Look at this forest it's dark would you say very European you could probably imagine little red
riding hood going in and out of the trees here maybe Hansel and Gretel honestly this dense
forest seems to be the setting for almost every European fairy tale and it's because of this tree
the spruce but i'm here to tell you that this image of a classically european forest
is a bit of a myth historically this is not what the forest should look like meaning it's not a
wild forest that people planted monocultures of just these trees because they're really valuable
trees but now they're dying in a mass this is not a normal clear cut to simply harvest trees
this didn't result in wealth quite the opposite what you're seeing here is an attempt to clean up
death happening on a massive scale across europe it is a catastrophe the owners of this land lost
millions and yet it could have all been prevented anyone who looks after a forest even in their
own backyard can learn from what is happening in europe here because it's probably going to happen
in every overly dense forest in the world soon enough and that's exactly why we're here to find
solutions from ground zero to find people who've figured it out so we start here in the beautiful
country of czechia in central europe we made it to czechia that what is that is that what they say
here is my friend and the world's leading bark beetle expert yeah you're like the leading
world's expert i can't say it okay viewers can say he's spending a year here with his family looking
at this problem of bark beetles now prague is the capital of czechia and is where we're
starting our journey but it's not where yuri is from that's not where his true love really
is i'm attached to the dirt here yuri was born here he grew up in the country summer nights i
spent on that balcony in a sleeping bag we were treated to dinner with his family on the farm
the punishment for the fox for having eaten other chickens is they killed it stuffed it
and it is as undignified as you see it there like a cartoon smoking a pipe please don't and they're
really proud of their son yeri the professor then the home movies came out that's yuri working the
fields when he was a kid with his family and even today it's clear being in nature and in the fields
or on the hunt for beetles feels more like home for yeri all this background on yuri is important
because he had a real revelation especially after these headlines started coming out
many of these headlines imply the current die-offs are a beetle problem which is exactly why yuri is
here in fact he came to study these very beetles but it turns out this is a native beetle it's been
around for thousands of years and it's only able to infest weak spruce trees a healthy spruce tree
you see produces enough resin that the tree can kill the beetle and thus it normally causes no
problem at all they're only killing off stressed trees and the main stressor right now is drought
which is related to the higher than normal summer temperatures yuri explained it real simply to us
when we found a forest of dead spruce trees this is a bark beetle outbreak site a real drama you
can see how it unfolded if you start over there you see it started it all started there and folks
were managing this still had some time to try to stop it meaning that they're cutting down the
trees peeling the bark off taking them away this was three years ago you see already bushes growing
there this was probably last year or two years ago when the front was advancing the bark beetles the
clouds the barbed wheels coming out from the the trees behind us we're chewing on these other ones
folks are still trying to manage it cutting it down they seem to not have enough time or
manpower to take it out so the next generation of bark beetles emerged from these logs and attacked
those trees nobody had any time to do anything with that their toast bar beetles are not usually
the cause of death barbie does finish trees but they usually don't start the process of death
so rather than us just thinking about how to kill them how to kill them let's think about why it's
happening why are we seeing suddenly now these big explosions of bark beetle cause mortality
what happened to these trees rather than thinking about beetles as the mean cause
of death let's think about them as a symptom of tree condition more simply he realized it's not
a beetle problem it's a spruce problem and more directly the problem is that monocultures were
planted for centuries and now we're getting hit by an outbreak of epic proportions
they're killing huge forests of trees so my main question was is there any
way around this catastrophe or do we have to just plan for the end of forests in the future
my hopes hinged on a privately owned forest that was in the middle of a transition
it's owned by the duke kinski we met him here at a chateau in central czechia
it's not only a business but it is a business so anything we do has to pay
for itself if you talk about sustainability for example which is a big buzzword we always
say that sustainability has three pillars one is ecological working with nature and protecting it
the second one is economical if it doesn't pay it's not going to survive and i need to make a
living and the third thing is sociopolitical if it doesn't carry meaning for society at large
society will turn its back on you and again it won't be sustainable if you build on those three
pillars you're fine you're doing something that's really meaningful and will live on you would need
to include in the storyboard the the monoculture dark same trees same size same height there are
that's what we started from in 1994 and we're already at this stage and i can explain
sort of going around what we've been doing yeah let's walk then he showed us how he's adding trees
to his forest to help make them stronger and more resistant to the beetles which in the end
protect his investments you have a slot where we've created a half hectare hole where we have
planted beech so we are reintroducing a species that belongs here but because this was monoculture
had basically disappeared so in a sense we are returning the forest closer to its natural mix
which here is for spruce fur and beach in various proportions there's just you know a touch
of diversity he then explained how they're thinning trees actually with these animals
