Why Not Scotland? | The Rewilding Nation documentary
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 27 ก.ย. 2024
- Join Flo, a young Scot from Glasgow, on an intensely personal journey, as she seeks out examples of nature recovery around Europe.
Like many of her generation, Flo is concerned by the state of nature and fearful about an uncertain future. But during her travels, she discovers places where nature is making a spectacular comeback, breathing life back into the landscape and revitalising human communities. Encouraged by these stories of hope and renewal, she is prompted to wonder: Why Not Scotland?
A Scottish Rewilding Alliance film, forming the central pillar of the Rewilding Nation campaign. Produced by rewilding charity SCOTLAND: The Big Picture.
Starring Flo Blackbourn. Produced and directed by Mat Larkin. Executive producer: Peter Cairns. Assistant producer: Tierney Lloyd.
Find out more at www.scotlandbigpicture.com/why-not-scotland
Sign up for Rewilding Nation updates: www.rewild.scot/newsletter-sign-up
Major, major congratulations. That is the best film I've ever seen on promoting the rewilding agenda in Britain, or indeed anywhere. Astounding cinematography, truly wonderful explication so everyone can understand, and brilliant presenting by Joy Blackbourne (hope I've got her name right), and a great idea for her to downplay her knowledge so more people can relate to her. And the choices of places to visit were perfect. Incredible to see and learn about communities that are happy to have brown bear, wolves, lynx, boar and beavers in their environment. Scotland can have all these again. Of course, the main revelation of your brilliant film is that the Scottish hills and valleys could yet be clothed in native forests, and host long-lost native predators like the bear, wolf and lynx once again. Take a bow, you have produced an incredible promotional video, and thank you for that.
Brilliant, inspiring film. I, for one, can't wait to hear the sounds of the wolf howling somewhere in Caithness or know that bear and lynx roam freely, as they once did, right across the the nation. Very much hope you can get this message through to Government ministers - I fear that, without real political heft, the capture of so much of this land by so few who evidently care so little for this message will mean that the deer and sheep will remain a dominant scourge. I frequently walk the Pentlands and am dismayed at the near-total absence of nature, at the desolation on view and at the prevalent but deeply misguided view that 'this is what it should like'. This country needs to wake up to the fact that it has been robbed and despoiled by its oligarchical landowners and that this needs to change urgently at this moment of climate and ecological emergency.
Emergency? Where?
Wonderful film. Watched with my 12yr old son. Both feeling very inspired. Thank you.
Well done Flo, beautiful places, beautiful animals, and so encouraging to see what is, and what can yet be done. We should invite these europeans to come and talk to our communities and farmers, landowners, fishermen. It is so much more meaningful and impactful in terms of persuasion that the doubts and scepticism that existed just as much in Norway, Poland and Italy were overcome through the reality of co-existence and the help and guidance that was brought to bear.
Thank you all all those concerned in making this documentary, especially the photographers and Flo. I too feel a little lighter and brighter today having watched this film. Well done. 💚
Beautifully made and presented, and the tone was just right, I learnt loads. Here's hoping this film is widely distributed and seen as it deserves to be, and becomes a real agent of change. Nice one!
Brilliant and so obvious. At the start of every stage in theTour de France they visit an area in the locality that is allowing nature to return with our human aid so: Why not Scotland?
Good watch, thankyou to all those involved in the film 🤩
Fantastic and inspiring video! Well done!
wonderful film - so much to think about
Scotlands rural culture is still very Victorian in certain areas. Grouse moors and deer forests (no actual forest 🤔) with green welly tweedy types trying to tell us thousands of square miles of just heather grouse moor is biodiverse, and that high deer density does wonders for the land 😬. The SGA and farmers unions are the biggest threat to any rewilding, they see it as an attacknon their livlihoods. The problem is you cannot keep everyone happy, someones nose will always be out of joint, but we do need change for the better. Wild places are very good for our mental health and wellbeing. The sport shooting brigade have had their way over vast swathes of our landscape for too long, a tiny minority of people. The sport shooting set hava a right to undertake their past times, but they would do well to listen to the ecologists and biologists trying to tell them that they would actually have better healthier game hunting in a more natural bio diverse environment.
Yes, let's look after the rich (the minority). they wont be put of joint. Forget the environment, forget biodiversity, forget we're a mammal. I'm just back from a couple of hot days in the Trossachs. Driving for hours, don't think 1 insect died on the windscreen. A day's cycling over the lochs. Seen crows and jackdaws, beyond that next to nothing. All Norwegian spruce forestry and sheep. a disgrace.
As an aside, i really enjoyed this. Great presentation. I've been banging on about this for years. I see more wildlife in Edinburgh (that's not an euphemism btw, deer, fox, badger, buzzards, kestrel, sparrow hawk can all be seen if you're out and about and looking) So absolutely correct. why not Scotland?
A tiny minority of people doing very retrograde activities. Not for much longer!!!
A wonderful and important film! Many thanks for this work and for the positive words about our efforts here in Poland. Unfortunately, we have the impression that the lobby against the idea of sustainable development and wise use of the environment still has the upper hand. Moreover, the majority of society is easily fooled by empty promises of an easier life in a world without trees and animals. However, films like this and people like its creators must give hope that all is not lost! Thanks again for that!
