Original subtitles

A wild, mysterious world.

Veiled, impenetrable.

A place of legends and wonders.

Quiet, isolated.

Full of secrets.

And this enchanted forest exists only because of man.

The decision to leave the forest alone

was a controversial one.

Today, its recovery is seen as a small miracle.

Nature has reclaimed lost territory here.

This film tells the story of the making

of an ancient forest.

Nestled between two great mountain ranges

in Central Austria,

a last remaining great forest wilderness,

the Kalkalpen National Park.

In these steep gorges and hidden valleys,

it is turning into a wild, primeval alpine forest.

Deep in the national park's beech forests,

lives a small population of lynx.

The only lynx in the Austrian alps.

Their story began in 1998.

A single male lynx wandered into the national park,

and decided to stay.

When people realized he was there,

he quickly became the symbol of the forest.

Extreme weather can batter this steep mountain

world night and day.

Sudden drops in temperature,

storms and heavy rains assault the trees.

Floods and landslides tear into the landscape.

For millions of years, these natural forces

powered the forest's evolution.

What looks like destruction and devastation

are, in fact, opportunities to renew the forest.

Hastening its return to wilderness.

These bare and exposed mountainsides

pushed life to its limits.

And since they couldn't escape the forces of nature,

trees had to learn to stand their ground.

There were trees long before there were dinosaurs.

350 million years of evolution have made them

expert communicators in the wild.

The forest is a complex web of organisms

relying on cooperation and partnership.

Trees have developed their own language,

a set of codes.

They use them to communicate with each other,

and with their environment.

The codes are composed of chemical scents and pulses.

Trees obey a fundamental rule of life,

they grow and become more powerful.

But even giant forest trees don't live forever.

Their death gives life new energy.

Scientists have a name for it, resilience.

The forest regenerates itself in a continuous

cycle of growth and decay.

Deadwood is the biggest single source of growth

in the Kalkalpen National Park.

It has proved vital for bringing new life,

and encouraging biodiversity.

The white-backed woodpecker is

the ancient forest specialist,

and one of Europe's rarest birds.

Its local name is Hackspett.

It spends all day hacking into old rotting trees

with its grooved beak, reducing them to wood chips.

And its rasp-like tongue helps it extract

insects and juicy larvae.

Chiseling with extreme accuracy,

it easily locates larvae.

90% of is its blows strike with pinpoint precision.

The giant wood wasp is just as precise.

A giant among wasps, almost five centimeters in length.

Using its drill, it penetrates deep into a dying tree,

and deposits its egg.

The law of the forest,

life begins when a tree dies.

And so that millions of cubic meters of deadwood can vanish,

the forest engages in one of the greatest

cooperations on Earth

with fungi.

Fungi are the magic creatures of the forest.

Apparently, appearing out of nothing.

In fact, they live almost entirely out of sight,

decomposing and processing deadwood.

They only become visible when fruiting.

What we know as a mushroom,

exists only for reproduction.

And it's soon reabsorbed.

The honey agaric reveals only in the fall,

where its vast networks run.

Mycelial cords sprawl through tree trunks

providing the blossoms with nutrients.

These fragile structures are some of the largest

and oldest living organisms on Earth.

This invisible colony may weigh more than

600 tons, and be 2,400 years old.

A lynx steals silently on soft paws

through the Kalkalpen National Park.

Solitary by nature, this young female

born last spring, now seeks to establish

her own territory.

This will be the toughest time of her life.

Hunting in unfamiliar terrain,

while avoiding other lynxes.

Till now, she was inseparable from her mother

and siblings.

Now, she is alone with her instincts.

Her survival in the wild is uncertain.

The pygmy owl has taken up its territory.

It specializes in lightning attacks on songbirds.

At 50 grams, its hardly bigger than its prey,

but its a master hunter.

The forest floor starts to come alive.

More and more yellow-backed mice

emerge from their winter hideout.

These are true forest mice, they climb trees,

and leap ten times their body length with ease.

Lucky for them, because they are a delicacy for

practically every forest hunter.

Mice arouse the killer instinct of any cat.

And this should be easy prey.

A lynx can hear its prey from 50 meters away.

But yellow-backed mice do more than climb and jump,

they're experts at the ancient game of cat and mouse.

Agitated songbirds sound a warning,

the feared predator has appeared once again.

But today, the tiny owl's intentions are quite different.

It's the mating season, and the male pygmy owl

is out to impress a female.

A direct approach like that is usually rejected.

So, he shows off his tree hole.

A safe home for offspring might make a difference.

