Original subtitles

Most of us love going on a journey.

I've been incredibly lucky,

exploring countries on six different continents.

Now that travel has become a bit tricky,

it's not a bad time to have a look back.

In this series, I'm going to be showing you some of my

most memorable adventures.

WHISTLE BLOWS HORN BLARES

We're on the way.

CLAPPING SINGING

The landscape is incredible, the vegetation.

Everywhere you look, green.

All different shades of green.

If you're going to try and imagine paradise,

that's it.

And this...

This is the real treasure of Haiti.

I've met hundreds of incredible people.

Hello, my friend. Welcome to Libya.

SIRENS BLARE

Welcome to El Salvador. Thank you, mate.

Welcome to Uzbekistan. SHE LAUGHS

I'll be catching up with some of them.

SIMON ON VIDEO: Because they're cheap,

they have nimble fingers...

Oh, mate!

This is a land of utter extremes.

This is where heaven and hell are said to collide.

And I'll be sharing what I've learned on my travels...

I have no words. Just good luck, OK? Thank you.

Good luck. Whatever you do.

Good luck.

..about the challenges and the solutions

for our incredible planet.

There are buffalo once more on the American plains.

And that's a bloody wonderful thing.

I'm on the island of Lundy,

exploring one of Britain's oldest nature reserves.

At the same time,

I'll be showing you some of the other wild places

I've visited on my travels.

I really want to show you some of the great wilderness areas

on our green planet -

also our climate crisis,

what we can do about it,

and some of the extreme and incredible landscapes

that I've been lucky enough to explore around the world.

Wow!

Oh, my goodness.

There are still wilderness regions of staggering beauty.

What a place!

Places that, at first glance, the modern world

seems to have hardly touched.

The sun's just going down over the mountains behind us.

Where on earth are we going?

We do face huge challenges in preserving these precious gems.

Perhaps the best way to understand these wild corners of our world...

Oh, look!

..is to spend time with the people who live in them.

SINGING

PHONE RINGS

Hello?

SHE SPEAKS MAASAI

It was a phone call from one of your neighbours saying,

"Who are those strange people with you?"

In 2015,

on my travels around the Caribbean Sea,

I journeyed to Colombia...

..and its wild and beautiful Sierra Nevada mountains.

We're heading into the land of the Kogi people.

The Kogi are the most intact surviving civilisation

from the time before Christopher Columbus

arrived in the Americas.

Unlike many remote indigenous people,

they've managed to hold on to their traditional way of life,

and they usually keep outsiders out.

Many had never seen a foreigner before.

Hantsiga.

This is right up there with the most incredible places I've ever been.

Hantsiga. Hantsiga, hantsiga.

Hantsiga.

Siga.

THEY LAUGH

This is a job made for me.

OK.

Which one?

Ah!

Flippin' heck.

Wow, smells incredible!

Mm!

I don't think it's alcoholic.

Any alcohol?

No.

I know I mustn't drink it all, but it is very good.

The Kogi understand this forest better than anyone,

and they took me into their back garden.

This was pristine forest.

It has to be one of the most important concentrations

of endangered mammals, birds and amphibians

anywhere on Earth.

The Kogi believe that the Sierra Nevada

is the heart of the world.

Look at this!

Absolutely spectacular.

The Kogi think of themselves as stewards of the planet.

They call themselves older brother...

OK.

..and the rest of us younger brother.

Wow.

They believe we're threatening Mother Nature

and their very existence.

I talked with Mamo Luntana, a Kogi elder.

This has been the biggest shock to me

since I started travelling extensively.

Right from the very beginning, remote and indigenous people

started saying to me, unprompted,

they could see the climate changing on their patch of the planet.

And these aren't people who'd been reading

The Guardian newspaper online.

These aren't people who needed to be told about climate change.

They were already experiencing it.

The indigenous people who live in the Earth's great wild forests

are witnessing fundamental changes.

Forests are a critical element in the ecosystem of our planet.

