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 heifers 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 killed 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 illegal 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."