I think rewilding is all about giving our tired and beaten landscape another lease of life.
Sometimes that means creating a little bit of space for nature to go on living.
But on other, more rare occasions, we actually have the opportunity to hand back an entire area.
And when we rise to the task and we set our aim high, we can put aside
a whole chunk of the landscape that we no longer have any use for.
Where wilderness is ready to jump at the chance to take over.
And well, I think that if we can accelerate that handover
even by a little bit, then we are doing a pretty good job.
And that is why this new project is so exciting.
Today I'm here in an abandoned quarry which we are going to restore
and as you can see, it is a really strange landscape,
but it has a lot of potential for biodiversity.
You see, large wetland ecosystems are extremely rare in this dry part of Portugal
because most water bodies in the region have been modified
over the last few centuries and are in a really unnatural state.
So when an abandoned quarry flooded in this region
it provided a unique opportunity for all kinds of species of plants,
migratory birds, amphibians and aquatic mammals.
But unfortunately, the full return of wilderness to the area isn't a done deal
because much of the quarry still looks like this
barren, steep walls with little to no vegetation or use for anything.
Not to mention this weird light blue water in the middle there.
It's only visible by drone and we have our own theories
on how it's formed, but I'm curious to hear what you think.
My point is that the area is already really great for wildlife,
but it could be better, especially when it comes to diversity,
which is why our goal with this project is to modify the topography of this area,
to increase and diversify the available wetland habitats
and creates the best conditions for a wide variety of species.
I think you're going to enjoy this one because we have all sorts of ambitious plans for this area
such as knocking down and smoothing these steep banks, connecting
and blocking ponds to create different kinds of habitats
and even creating islands in the middle of these areas here
to provide crucial breeding habitat for wetland birds.
And in this video today, I want to show you around the area,
tell you what we have planned and of course, show you the progress we've made so far.
Now, let's start by looking at this absolute mess of a place.
This site was formerly known as Quinta de Santa Margarida
and it was an open pit mine, which, according to my research, first started operations in the 1930s.
They mined for tin and titanium until 1991 and then for feldspar and quartz until 2004
when the mining finally ceased after more than 80 years of activity.
Since then, it's been out of use and mostly abandoned,
which meant that over time it started to slowly flood and overgrow
with vegetation, creating these insane wetlands that we now want to improve.
Well, when I say we, it would be very incomplete without Rewilding Portugal
one of our oldest partners
They were the ones who first saw the potential of this area and are now managing the lands to improve it
which is of course how we came to work on this exciting project.
Today I'm being shown around the area by Tiago, the biologist in charge of the Mossy Earth
side of things for this project, who also happens to be my brother.
So what I really like about this landscape is that although it used to be an ugly quarry,
now it has become a bit of a pond wonderland with little ponds dotted all over the place.
Wonderland is almost an understatement.
Here you'll find incredibly steep banks, lakes of different sizes,
small islands with trees on them, abandoned houses and weird ponds
like this one sitting four meters above another one right next to it.
I must say that walking through this area is really strange because these cliffs are bizarre.
They don't really stand in a natural way as you would if you’d have cliffs near the shore.
They're just a wall of what looks like sand, essentially.
And that is, of course, because this is a really artificial area and you can feel it.
It feels very different from anything else you get elsewhere.
Exploring the area made me feel like a kid.
You are always going up and down and never really knowing what is around the next corner.
The miners here dug in a very strange pattern
or, well, maybe in no pattern at all
And this makes it feel like a strangely organic maze
of water, sand and vegetation.
Places like this excite me
areas with intense human use which suddenly find a new lease of life.
And I think nature is not picky, it will take what we can give.
But this blasted landscape isn't like most other patches of dirt that we leave behind.
This one is full of water and that means it has great practical value
In a region where most places with water have been heavily modified
a place like this is a rare and precious thing.