They're crucial to how it functions.

Eight out of ten of the world's land species live in forests -

hundreds of thousands of species of birds, reptiles,

mammals and plants -

many still unknown to science.

And so many millions of insects we've hardly started to count.

Perhaps even more importantly, forests are a colossal store

of carbon and help to regulate our planetary climate.

They could hardly be more important.

Yet, everywhere, they're under threat.

In 2008, in northern Argentina,

I stayed with the Wichi indigenous people.

That's where the bees are?

I'm a bit worried about being stung by angry South American bees.

The Wichi have adopted Western clothing and tools,

but they still get much of what they need from their forest home,

harvesting the occasional tree for wood and treasure within.

And here come the bees.

I don't think this smoke is working, guys.

Bloody hell.

I've just being stung once.

Look at it glistening, there.

Looks incredible.

Proper wild honey, straight from the forest.

OK, let's try some pure honey.

Oh, fantastic.

That's amazing.

And what...? This is honey, and what else is that, there?

And you eat the larvae as well?

Choking on the smoke!

I think I prefer the honey to the bee larvae.

Officially, the Wichi owned this land,

but just a few hundred metres from their village

their forest was being illegally logged.

Look at this!

It's really shocking to suddenly come across this.

This is just being torn out.

This is forest that the Wichi depend on.

Obviously, the rest of the world depends on.

These are lungs for our Earth.

Look at this, round here.

This is what they use.

This is what they use to destroy the forest here.

They put these huge chains between two bulldozers...

..stretch it out,

and then just run it across the trees,

ripping the trees up.

I can't...

I can barely lift...just this.

SIMON SIGHS

Can you imagine the devastation this causes?

At night in the village, we talked about the future.

You think that Wichi culture can survive the destruction

that you're seeing around you?

So quite a depressing day today,

seeing all the destruction of the forest.

And it's the sort of thing you hear about at a distance.

But then when you see it close up, it really is...

It really is desperate.

You can only feel a great sense of sadness for the Wichi.

I think. Because they're a very gentle people.

And gentle people tend to get walked over.

Deforestation is a truly global crisis.

And I've witnessed it unfolding and worsening during my travels.

SIMON GASPS Bloody hell.

From Asia to the Americas,

Africa to Europe and Siberia,

forests and jungles are being chopped and burned.

They have chopped and hacked the rainforest down.

Oh, my God.

They have crossed the border into the national park...

That's correct. ..and they have cut it down to farm?

Yes, exactly. That's right.

In Madagascar, it's thought up to 90% of the original forest

has now been cleared, mostly by poor farmers desperate for land,

for crops to feed their families.

Where are the trees?

Well, they've been cleared.

This is land that's been deforested,

used for cultivation, then been abandoned.

The vast boreal forests of Canada and Russia,

as massive and crucial as the Amazon,

are being devastated by fire and illegal logging for timber.

Wow.

Look over this side.

It's been completely felled and logged.

Goodness me.

All around the planet, I've seen forests disappearing.

But I don't think it's a situation where those of us

in wealthier nations can just wag our fingers at poorer states

and complain that they're not protecting their natural resources.

Because we did the same, in Britain and much of Europe,

hundreds of years ago -

we chopped and we burnt our forests,

and we cleared the land to make way for agriculture and for industry.

Many of the British landscapes that we now love,

from Exmoor right up to the Scottish Highlands,

are in some ways artificial

because they were land that was cleared to make way

for sheep farming and even grouse shooting.

In Britain, we only have about 13% forest cover.

Britain is actually one of the most deforested nations on the planet.

Ah!

The Arctic north of our planet is about the most remote

wilderness imaginable.

But there are people who live even here,

and they're some of the toughest and most hospitable I've ever met.

in 2017, I travelled across Siberia, in eastern Russia.

Calling it vast is a bit of an understatement.

Siberia, on its own, covers almost 10%

of Earth's land surface.

Love to. OK, sir. All right.

I'd love some.

