Iceland Is Growing New Forests for the First Time in 1,000 Years | Short Film Showcase

what I love about working in forestry is the chance every once in a while to get out of the office and walk in the woods to see the forest growing to see that we're actually doing some good is a very rewarding thing a very satisfying but Iceland is certainly among the worst examples in the world of deforestation it doesn't take very many people or very many sheep to DeForest the whole country over a thousand years Iceland used to be much more wooded the people coming brought sheep and cattle and swine land needed to be cleared and their grazing prevented the forest from coming back and after a long time the thin vegetation cover that's left is susceptible to disturbances like frost heaps and storms in the wintertime it's basically rips open the soil is exposed in part it starts washing away or blowing away that's what we see in very very large parts of Iceland my mission is to support growing more forests and better forests to make land more productive and more able to tolerate the pressures that we put on there are other needs of forest biomass lumber lots of different things we started using exotic species because the native birch simply isn't productive knowing which trees to plant is actually harder than you'd think we plant about three million seedlings per year in Iceland most people have simply until now you use what you have here in Iceland it's the native birds plant them and you'd expect that they grow and then the climate changes the winters have become milder many of the trees that we planted in the 1950s especially siberian larch are literally dying after several decades of being reasonably good sitting there dead in the landscape and it's difficult to find the money to do something else with the land becomes a problem our aim is to produce the seed that we need here in Iceland that it will eventually all be of genetically well adapted material the genetics of forest trees are important how much heat they need in the summer to grow how tolerant they are to droughts when they know to stop growing in the autumn these are all things that are genetically determined in the trees and through the years we found the species that we can use and now we're selecting individuals that are best adapted bringing them together in a seed orchard and using their offspring in afforestation the seedlings are produced in modern tree nurseries with greenhouses they're all containerized seedlings which are very easy to plant and we produce all of them here in Iceland right now I am optimistic for forestry in Iceland the trees are growing people call us at the Forest Service and say I've got a shelter a wall that I want to build I need some planning for my summer cabin or I want to build a pagan church can you help us and we say well yes we can we're producing wood now of vision boards and planks we have the trees in the woods and we can cut them down the forests are growing better than anybody ever thought people will more and more look at them and say hey this is something that's worth having this is not something that was obvious to Iceland you see only a few decades ago that's a great cause for optimism [Music] you [Music]

Channel: National Geographic

Views: 4,538,031

Rating: 4.9298525 out of 5

Keywords: Short film showcase, national geographic, nat geo, natgeo, animals, wildlife, science, explore, discover, survival, nature, culture, documentary, Showcase, short films, filmmakers, wildlife films, films, iceland, forests, trees, deforestation, planting, regrowth, forestry, farms, PLivjPDlt6ApRiBHpsyXWG22G8RPNZ6jlb, PLivjPDlt6ApT5VT7oiz7riKmPzkl2sAe0, PLivjPDlt6ApTDlm7OufY6HAzNmFAqxWSo, Growing New Forests, farming, mammoth task, woodlands, forestry societies, orest farmers, ecology

Id: pnRNdbqXu1I

Length: 5min 22sec (322 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 13 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/Meat_Soup]

Icelander here, the movement to plant more trees has been going for quite a while now and most children plant a tree or two when they are in elementary school.

The thing is that we can't really use the valleys/flatlands because we need them for farms. Instead we plant the trees at the roots of mountains and up the mountainside (as high up as they survive).

It's unlikely that we can plant them in the desert of the highlands without pretty extreme all-year-round care but the forests are growing bigger and huge areas where there were no trees will be forests after 10-20 years and that makes me happy.

I'm only about 20 years old but there is a clear difference in treegrowth through my lifetime.

[u/birddit]

How cool is that!

[u/Happy-Fun-Ball]

"I want to build a Pagan church, can you help us? Well, yes we can."

The forests are back, and so is Thor!

[u/LightBadger]

Reminds me of the last inhabitants of St Kilda. They'd never seen trees before because there had never been any on the island, then in the 30s when they were evacuated to the Scottish mainland they were given jobs in the forestry commission.

[u/LabyrinthConvention]

Interesting

[u/outrider567]

Trees, they sure need them over there