We started Mossy Earth all the way back in 2017.
And in those days, the first project we tackled was to try to plant
a forest to restore an area that had just burned down in a terrible wildfire.
We arrived there a few days after the flames were extinguished,
and I vividly remember the jet black ash and the 40 degree heat.
This was the scorched landscape
in a truly desolate place, unlike anything I had ever seen.
But in the following months, we put our backs into the work and spent
countless hours on that mountainside trying to plant thousands of saplings
in the thin layer of charred, dusty soil that was left.
And bit by bit, things started to look better.
And now, six years later, I think it's finally time for a long overdue project.
Update.
To show you how the area has been transformed, but also to reflect
on what we've learned and how Mossy Earth has changed over the years.
It's really cool to be back here because this is where it all started.
This was our first project at Mossy Earth, and I'm really excited
to see how this area has transformed completely after the
the wildfire and especially our planting area up there
because, yeah, that was a lot of love and effort put into it.
So I'm really curious to see how it looks like now.
My idea for this video is to hike a short trail
that climbs from the river to our planting area at the top.
And along the way, I want to show you how each part of this valley has changed
since the fire.
I remember growing up seeing the fires on TV.
It was a yearly occurrence which didn't surprise anyone.
But this year felt different.
The raging fires consumed more area than any other year on record,
and then they became deadly.
In June, 66 people died in the Pedrógão
fires, 47 in one road alone.
The worst day for wildfire deaths in the history of the country.
Lessons were supposed to have been learned,
but this was an unusually long summer which left room for further mistakes.
On the 30th of September, all fire watchmen left their towers
as was scheduled, as was planned, although it still hadn't rained,
which meant the forests were at their driest and most dangerous points.
The October fires started slowly spreading around the 13th,
but then Hurricane Ophelia formed in the Atlantic
and moved along offshore a few hundred kilometers off the coastline.
It brought wind which fanned the flames, but
tragically no rain as it never made landfall.
And on the 15th, all hell broke loose.
At one point during that day, there were more than 440 active fires in the country.
Emblematic places that you learned about in school burned down.
Once again, people died,
bringing the death total for the season to more than 115 people.
The scale of these
fires was so immense that you could see them from space
and the smell of burnt wood reach Britain, which lies 1000 kilometers to the north.
And it was with this dreadful backdrop that me and Matt were starting
Mossy Earth.
It felt like the right moment to jump into action.
But we also picked a project
that truly challenged us to our core and also our young organization
beyond what we were expecting for a first project.
It was a true baptism by fire.
Our connection to this project was Pedro who at the time was leading ATN,
a local conservation organization, and now leads Rewilding Portugal,
whom we work with on some great rewilding projects.
And the first thing he showed us was the edge of where the fire reached
six years ago.
And the reason why the fire stopped here is really interesting.
Fire was coming that way and it reached over this area
by mid afternoon, like five, four or five, six o’clock.
And it got stopped there because of the horses there.
Pedro and his team at the time had some wild living horses in the area
as part of a rewilding project and they saved this forest by essentially
grazing down a lot of the bushes and grasses, which meant the fire had less
fuel available.
So when the fire got to the border of that property,
it couldn't really spread much further.
So, yeah, it's it's nice to think that if we restored
wild grazers to many of these areas, we would have a lot less problems
with wildfires than we do now in this current situation.
Now let's dive into the parts that burned and see how they've recovered
before the fire.
This area here had some lovely junipers and a few small trees
that unfortunately burned down.
And as you can see, they haven't managed to return.
We found no real signs of their recovery.
Instead, we have these plants called Giesta or Portuguese Broom.
They're the pioneers of this region and will dominate this area here
for a long time before any tree can find enough space to settle natural.
Yeah.
I remember when we were here the first time, it looked like the moon.
If the moon was black like that, ash was just so dark.
I mean, it was a bit like you walked into a fireplace.
I mean, do you remember Tom?
How that felt?
Like it was also so really, so warm.
It was one of those classic Portuguese days with 40 degree weather.
Yeah, I remember it very well.
It's almost unrecognizable.
The voice you hear is Tom, who works with us as a videographer,
but back then, he was not yet a part of Mossy Earth
He was just a friend who came along to take these beautiful photos.