The Even people are nomadic reindeer herders.

Tea with fish?

OK, are the reindeer far, Alexei?

In the summer, there's grass.

But in the winter, the reindeer have to survive

by rummaging beneath the snow.

But the changing climate is threatening this way of life.

So, Alexei, are they all yours?

I'd give myself three days, actually.

So, look, this is what they're after.

Are you saying that reindeer are starving to death?

Across the Arctic, climate change is one of the risks

to reindeer herds

and the traditional way of life of many of the region's people.

Is this reindeer meat?

Thank you very much indeed.

Thank you, Galina. Spasibo bolshoe.

Mm.

That is really good.

Have you got children, and are any of them working as herders?

What does it mean for the future of the Even people if...

..if your...

..if your community aren't herding reindeer?

Like so many indigenous communities around the world,

the Even people are experiencing our climate crisis at first hand.

Goodbye, my friends!

When I first started these journeys,

climate change was still seen by some as a controversial issue.

But now the scientific evidence is overwhelming and undeniable.

The Russian city of Yakutsk is a harsh Siberian outpost.

It takes a certain type of character to live here.

The city is built on top of permafrost.

OK.

Russian climatologist Sergey Fedoroff

was taking me underground to actually see the permafrost.

Into the freezer!

Oh, wow!

Look at this!

The more we breathe, the more crystals are created.

It's absolutely stunning.

OK, so, is this the actual permafrost?

These tunnels were once used for cold storage.

Now they've become the number one tourist attraction in Yakutsk.

This place is bizarre!

What's this? SERGEY LAUGHS

Oh, my goodness!

After you.

Into the bridal chamber.

It's a proper block of ice!

I don't imagine it's very comfortable.

Well, if you can.

I'll cosy up with you, Sergey.

People from other countries live up in the very far north,

but only Russia has built big cities

and really occupied the north.

They've even occupied the Arctic.

I think there is something...

There is something especially tough about you.

How did you survive a winter like that?

Flippin' heck! We'd declare a national emergency

if anything got even remotely like that in Blighty.

The country would come to a halt.

We're just not prepared for that.

You get a bit of snow or some leaves on the line, we close down.

Here, minus 45?

Sergey's out playing ice hockey.

Unbelievable.

Sergey knows that the permafrost is melting.

He wanted to show me proof.

We headed out of the city.

These, I think, are going to take us to what locals call

the gateway to the underworld.

We headed into wilderness.

Flippin' heck.

So, this...

..is the Batagay Crater.

And it...

..is enormous.

Permafrost is now melting so quickly,

so aggressively,

that vast craters like this, called megaslumps,

are appearing right across the Arctic.

Russia's not going to collapse into a hole,

but these craters are a dramatic sign

of what we are doing to our world.

It's a frightening size.

Thawing permafrost is dangerous because it can release

vast amounts of methane gas.

That makes it a ticking time bomb.

Methane is, of course, a very powerful greenhouse gas -

much more powerful than carbon dioxide, for example.

And if, as scientists fear, the permafrost melts,

it releases incredible quantities of methane into the atmosphere,

it threatens to cook our world.

It's not the best morning,

but it's definitely time for a brew up.

So this is my storm kettle.

The water is held in the skin of the kettle,

and then you have the fire that comes up through the middle,

and that heats the skin, water boils.

It's worked pretty well in many countries around the world.

I remember when we were in the Sahara Desert

travelling around the Tropic of Cancer

and we had to brew up there.

The Tuareg, who were with us, who love their tea as well -

the Tuareg saw this and they were completely blown away by it.

They offered me three camels for my kettle!

I only turned them down because I wasn't sure

how to get them back through customs.

Water's boiled.

Let's get some tea.

I think I did give them the kettle eventually.

Oh! SIMON LAUGHS

I feel warmer already, just looking at it.

Here we go.

Simple.

But effective.

Well, I grant you, it is a little bit chilly.

But it's certainly not the coldest we've been on the journeys.

My goodness!