That was absolutely wonderful. Every time I visit Scotland, I come away heartbroken. I go to capture the undeniable beauty of its landscapes and wildlife but what I find is a land in despair, punctuated with tiny pockets of hope and glimpses of what could be. I wish you every success.
What about the iconic native creatures we are currently ignoring and rapidly losing like the Salmon and Sea-trout.? Soon to be extinct. Not to mention the insect life essential to everything.
Stunning, beautiful film, well done!🤗💛🤗
If we do not change, then nature will change us.
Incredible - I could almost cry with the hope. Here's to re-wilding Scotland. IN fact the whole of the UK.
An interesting (and well-made!) film and good to have the uplift at the end, but the overall feel I got was of a "learning journey" where the narrator starts out with a mis-informed understanding which gradually improves until it reaches a better (but still incomplete) understanding at the end. It misses the huge amount of good work that is going on across Scotland and the beneficial changes that have been happening for the last 40 years.
So many areas have changed for the better in my life-time and (as highlighted by the European examples in the film) ecological time-scales are slow when measured against human time-scales.
There are so many examples, but look at the slow but steady forest regeneration that has been going on - Dava Moor, Rothiemurchus, Strathbran, Glen Feshie, Glen Quoich (Aberdeenshire - but, hell, even Glen Quoich Inverness-shire!) etc. The whole of the A832, coast to coast, is vastly different from 40 years ago, but trees take time and it will feel very different again in another 40 years.
Look at the improvements in water management in so many catchments, a shining example being Insh Marshes.
Yes, we could do with some cranes, lynx and more wild pigs, but at least we now have beavers and sea eagles! Beaver spread will make a big difference to many locations over the next 20 years. Red kites, ospreys, pine martens are all common, where they were virtually absent 40 years ago. Badgers are also much more commonplace.
I have a much more optimistic view that we are on the correct direction of travel and that we don't need to panic. It all takes time and that includes the human-scale time-frame necessary in keeping communities on board.
As long as Scotland's human population continues to remain low, rewilding larger swathes of land is possible - without a 'negative' impact on the farming and sporting community.
What really needs to be done is for the environment department to begin to construct wildlife 'corridors' that flow back and forth across the nation, taking creatures through safe zones, linking up all these 'patches' of well-meaning woodland/forest, but which still act like islands, this causing the possibility of genetic vulnerabilities.
It is just amazing what happens when you link even reasonably close areas of woodland with a hedgerow. I did this in my own garden - planting a hedgerow between a neighbour's small woodland and a thin riparian woodland that flows up and down a nearby hill.
At first, insects and occasional small birds took advantage of this new route between the 2 woodlands, and then quite suddenly it became a highway for all sorts of creatures than scurry or fly through it. While Neonicotinoids dealt the area a real setback earlier in the century, and insect numbers still tumble due to global pressures, there is still an interesting variety of wildlife with new species rolling in. I've just begun planting a third row of trees and shrubs along this hedgerow and added a parallel hedgerow several feet from it (to mimic a bridleway).
But from my experiment, I can see the great advantage of not necessarily scaring farmers by pressuring them into planting up whole fields with gigantic woodlands - but looking more into Boris Johnson's near forgotten planet to replant 300,000km/miles of new hedgerows.
These don't have to be hedgerows that we often see as tightly trimmed, gap-ridden, 2 foot wide affairs, but thoroughfares that vary between a few feet and several 10's of feet, perhaps to encompass ponds, lead to streams and rivers, and to create highways from woodland to woodland wherever possible.
The reason why farmers are reacting badly is because they feel like they are being squeezed out by people who want the country covered in buttercups and bunnies, people who (as they often rightly think) have a Disney-eyed view of the countryside.
As a consequence of the division between environmentalists and farmers, we're seeing more and more Sitka Spruce forests going up (which means more pests, more spraying, more dead birds floating down the streams - yep, they certainly do and it's a very sad and unsettling sight).
We need farmers to be able to make money from at least some of the trees they grow on these hedgerows - whether that be the inclusion of hedge fruits (need some practical PR for boosting this type of harvesting), or coppiced woods (for traditional basketry crafts, biofuel, or rare woods for turning and artisan woodcrafts), and promoting beekeeping.
There is nothing wrong with mixing certain 'beneficial' one-off or permanent non-native species with natives - if they can be proven to benefit these wildlife highways (hybrid fruits that can be sold to the public and the waste left for wildlife; edible and medicinal fungi species introduced - especially high value varieties; ornamental shrubs that can fill a gap in the flowering calendar to benefit a system of bee hives or help support native bees); bulb production for thinning out and reselling through garden centres; and even for the production of organic soils/leafmoulds.
I've been a gardener all my life and it was my profession before an industrial accident.
A large part of my work consisted of conservation, but it has irked me that conservation is becoming too extreme, advocators demanding an 'all or nothing' strategy. We don't need to do that. We can all benefit, humans, animals, plants and fungi - with proper planning.
I support this but don't have the money Di Caprio has not that fortunate but I love Scotland it's history culture and beautiful sights.
I understand Norways reforestation was boosted by depopulation..?
Wouldn't surprise me. I've always thought even as a small kid that the world seems over-populated and having a negative impact on nature.
Norway's population has grown steadily from just above 3 million in the 1950's to around 5 and a half million inhabitants today . I took this information from United Nation statistics found online .
@@herokindon I. Urban area's yes...
Excellent . Most interesting video.
💚💚💚💚💚🌱🌳🌿🍃
🐻🌿