer
for Cairngorms Connect.
A big part of my job is going out
across the Cairngorms Connect area
and doing surveys and monitoring to
look at all of the different species
and interactions, and understanding
how they might be responding
to the ecological work that's
happening within the project.
Ellie surveys wildlife in all
weathers to understand better
what the smaller species can
tell us about the bigger picture.
There's a sense of magic
in opening up the tent,
and you never quite know what
to anticipate in the morning.
There's a lot of
excitement and hope.
Oh, there's quite a few.
Moths, and invertebrates generally,
are really good indicator species
for showing the health
of the system as a whole.
I love the diversity of moths.
You get such an array of different
species, of different life cycles.
And often moths will have such a
specific, intricate life cycle,
where they will very much rely
on one particular food plant
at a particular time.
The team plant the kind of trees
which moths and
other insects favour,
and so boost the
Cairngorms' biodiversity.
Insects are incredibly diverse,
and they're so fundamental
to so many of the
different systems.
They are pollinators, they
help to break things down,
they're a really important
food source to a number
of different species
of bats or birds.
Without insects, we wouldn't
have a lot of the really
fundamental systems that we
need to sustain life on Earth.
Without nature...
..we wouldn't be able
to survive as a species.
The scale and ambition of this
partnership is sorely needed
in our wilder places.
But for most of us who
live in urban areas,
it might seem rather remote.
To truly save our wild isles,
we also need to bring nature
back to where we live...
..and that is the idea behind
this inspiring transformation.
I didn't even know
this place was here.
It was almost surreal.
So, like, you wouldn't think
this place is slap bang
in the middle of East London.
It's very magical.
It's a little oasis.
It's like a sort
of hidden paradise.
It's very green
and it's colourful.
And all the birds...
..just, like, having fun with
their friends, just like me.
Cody Dock, in the heart of
London's industrial East End,
was once filthy and polluted...
..but members of the community
reclaimed this forgotten corner,
restoring it for the benefit of
both wildlife and themselves.
For nearby schools, it's become
both a classroom and a sanctuary.
We've been walking along the
riverside, and we've been tallying
how much pollution
and waste varies.
Can anyone tell me what
this river's called?
Oh, you put your hand up
first, go on. The Lea?
The River Lea, awesome!
Ben and his colleagues have
been coordinating efforts here.
A lot of the kids that we get
here, you know, they live in
really nature-deprived areas,
and this space is a link
for them to access nature.
The space itself gives them
an opportunity to learn about
what they can find in nature
and gives them a place to take
a stake in the conservation
of nature here.
So, it's really important that,
even in Newham, we're looking at
these insects and we're trying
to track how well they're doing,
so that we can look
after them, yeah?
It was really nice catching bees,
like, cos I never really thought
I could catch bees, cos I
always run away from them,
cos that's where I feel normal.
I got a chance to, like, see them
and see their beautiful colours.
Beautiful - how
many legs they have.
Cos I never really knew
bees look like that.
Originally I thought, like,
all bees just look the same,
but now I realise that, actually
catching them and looking up,
how they've got, like,
different patterns and so on.
I used to think that all
they done was hurt us.
But now I know the
meaning of them.
They're real things,
they're living things.
They're not just insects.
They breathe like us.
Whoa! Ah!
6,000 volunteers have contributed
to the work at Cody Dock,
and together have recorded
over 300 different species.
As soon as I came here I was like,
"Yes, this is the right decision".
You learn so many skills.
There are so many different
people that come here to volunteer
from so many different places.
And valuable information
gathered here is fed into
national citizen
science projects.
We test the water along the dock
to see if there's any problems,
and we look at the samples
of water and determine
what species are living there.
Once one of the most polluted
rivers in the British Isles,
it's now showing
signs of recovery.
We found a couple of
different types of fish fly -
so flounder, different
types of mayfly larvae,
damsel fly, as well.
Not so long ago, this place
had turned away from nature...
..but, with a long-term
vision and willing volunteers,
nature has returned even to
this most urban of places.
In the city, sometimes it
can feel quite closed off.
So, coming here, like, just
being with nature can free up
your mind a little bit.
Stress can build up so easily
on someone, and it really
dictates your mental health.
I think you should be able to come
to a place like Cody Dock to relax
and sit down, and just breathe.
From the heart of London to the
remotest peaks of the Cairngorms,
there are passionate people
right across our isles
making a better livelihood
by working with nature,
rather than against it.
It may be tempting to think of those
on the front line as the only ones
who can make a difference.
The truth is, however,
that every one of us,
no matter where we live,
can and must play a part in
restoring nature to our isles.
Never has it been more
important to do this,
for ourselves and
for our wildlife.
This is our home,
and this is the moment.
We have just enough time
and just enough nature left
to save our wild
isles for our children
and for future generations.
If you'd like to play your
part in helping restore nature,
just go online and search
"Save Our Wild Isles."
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