When we were in the Arctic in Russia,

it was minus 40 for day after day.

Oh-ho!

When we eventually got to a relatively comfy hotel there,

I actually shot a time-lapse video on my phone

to show you what I had to wear, what I had to get dressed up in,

just to go out when it's minus 40.

I have woken up in some of the most amazing places.

Occasionally, is it a bit rough.

Occasionally.

It got very, very, very cold.

The cold is a real killer for camera batteries,

so we all had to have some of them inside our sleeping bags.

I've got bags of these in here.

The place is quite extraordinary, eh?

He just showed me... I'm staying over there.

And, er, the toilet is just over here.

Apparently you can get tigers within 50 metres of here.

So a proper run for a wee.

Bloody hell.

We've got a few extra passengers on board.

That's how you survive in the tropics,

with a whopping big mozzie net.

COCKEREL CROWS

Cockerels started crowing next to our heads

at about 3:15.

I hate cockerels.

These dogs make more noise than cockerels.

Barking. Barking the entire night.

Not bad as a view while using the facilities.

But rough or smooth,

it's glorious to wake up out there in the wild,

perhaps nowhere more so than in the Maldives.

The sort of sky that Turner painted.

To be greeted by a dawn like this is...

..spectacular.

A tonic is what it is. A tonic.

Scattered across the Indian Ocean,

the Maldives are a chain of 1,200 islands

built on ancient coral reefs.

Biologist and conservationist Marie Saleem

was taking me under the water...

..to see reefs that are almost indecently beautiful.

Around the planet, coral reefs make up less than 1%

of the global marine environment,

but they provide food and shelter for more than a quarter

of all marine species,

from the tiniest molluscs

to some of the biggest and most spectacular creatures in the ocean.

Manta rays are one of the treasures of the Maldives.

It's one of the best places to see them.

Coral reefs are crucial to their survival.

Mantas can grow to more than five metres across.

The epitome of grace, they were playful and inquisitive.

And despite their enormous size,

they felt totally unthreatening.

That was amazing.

Actually quite moving.

Those are huge creatures.

Marie took me on to a fabulous coral atoll.

I had a poster on my wall when I was a kid

growing up in London.

A poster of a tropical island,

and this looks like it.

It's just staggering.

Climate change is an existential danger for the Maldives.

As the planet warms, sea levels rise.

Come on, then.

That could put much of these islands,

and the country, under water.

The temperature of the sea is also rising.

That's a catastrophe for coral because,

both here and around the world,

coral reefs are incredibly vulnerable to change.

Wow. That's a nice piece of coral.

Why is this coral white?

When the temperature rises even one centigrade above the usual average

and stays like that for a while,

the coral polyps get upset, then it dies.

And this is what becomes of the coral.

We're not talking about the temperature plummeting

to freezing or rocketing to boiling, are we?

No, not at all. Slight change.

In what ways is the coral reef so important

to people here in the Maldives?

The coral reef keeps the rest of the ecosystems in balance.

They're like the rainforest.

And like our great forests on land,

coral reefs around the world are now being ravaged.

So there's reef just over here,

maybe only 20 metres away from us,

which Marie was saying was vibrant and healthy

just 18 months ago.

Sea temperatures are now rising

and coral reefs are dying at an unprecedented rate

as a result of coral bleaching.

Even in a place that looked like paradise,

a great swathe of reef was a barren wasteland.

Oh.

It's all dead.

It really is all dead.

It's a devastated...

..and a devastating sight as well.

Like a forest that's been logged.

The figures are really frightening.

Three-quarters of the world's coral reefs

are now at risk of a severe decline

because of climate change,

because of pollution and because of overfishing.

And if we lose them, which is possible -

some scientists think we could lose coral reefs

within a single generation -

we're not just losing something that's pretty for tourists

to come and look at.

We're losing an absolutely fundamental part of our seas,

of our oceans, of the marine environment.

I feel really conflicted about the journeys I go on.