Now, I'll admit, of course, this place is actually modified to the extreme,
but it holds a lot of water, which cannot be said about
many of the other areas we leave behind.
Add to that the crazy patterns of the miners,
and we have one of the most important conditions for thriving biodiversity,
which of course is habitat diversity.
This place is full of amazing features for wildlife.
Have a look.
All this freshwater habitat is great for fish, reptiles and amphibians.
Here you'll find different depths of water, permanent ponds and crucially, also temporary ponds
which dry up in the summer, creating rare, ephemeral habitats
which are really important to a range of species that have evolved to live only in those conditions.
The trees and abundant vegetation provide great places for birds,
which, combined with the water and the abundance of prey, is pretty
much like an all inclusive resort for them.
And there even these little islands here where the birds can nest in relative safety.
So far, more than 115 species have been observed and identified.
In my quick visit, I saw herons, a circling red kite and these small birds
which I couldn't identify because they were hiding in the reeds.
However the ideal season for this is spring
and you can bet I'll be back here to film an absolute bird fest of a video for you.
Then in the different lakes, otters can also be spotted.
Diego had a bizarrely close encounter with them during his last visit.
Now you heard me go on about how amazing this place is.
So why are we then spending €36,000 on a project to improve it?
Well, we are essentially here to make it even better
and to do so in a much shorter time frame the nature ever could.
We are here to speed up that handover.
Now, before we start our projects, we always like to have baselines
because good projects are grounded on a solid results based approach
so that we can understand how things are and what impacts our actions will have over time.
Otherwise, we're working in the dark.
For this area we are taking three different types of baselines.
We will start by conducting a survey on the abundance of various species
to get a reasonable estimate of what is there before we start.
Then we're also collecting water samples to run and eDNA analysis
of both vertebrate and invertebrate species in the different lakes.
This is some amazing technology.
We can filter just a bit of water and detect the small bits of DNA
from all kinds of species which are hard or even impossible to detect with surveys.
This allows us to understand which species live where
and if some lakes have certain species and others don't.
And if we detect certain invasive species in one area,
we will know we should not connect it to healthier areas.
It has many such uses.
As you can see it was not easy to collect, but it's well worth getting done before starting the project.
So how’s the situation Sara?
Well, I’m really stuck in the mud
And finally, the team also collected a large orthophotomosaic of the whole area
to map the change in ecosystem types.
This is not the one, it's one from another area we work in because we haven't finished
the one from the quarry as it's really big
As you can see, this is essentially a detailed drone photo that is created with a pre-planned flight.
We use this in many of our projects
and it is a very useful way to track changes over time.
We've even used algorithms to detect unique species and their distribution.
I can't stress how cool this stuff is
If you're a member, once we have the results for these baselines, they will be added to your account
so you can also track changes over time.
I'll also refer back to them in future videos,
as I'm sure they'll be really useful to tell this story.
For now, we are releasing the management plan for the project as usual
so you can dig into all the sources and the methodologies behind what we are doing.
And if you have no clue what being a member is, then
be sure to check out our website and some of our other videos
because we essentially fund all of this work
with contributions of people like yourself who watch this video
and then decide to contribute monthly to our projects.
So you can check out mossy.earth
to learn all about the different ecosystems we work in and the different projects that we are implementing.
The link is in the description below.
Now lets get into the actual interventions.
The first and most obvious intervention will be to smoothen the steep banks
to create a gradient of habitats.
And the best place to show you is here, where we have both a smooth bank and a steep bank.
I'll let Tiago explain.
So here it's really interesting because we have the steep banks in the background there
where it's so steep that you don't have any diversity of conditions.
And so the vegetation is all pretty similar.
Well, if we look at where we're standing now, we actually have a smooth slope.
And as you can see, if you progress from the lake to where we are,
we have these reeds here and then we start having like different types
of vegetation all the way to the background there.
And it's this kind of diversity of habitats
and conditions that we really want to promote.