This first part of the trail descends to a river in a narrow valley.
The fire actually managed to impact both sides of the stream here,
but the temperatures must have been lower because a lot more survived here.
And here near the river, actually it was one of the places
where when the fire first came through, it didn't burn all the trees.
And you can see that's where we still have some of the some of the tall trees,
which are a mix, I think of of Ash mostly.
It's looking really good now that a lot of the other vegetation has come back.
And with the new vegetation, we also saw the return of another species, the hiker.
Normally I'm not one for busy trails, but given how sad and empty
the place was after the fire, this was really nice to see.
As the trail switched back and climbed, I finally got to some areas
that I had never seen before with a different form of regeneration.
I know these as a Estevas or an English gum rock roads
they emit a lovely fragrance, especially when the sun comes out
and it always makes me feel like summer is just around the corner and these
hardy plants grow well in the harsh conditions of this valley.
But as you can see, the same problem as before is present here.
The trees have not recovered.
You see, historically, a hill like this would have
all kinds of oaks, junipers and wild olives.
But grazing and other land uses have long blocked their recovery.
And it was with this in mind that we decided to plant native trees
in our area and try to create a pocket from which a forest could spread.
And as we now rounded the corner,
we finally caught a glimpse of our planting area where we worked.
So hard all those years ago.
Right after the fire,
the temperatures still hit the forties, so there was nothing to be done
on the ground and we instead focused on how to get the funding
we needed to get those trees planted.
We started Mossy Earth
with about €300 between the two of us and built a simple website
that could receive payments to plant trees and then we got lucky.
A company called Eliza was here, decided to help us plant quite a few trees.
And also Alex Honnold, you know, the guy
who climbed El Cap without a rope in the free solo documentary?
Well, he bought some trees with us and shared it on social media
where he had a big following and this got us
a little bit more attention and also a little bit more funding.
Suddenly we had the money
we needed to get this area planted and we started sourcing the trees.
We got most of our tree stock from ATN's Nursery and also from
a few other ones in the region, and we often had to resort to
some rather unusual means of transport.
Those rides were cold and grabby,
but we were loving it because we finally got to going.
The species we picked were all natives such as the Four Oaks, Juniper,
Wild olive, Strawberry tree, Hackberry,
and among the water lines, Willow and Ash.
To save the soil.
We tried to spread some grass seeds,
but when the first rain came, nothing really grew.
So when we actually started planting, we had lost most of the soil,
which made planting hard.
When I mean hard, I mean really hard.
We were hitting rocks with every swing.
Here you can see my friend Jordan, quite
literally bouncing back twice after smashing some rocks.
I remember this being so constant that my hands would go numb
and my back would hurt so much more than planting in another area.
And yeah, then it began raining and the dusty
ash in 40 degree heat turned to mud and cold, dreary days.
Bunting was not a walk in the park, but bit by bit we got it done
and it was all thanks to the dedication and hard work of the amazing people
that put their backs into this from ATN we had Nicola, an Italian forest engineer,
and Zé a local field worker and then we would bring bigger groups
of our friends and family, such as Diogo who later became our operations manager,
and Tiago, who became one of our first conservation biologists.
We reached our targets of 10,000 trees and then planted
a few thousand more near the areas where the water runs in the winter.
And I think by the time that we were done, we really had something we could be
proud of.
In spring, Nicola developed a water system
that was coming from an old reservoir from a local farmer,
and the goal with this was to help water the trees through the harsh summer months.
But that 40 degree heat was something
that always made us nervous and with good reason.
So now we can finally see our planting area.
It's kind of rectangular, so it goes more or less from there,
all the way to that end there.
And then this way it's a bit of an odd shape,
but it followed what we had available to plants.
And yeah, I'm really curious to go there now and check out all the different trees.
As we got closer to our area, we were presented with a familiar sight,
some old friends soaring slowly in the warm afternoon thermals.
They probably just finished an important
cleanup job somewhere in the region and are now heading back to base.
The cliffs here are home to a large population of griffins
and it was wonderful to see them land gracefully back in their nests.