Obviously, me gadding about the planet does burn

an obscene amount of carbon.

I like to think that the journeys help to spread

a bit of information and knowledge about what's going on

around the world.

But I still feel torn.

Travelling in the Maldives had a huge effect on me.

It's a poor country that relies on upmarket tourism,

and money from visitors helps pay for protecting marine reserves

and the coral reef.

Much of the sea around the Maldives is actually marine protected areas.

But the Maldives also showed me starkly the impact of tourism

and our modern way of life.

I suppose it's easy to forget that these are populated islands

with lots of tourists as well.

They produce a lot of muck.

This is really behind the scenes in the Maldives, eh?

Oh, my God. What a sight!

There's this stinking smoke hanging in the air.

It's actually cascading off the edge, there, into the water.

Oh!

My God.

Oh, there's flies everywhere.

You OK?

I don't know if we can get through here.

This was where the Maldives dumped its rubbish.

Just a couple of decades earlier,

this was another unspoiled coral island.

But then up to 300 tons of waste a day was shipped in.

It's sort of apocalyptic here.

I don't mind the dust. I don't mind natural dust at all.

But the smoke that's coming off here,

and the dust that's being blown up,

is really toxic.

Bloody hell.

The scenes here are gobsmacking.

Gobsmacking.

And really upsetting as well.

More flies than I've ever seen anywhere in the world.

This is a poisoned environment...

..and it shouldn't be happening anywhere, least of all here.

Our waste, our rubbish, our plastic -

it's all part of a vast global crisis

I first really encountered in 2010.

Following the Tropic of Cancer around the world

took me to Hawaii,

slap bang in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

It's almost 2,000 miles from the nearest continent.

I travelled on to one of the smallest,

most remote Hawaiian islands.

Wow, just look at this.

What the hell is this?

This looks like it was a mould, a plastic mould

something's been cut from.

This is some sort of plastic container.

It's been drifting and sun bleached.

It's come from the sea?

What looks like pristine sea.

Look, it's a plastic helmet.

A slipper. An old shoe, slipper.

Plastic bottles.

I was with biologist Dr Sam Gon

from the Nature Conservancy of Hawaii.

Look at this!

And this is after a clean-up.

The first time that I came to this beach,

the debris problem was so bad you couldn't even see the rocks

along most of this beach.

It was covered in just tons of plastic.

Of course, plastic doesn't biodegrade.

It just breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces.

On the surface, over 50% of what we're walking on

is actually little bits of decomposing plastic.

I mean, these are tiny, Sam!

Pink, blue, green, orange.

But there's white bits here that could be plastic,

they might be sand.

I mean, this plastic is becoming the beach.

The beach is becoming plastic.

And look, it's not just on the surface either.

It'd be one thing if it were.

But the deeper you go, the more plastic you get.

It's the smallest issue,

the smallest problem I think I've seen

on my journey around the Tropic.

And yet it's the biggest one as well.

The fact we're soiling our nest.

As fast as the beach was cleaned,

it filled up again with a seemingly endless quantity

of plastic rubbish.

It really is...devastating.

Not just because this crap is here on these beaches,

but because of what this signifies -

and where this has come from.

It's coming from the great Pacific Ocean.

There's now this garbage dump floating around

in the middle of the sea, in the largest ocean on Earth,

and sending this kind of trash to every island in the Pacific.

The plastic crisis is truly global.

We've known this for a long time.

But even in recent years, it just gets worse and worse.

Even in the Mediterranean, up to 750 tons of plastic

enters the sea every day.

One estimate suggests the pollution level is equivalent

to more than 500 plastic bottles

being dumped in the Med every second.

Plastic, plastic...

Bloody hell, there's loads!

By 2050, plastic in the oceans could outweigh the fish.

I know I'm not alone in thinking this is madness.

A huge amount of this plastic mountain

comes from the packaging and bottles we as consumers throw away.

But that's just the start.

So what we're on now, what we're climbing up in,

this is basically a river bed?