And we hope that by smoothing the banks in different places, we will be able
to see more of of this type of habitat and of this diversity in the area.
And some of these steep banks will also be left as they are,
because they can be useful for certain birds to nest in.
Ultimately this part of the work is all about diversity
A diversity of water depths will mean the areas are dry and wet
at different times of the year and create a wide range of conditions,
which also leads to a diversity of habitats
which in turn supports a diversity of species.
I'm sure you'll get real tired of that word
before the end of this video, but it's what we are doing here.
Our second intervention type focuses on increasing the flooding
and creating the right conditions for a very unique pond
ecosystem called the Mediterranean Temporary Ponds.
The work on this actually started a couple of weeks ago
and Tiago managed to film some bits, so I'll let him show you around.
So the goal for the section behind me is to stimulate
the appearance of Mediterranean temporary ponds.
And these are ponds that dry in the summer and they're very important
because there's a range of species that have actually evolved
to take advantage of this ephemeral habitat.
And so the way to do this here will be to
block this this bit of channel here.
So that we have more water accumulating in the flat bit behind me.
And so if all goes well, we'll have a few Mediterranean temporary ponds
dotting the landscape behind me and it will be very exciting.
I've been reading about these ponds for a long time now
and I'm really interested in this habitat.
So if we managed to create some here that will make me very happy
and it will be amazing to come back and see what it all looks like.
And some of the species that take advantage of this habitat are
amphibians because one of the features of these ponds
is that because they dry out in the summer they don't have fish.
So that means that the amphibians can lay their eggs and they are safe
from predation from these fish.
So yeah, it's a special habitat
and it'll be very interesting to see what it looks like once it
rains and we start seeing them dotting the landscape here.
The first ditches have already been
blocked and Tiago has been showing me a ton of different earth movements
just in one small area of the project.
I have this whole management plan I've been looking at
and I visited the sites and I'm still confused.
So I think that before this gets really messy for you,
we should take to the air and get a more simplified overview of this initial part of the project.
So this area here is the first one we will work on.
It's here at the tip of the quarry and in this one shot you can see several interventions
Here in the back we are blocking an old drainage pipe to increase flooding and retention,
and here we are smoothing a bank to help spread the flooding to this area here.
Then in the middle, we're smoothing
that really tall bank to flood this really big area over here.
And in the middle in this part, we are blocking those channels
to create the temporary ponds that Tiago is so keen to see.
And then in this area we're doing nothing because it is also important to know when you should step back.
So one thing that's very important is that we are leaving some areas untouched.
So where I'm standing now, you can see that there's actually
a great diversity of habitats already
Areas with different types of vegetation.
And so here we don't want to do anything we don't want to interfere.
We want to let nature take its course.
And it seems to be already on its way to restoration
since the site was abandoned and the mining activity stopped.
In addition to these initial earth movements, we're also looking
at reintroducing and propagating different native plant species
improving certain water passages to increase the water quality
and my favorite creating small islands in the lakes for the birds to nest on.
But those are all stories for upcoming videos when we get started on those interventions
because I think that each one has a story to tell and I don't want to rush them.
I'm really excited to show you how this unique project evolves
as we transform this area over time and let nature fully take over.
So keep an eye out for more project updates in the spring.
And of course, the best way to do that is to subscribe to the channel.
Yeah it’ll be great as well once the earth movements are done.
To start seeing like how the ecosystem evolves I think that'll be very exciting.
Yeah, I'm really excited to see how things will turn out this spring once
yeah, all the earth movements are complete and once the wildlife starts returning,
especially the birds, because, you know, I've got this big lens now
so I can finally go take some really cool shots of these birds.
So I can't wait to show you all the wildlife that uses this quarry.
and yeah, if this project is something that you think is worth supporting,
then please consider becoming a Mossy Earth member.
You can do so by heading over to our website at mossy.earth
Until next time. Cheers!