Happen Films
4 HN recommenders · recommended in 8 months, 2019–2025
29:38 · 4.7M views · Jul 27, 2019
Fools & Dreamers is a 30-minute documentary about Hinewai Nature Reserve in New Zealand, where botanist Hugh Wilson let gorse grow as a nurse canopy to regenerate native forest. It shows the results after 30 years and the local skepticism he faced.
Shared in climate and land-use threads as a vivid example of how letting land regrow can restore forest.
8 comments from Hacker News
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: this video
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 47 known waterfalls are in permanent flow. He has proven without doubt that nature knows best – and that he is no fool.”
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: this video
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
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