Exactly, a river bed that, of course,

is dry right now because it haven't rained in a while.

So, you can see, we're just a little distance above the sea.

In Spain, I met up with Daniel Rolleri,

an expert on marine pollution.

He's a dedicated environmental campaigner

fighting to save the Mediterranean.

We can see what I call a good example

of this new geological age...

Oh, my God. ..in which, you know, the plastic

is totally integrated into the soil

in the different layers.

This is not just one.

This means one on top of the other.

Can you see? You know, and really show the footprint

of humankind on Earth. This is...

This is unbelievable.

This looks like plastic used in agriculture.

This is a greenhouse plastic.

So this is one of the ways for trash to reach the sea.

Here, it barely rains.

But when it does, it rains a lot.

It pours. So all this plastic, here, gets flooded out into the sea?

Totally, yes. It's like a highway nonstop into the sea.

This is...

This makes me feel sick.

I feel disgusted by our systems

that enable this to be even possible.

Have a look at this just here.

And it just breaks down, can you see,

into smaller and smaller parts?

And this will end up in the ocean, in the sea,

sooner or later.

No doubt about it.

In tiny, tiny fragments.

And this is what the marine wildlife eat.

And that's why, then, plastic is in the food chain.

According to the United Nations,

about eight million tons of plastic waste

is dumped in our seas every year.

That's a rubbish truck load every minute.

Plastic has been found in the deepest oceans.

It's everywhere.

Clean-up campaigns are great,

but only scratch the surface.

The only solution to plastic pollution

is not create the waste in the first place.

Travelling around the Med, I found it infuriating

even wealthy Europe can't or won't stop polluting

its bit of the sea.

At the most southerly tip of the Italian mainland,

I hopped off a train in the small town of Brancaleone.

I wasn't going far.

So, what is just about the last thing you would expect to find

in a train station?

A turtle rescue centre, perhaps?

Buongiorno! Buongiorno!

Filippo?

Simon. Very nice to meet you.

Tania? Tania, hi.

Very nice to see you, too. Buongiorno.

Filippo and Tania had refashioned this old ticket office

to help save some of the Med's most incredible sea life.

SIMON GASPS

Oh, my goodness, look at the size of you!

How has he lost so much of his flipper?

So how much of a problem is plastic to the turtles, then?

All of this was in Raoul?

SIMON GASPS

Oh, my God.

I haven't seen such clear evidence of the consequences

of the modern world for marine life.

Look! This is astonishing!

This is a packet of pasta, for goodness' sake.

I feel your emotion.

I feel it, too. I really do.

It's needle-sharp.

Look, you big beastie!

Parrot beak of a mouth comes open,

snaffles it straight down.

Raoul had made it to 30 years old, breeding age -

a milestone only one in 1,000 turtles ever reach.

We are here on such a special day,

because Raoul is about to be released.

Hold down?

So 5065...

..is going to be you, Raoul! Si.

How far did you have to look to find turtle leggings?

Turtles are dying in their thousands from eating plastic.

Sea birds, too, and whales.

Animals crucial to the marine environment.

Oh, my goodness. Raoul's keen to go!

Raoul was getting another chance,

thanks to these amazing conservationists.

Tania, are you going to miss him?

Look, his flippers are going already!

He swims! He's going!

Oh-ho!

Thank you.

Thank you, on behalf of everyone.

SIMON LAUGHS

What an incredible moment that is!

I...

I've reached the most spectacular bit of Lundy.

There are thousands of sea birds nesting in the cliffs around here.

Some of the birds that come here are endangered.

Climate change has made it harder for them to find fish.

During the time I've been on my incredible journeys,

I've seen the effects of climate change become more obvious

and dramatic.

Yet we're still pumping millions of tons of carbon

into the atmosphere every year,

a rate that means temperatures are rising to a point

that could make climate change irreversible.

Finally, and slowly, governments around the world

are waking up to the problem.

They're starting to introduce measures

to cut our emissions.