But we also got a surprise visitor, a
beautiful Egyptian vulture, which I'd only seen a few times before.
And actually in 2018, when the trees were already planted,
we did do a rewilding project with these vultures to help monitor
their population here.
You see, a year into our work, we started a monthly membership
that allows people
from all around the world to support our work to restore wild areas.
This allows us to work on stuff which is much more complex
and much more impactful than just planting trees.
The ultimate bang for your buck of the nature restoration world.
We still plant trees, of course, but these days our projects range
from flooding forests to restore precious wetland habitat.
To creating kelp forests in the sea, which are a nursery for fish.
All the way to weird, but impactful ideas that usually go underfunded
like rewilding a quarry, translocated ground squirrels between airports
or a saving four critically endangered species of snail that only live
in one cliff on a deserted island in the middle of the Atlantic.
To do all of this, we have our own team of biologists
that research and implement these projects properly
to maximize our small but impactful budget.
And of course, transparency has always been at the center of all this.
Even back in the day when we did this first project,
we took a photo of every single tree on that hillside
and then sent those photos to the people who paid for those trees.
And nowadays we keep our members up to date
through videos like this one that you're watching right now,
but also by sharing detailed project management documents, 360 degree
photos, detailed maps, regular update posts, and project podcasts
with our biologists, a comprehensive transparency dashboard
with all our actions, costs and the cumulative impact
we think we've had on ecosystems and species.
And if you would have any questions after reading all of this stuff,
you could always book a call with us or chat with us on Discord.
The membership starts at the price of a pint of beer, but it goes a long way.
So if you'd like to help bring back Wilderness together with us,
then please consider becoming a member at mossy.earth.
The link is in the description and in a pinned comment down below.
All right, now let's go see those trees.
Last I checked,
the survivors were along the areas which had the water lines.
So that would be somewhere over there.
All right, here's one.
Number one, it doesn't look great, but
it is a tree.
Let's see what else we can find.
All right, You got another one right here.
This little guy also a bit shaded, but looking really great and healthy.
I got another one right here.
This one's a little bit taller.
Not yet enough to.
To do. Yeah,
to have a bit of shade in the summer, but it's looking really, really great.
Like another one right here.
And another one right here and another one right there.
These ones are looking great.
Look at this guy right here.
Yeah,
they are everywhere actually, in this area.
And this is the area that we focus on a bit more with irrigation.
Oh, that is a really tall one.
So this might be one of our tallest trees here, which,
you know, it's quite a bit of growth for for an oak.
I mean, look at this.
This one, you could certainly get a little bit of shade on
if if the weather was right and the sun was coming from the right direction.
You might say you can sit under the shade of your own tree.
Which is really cool.
Very, very, very happy
with the results, actually, this is our first project.
Super cool.
So how many trees actually survived
the harsh summer and the years since then?
Well, in the areas with water, most of them did.
And in the areas where we left them alone, few or none survived.
Of course, this was due to some limitations
on the size of our irrigation system.
And overall, we estimate that around 1000 trees survived from this first batch.
Of course, we've done some replanting over the years,
but at the time we needed to plant a tree for every single contribution
we had received.
So we hedged our risk and used the leftover money to plant
10,000 extra trees as a backup project in the Carpathian Mountains,
where growing them is really easy compared to this
dry, dry, challenging location.
This way those early customers actually got these trees as a bonus.
Last six years have been really crazy and I'm so happy with the things
we have achieved and a project like this one, which was our first one,
were challenging and were very difficult to implement.
And that's why only 10% of of the trees survived.
But I'm still really happy and proud that we did this
and so really happy and proud of the results and
how that fills me with this joy to to look back at what we've done.
But above all, what I'm really excited for is for what we are doing now
and for what is to come.
And that part is all about you and our audience on YouTube, of course.
But above all, are must your members that make all of this work possible
through your contributions and through supporting us also emotionally.
So yeah, I'm really, really excited to see what's coming.
And if you'd like to be a part of this and maybe, you know, in six years time
this might be a tree that you've helped plant
and we might sit together under the shade of that tree,
then yeah, please consider becoming a Mossy Earth member
and you can do so at mossy.earth Until next time.
Cheers.