Still she holds back,

but the prospect of a luxury home

might just have its attractions.

At last, his persistence wins her over.

The first delicate beech leaves

appear at the end of April.

The forest is in transition.

It's sunny, calm, and warm.

Perfect conditions for a mysterious creature

to emerge.

For a year, this female Tau Emperor moth

lived as a pupa on the forest floor.

It's time for a change.

She will remain here for the next half hour

pumping blood through her unused veins

to unfold her wings.

Elsewhere, highly sensitive antennae

have already unfurled.

They can detect female pheromones

from several hundred meters.

They belong to a male ready to take flight.

Time is of the essence.

The lifespan of a Tau Emperor is short.

They're embarking on the most important

mission of their life,

to find a mate and reproduce.

After mating, females stop producing pheromones,

but they're still wafting through the spring air

leading the males astray.

Meanwhile, the female starts laying her eggs.

The lifecycle of the Tau Emperor is perfectly

synchronized with that of the beech tree.

After three weeks, the eggs hatch into

hungry caterpillars.

They'll only touch the new, tender beech leaves.

The forest is now cloaked in a dense canopy of green.

Nothing grows on the ground,

except where the sunlight warms the dead leaves.

Trees live out the secrets of their seeds.

Their energies are devoted to growing higher and stronger,

to the point of indestructibility,

and yet they do it in a socially conscious way.

They know when they've reached their natural limit,

and then they give the younger trees a chance to grow.

When a new generation germinates, the older trees

take less nutrient from the soil,

and allow the saplings as much as they need.

In the fading light of the setting sun,

the contours of the forest soften.

The forest shows another face.

It shocks by its brightness.

Tens of thousands more stars sparkle

in the night sky of the Kalkalpen

than almost anywhere else.

Because this remote forest is one

of the few truly dark places left on our planet.

On this night, in the depths of the forest,

a wonderful event has occurred.

A lynx has given birth to two kittens.

Her den, among the roots of an ancient beech tree,

is well protected.

The past two days have been nonstop work.

Even now, she can only leave her newborns

for a brief instant.

At birth, the kittens are blind,

and depend on their mother's constant care.

After a few days, they open their eyes,

and begin to explore their surroundings.

At this stage, they're still easily manageable,

but that won't last.

High above, in an abandoned woodpecker's tree hole,

the pygmy owls are busy with their offspring.

Both parents bring fresh prey as often as possible.

Their chicks hunger appears to be insatiable.

Both parents are kept busy removing waste, too.

In the soft dawn light it's hard to imagine

that a fierce war is under way.

For over 150 years this spruce tree has defied

wind and weather, insects and disease,

but the summer droughts of recent years

have weakened it.

And then, invaders arrive.

Bark beetles.

The spruce tree activates its defenses

by oozing resin.

Just a few beetles attempt to penetrate the bark.

At first, the tree has the upper hand,

but the beetles attract a whole army of their number.

Within a few hours, they arrive en masse.

The already weakened tree is unable to

withstand the onslaught.

From here on in, everything happens fast.

Beetles multiply beneath the bark,

boring through the pulp they destroy

the tree's vascular system,

and with it, its ability to transport nutrients and water.

But at the start of the attack, the tree released

a chemical S.O.S. alerting neighboring trees

to the invasion.

They immediately ramped up their own

production of resin to gain an advantage

on the invaders.

Affected spruce trees also call on the beetle's predators.

The three-toed woodpecker is an outstanding

bark beetle hunter.

It can consume 2,000 beetles a day.

The larvae are its favorites.

Especially, when it has hungry offspring to feed.

It's a prime example of the complex,

delicate balance of life and death in the forest.

The greater the invasion of bark beetles,

the more three-toed woodpeckers will breed here.

If the bark beetle infestation drops,

the population of breeding woodpeckers is also reduced.

Even an ancient forest has its casualties.

Water quickly seeps through brittle limestone rock.

If a summer drought goes on too long,

trees dehydrate, become stressed and weaken.

But the forest has a solution for this, too.

If it gets too dry, the trees emit molecules into the air.

These molecules have two properties:

they attract water vapor, and have an adhesive quality

that binds the vapor to them.

Water remains suspended in the atmosphere,

even in the scorching heat of the sun.

Out of nowhere, fog and small clouds form,

they drift across the canopy, and cover the forest.

The cooling air can no longer retain the moisture,

and it begins to rain.

During the summer months, white-backed woodpeckers

spend all day hacking at rotting beech trees.

Both males and females hunt for prey almost nonstop.

They now have a family to support.