I think... I know...

I know we need to do so much more.

We need to go so much further to save life on this planet.

I don't want to sugar-coat the reality of what I've seen.

I think we've really screwed things up.

But it's not too late.

Many scientists still think we can save ourselves and our planet

if we change.

Change the way we generate energy, the way we travel, agriculture,

and if we plant billions and billions of new trees

to help take carbon out of the atmosphere.

Is that too deep?

No, that's a good level. Is that acceptable?

Yes.

From Burma to Costa Rica,

I've seen inspiring projects replanting

large numbers of trees.

Get some back in the ground. That's fine, actually.

But many scientists think we need to go further.

They want us to rewild parts of our planet

to rebuild wilderness areas we're in danger of losing,

which could help to stabilise our climate

and save species large and small.

In 2019, I travelled through Montana in the United States

and visited one of the world's largest rewilding projects.

We're here!

Sean?

You made it! We made it! As did you.

Simon. Simon Reeve. Good to see you, Sean Gerrity.

Sean Gerrity is buying up land once used for ranching

to create a vast rewilded area called

the American Prairie Reserve.

Are we inside the APR now?

We are in it. We are absolutely in it.

This is what it looks like.

And this is native prairie.

As you can see, as you look out over this landscape,

there is not much to tell you what era you're in.

Is this the era of the Vikings?

Yes, this is what it looked like during the Viking times.

How about the Egyptians?

Yep, during that time,

when they were just discovering metal alloys and things,

this is what this looks like.

What you've identified here is a bit of a jewel...

Yeah. ..that is ripe for protection.

All the pieces are still intact.

And that's extremely rare.

If this landscape is destroyed through ploughing out

to grow a monoculture crop, that sort of thing -

putting this back together...

That sagebrush right there is 70-80 years old,

and they're very difficult to get going again.

It's really complex, not unlike a rainforest.

And, so, to have this is the jewel,

is to have the habitat to deal with.

And there's not much left in the world.

I don't want us to stop. Let's carry on.

I want to see more!

It's just brilliant. Look at it!

They left them for us.

This is too good to be true.

It's just wonderful.

It's the Missouri River!

Come on! Let's get out on it! All right.

As so often on the journeys I've been on,

I've found examples...

..where people are doing something wonderful and worthy

to try and restore or save a landscape or an ecosystem,

but usually they're really small scale.

This is not.

This is a country-sized attempt to rewild

a huge area of land.

Those are mule deer.

The scale of the project is immense.

The goal is to create a wildlife reserve

of more than three million acres.

That's bigger than all of southwest England.

There's a golden eagle!

A golden eagle!

Buffalo!

They are completely magnificent.

They are enormous and powerful and majestic.

Rewilding is about reintroducing species like the buffalo,

which was nearly pushed into extinction in the US,

and so much more.

Natural prairie like this absorbs huge amounts of carbon dioxide

to help slow global warming.

This is an amazing, resilient landscape.

You could have 1,000 bison come thundering through here

and all of these plants can take it.

The buffalo are key to creating a rich and sustainable ecosystem.

If we come back here in 10 years, 20 years,

what's your vision of what we might see?

I think you'll see bison along the river, bighorn sheep.

Maybe a grizzly bear walking along with three cubs.

Maybe a pack of wolves moving along, seeing if they might be able

to chase some elk for dinner themselves.

The habitat's here.

It's just a matter of time and coaxing that wildlife back,

I am sold. It sounds...

It sounds wonderful.

As I've travelled the planet,

what's become crystal clear is that our climate crisis

is not something that will just happen in the future.

It's happening now, on our watch, in front of our eyes.

At the moment, it's the people who live closest to the land

who are the most affected.

The Kogi people in Colombia were very aware of the danger.

Their message to all of us,

who they call their younger brother,

could hardly be clearer.

When you see this power station...

..what do you think, as a people?

You live in the mountains, but I sense the sea

is very important to you.

Do you think younger brother will ever listen?