right behind me now they're using horses to help the forest stay healthy and actually increase his
profit it's amazing how little damage the horses do that's impressive to me so it was very dense
and what we've done is take out 20 percent yeah every every fifth tree and we've taken out those
importantly those that were sick and contaminating the others and then you do the extreme you took
the those that are the best where you make the most money and you leave seventy five eighty
percent of the trees and this tree the norway spruce has the the ability to take advantage of
any space you give it so this tree probably was you know that big before when we start and it's
adding inches and inches and inches of wood it has the ability to react even
irrespective of its age to react to space to light to the availability of water
and continue to grow so if you leave the average tree you turn it into a great tree
at no cost and finally he explained that it's not just a long-term game he's also making this
work in the short term short term there will be more cash flow if you do it right it also feels
more natural and and that's that's what makes it really it feels feels more alive you know this
forest that kinski runs was kind of amazing it showed us clearly that with smart management a
long-term view of the forest and with someone who loves the forest you can make it all work
better we then visited the university enterprise forest a few hours away in moravia
here they're conducting research to try to design the best forestry practices
for the current world we live in we change the forests definitely for the future because this
is the main role of the university first to be the light on the end of the tunnel as we say
in in our country tomas is a character who grew up under the iron curtain in the old communist
days in those days they had planted all spruce monocultures and he's now working to change them
to save the forests and him saving these forests is not only practical because he does have to pay
for the entire enterprise it also has meaning to him personally forest means for me at first beauty
and second gift from god one of the main forestry techniques they found that has important utility
is this concept of a diversified forest not just a monoculture i don't know if you can see it in the
drone footage here but these forests are not all the same height nor are they all the same species
that's a definition of a healthy working forest and it's working for everyone little trees growing
underneath a big trees that's a stump right here i'm standing on
they took out the big tree and now it's being processed in a sawmill for a kitchen table
behind us we hear the chainsaws they're working here just there just as we came in there was a
wild boar and on the other side of the path was a deer it's working for animals and if you listen
there's a ton of birds this structured diverse diversified forest is an incredible thing it works
for everyone and finally to wrap our heads around the current threat of this beetle apocalypse
destroying the forests we visited the largest historic beetle outbreak site of the last 20 years
just over the border in bavaria we are in germany this is all spruce habitat all dead spruce right
here it's pretty incredible you could still see massive standing dead trees killed over
a decade before but unlike the other sites we went to nobody harvested these trees they were
just left as a bit of a natural experiment and the people feared here trees will not regrow
you see by your own this is not a question so the point is that humans really created
a perfect habitat for one insect species jurg was right we saw it everywhere these
monocultures of spruce trees across europe are the perfect place for beetle outbreaks
in hot years the beetles have a literal buffet in front of them so jurg and the researchers
here found the same results that tomas did in the south and that kinski was practicing in his forest
they found that the diversity of the forest is the key to making it resilient to the
unpredictable climate and thus to the beatles the takeaway seemed simple first like yuri discovered
it's not a beetle problem it's a spruce problem a monoculture is just super risky but it's more than
that the spruce monoculture is in trouble because the climate is changing the one thing we know for
certain it seems is that we don't really know what the climate will be when the trees planted today
are a hundred years old and that means the key to it all and to a healthy forest is to have
diversity in sizes and species of trees if you mix the dimension of trees if you mix the tree species
then you will not experience a huge outbreak and jurg wanted us to see this so he sent us up a 50
meter tower in the center of the forest and from here you could see the new growth this was all
what looked like death and destruction and the forest has rejuvenated
and there are very few outbreaks these days and it's now way more diverse and that's what
every one of these people came up with from the researchers to the hardcore foresters and the
businessmen it seems evident that these caretakers will make their forest work for them now and in
the future and these are important lessons as we need this renewable resource in the future so back
to those dense spruce forests at the beginning of the video we introduced them as a myth because
they're not actually historic forests that anyone should strive to have they're not diverse native
forests that can stand the test of time you see instead today they're a buffet for beetles
so our hope is that in the future nobody's going to look at these spruce monocultures and think
that's how things should be instead maybe the ideal is this mixed native forest because not
only is it better for the financial success of the stewards but also for everyone else
everyone i hoped you enjoyed that little film no matter where you are in the world i feel like
there are things we can learn from this story and i get that every forest is unique so if you have
questions about this beetle the lumber industry or you want more detailed look at the solutions
this is part of a bigger campaign that you can see at climatebeetle.org
something we put together with 360 degree videos and even other films like this beautiful cinematic
film which i'm leaving a link to right here definitely check that out and thanks for watching