This rare species of woodpecker

has almost completely vanished from its home

in the Scandinavian forests.

It only survives here because of the vast

amounts of deadwood.

Without these ancient forests, it's doomed to extinction.

Their sensitive antennae have brought

Rosalia longicorn beetles from far away

to a clearing in the middle of the forest.

To one particular log.

The males start to duel.

The winner has earned the right to mate.

He was drawn here by the scent of the female.

After mating, he will die.

The female examines the damp, rotten

underside of the log in search of suitable cracks.

Here, she will lay her eggs which will develop into larvae,

which in part will feed a new generation of woodpeckers.

Midsummer is approaching.

In the dense canopy of the beech trees, seeds ripen.

Beechnuts.

The young female lynx has survived the most

challenging period of her life.

She has established her own territory,

and learned to fend for herself.

A year ago, this was her home.

Now, her new sisters and brothers are enjoying

their mother's constant care.

They will be safe with her until the coming winter.

There have been a number of lynx litters

in Kalkalpen National Park.

The reintroduction of these wildcats

seems to have been a success.

But there's a shadow hanging over their future.

Inexplicably, male lynx known as toms, keep disappearing.

For a long time, it was only a suspicion,

but now it has been confirmed.

Poaching is undermining the reintroduction

of lynx into the alps.

If there are too few males, the lynx population

in the Austrian alps will succumb to inbreeding.

A giant wood wasp emerges from the tree tunk

where the female drilled a hole for her egg

two years before.

The lifecycle is now complete.

This wasp was lucky.

On a hot summer's day, unusual looking insects

buzz around a dying spruce tree.

Giant Ichneumon wasps, Megarhyssa rixator.

The wasp's antennae scan every millimeter of bark,

for a very specific spot.

She's found it.

Now, Megarhyssa maneuvers her ovipositor

into position, but it's much too long.

First, it's coiled into a special flexible pouch

in her abdomen.

Now, the drill is at right angles to the wood.

She can bore straight through the bark.

With high-tech precision, she drills towards

the larva of a wood wasp.

The Megarhyssa pierces its body,

and injects her venom.

This won't kill the larva but paralyzes it forever.

She retracts the ovipositor just a little,

and then lays an egg directly onto the surface

of the immobilized wood wasp larva.

Her egg turns into a larva that will eat

the paralyzed host bit by bit

until it's ready to emerge.

When tall old trees die, they complete a forest lifecycle.

Fallen giants give back their organic material

to the next generation.

A new cycle begins.

The death of summer heralds another new start,

though it's always hard to believe.

The leaves of deciduous trees turn yellow, red, and brown.

When the first frost comes, they're already falling.

But the autumn sun is not ready to give way to winter.

These are the last hot days in the forest.

Autumn brings excitement to the lives

of the yellow-neck mice.

The beech trees begin to release their fruits.

It's harvest time.

This year, it's a bumper crop.

A gust of wind brings down thousands of nourishing seeds.

The mice hide only healthy beechnuts and ignore

any attacked by parasites.

They must stockpile enough to survive the whole winter.

Many of the stockpiled nuts go uneaten.

Some may germinate next spring.

So, in their way, the mice help with the seed

dispersal of the beech tree.

The forest never sleeps.

A lynx walks stealthily through the trees.

Under cover of darkness, she's returning to her prey.

After catching and feasting on it the previous day,

she left it well hidden.

Another sign of a lynx at ease in its habitat.

The Tengmalm's owl hunts only at night

for mice.

And right now, there's no shortage.

Tirelessly, the small rodents collect as many beechnuts

as possible.

Easy prey for the owl, you'd think.

Yellow-neck mice aren't the easiest to catch,

but with so many about the owl doesn't

stay hungry for long.

With the arrival of winter, the merciless struggle

for survival begins again.

In the steep Kalkalpen forests,

the primal forces of nature continue

to transform the environment.

The cycle of life never ceases,

and next spring the forests of the national park

will be one step closer to their original wild state.

One of the new litter of lynx cubs makes his way

alone for the first time.

His mother has taught him all she can

over the past nine months.

Now play time is over, every step he takes

could be a matter of life or death.

Only one in four lynx will survive

its first year in the wilderness.

The odds worsen if you factor in their

deadliest enemy, human trophy hunters.

This picturesque, primal landscape, and all its inhabitants

are part of our history.

Many of these towering beeches have

been here for centuries.

For most of that time, the steep mountains

protected them,

but those times have changed.

Now, it's up to us to make sure this

magical place survives.

And the best way is simply to leave it alone.