All language subtitles for RTE.The.Future.of.Nature.2of4.Grasslands.1080p.x265.AAC.MVGroup.org_track3_[eng]

Life.

The closer you look,

the more mysterious it seems.

We can't see
the invisible forces at work.

But what if we could?

It's time to look at our home...

..in a whole new way.

Imagine carbon
cycling through nature.

It's one of the building blocks
of life.

And it's stored in our forests...

..oceans...

..and grasslands

on an incredible scale.

But we've released too much
of it into the atmosphere,

risking our future.

We CAN halt emissions

and draw that carbon back down.

And our best ally for that is nature.

Restoring it to abundance
is the biggest challenge of our time.

But we CAN do it.

If the future of nature
looked brighter,

so could the future for us all.

Grasslands are the largest
land ecosystems on Earth.

Monitoring
and protecting them is essential,

as they affect the health
of our whole planet.

The steppes of Kazakhstan

are part of the most extensive
grasslands we have left...

..home to the elusive
saiga antelope.

Scientist Albert Salemgareyev

is studying these
unusual-looking herbivores.

Albert's study site
covers 13 million acres...

..and the only way of tracking
these nomadic antelope

is with GPS technology.

Most people use darts to tranquilize
wild animals before collaring them.

But that's not
an option for Albert.

So the team has developed
a different technique.

For it to succeed,

they need to be as fast
and agile as the saiga.

To avoid dangerous levels of stress,

each chase is limited
to four minutes per animal.

They'll have to try again.

Collars are only secured
to healthy young adults.

They should provide
the most reliable data

over the coming years.

Over the next five days,
they must fit 20 collars.

It's worth the effort,

as saiga are important animals
for the health of the ecosystem.

They graze for 20 hours a day,

and that stimulates
the growth of fresh grass.

If the saiga were to vanish,

the consequences would be
catastrophic for the grasslands.

By 2003, unsustainable hunting
and outbreaks of disease

caused the saiga population to crash
to barely 21,000 animals...

..one of the fastest declines
for a mammal species ever recorded.

Much of Albert's work now

is focused on saiga protection
across their range.

And GPS collars are the only way
to be certain where that is.

Saiga travelled great distances to
avoid the cold of winter in the north

and the heat of summer in the south.

But human development
can block saiga migrations.

Albert's data helps protect
these critical routes.

With safe passage,

saiga are making
an incredible recovery.

Numbers have just been declared
at an astonishing 2.8 million...

..the highest ever recorded.

There are many different kinds
of grassland in the world,

but they usually have
one thing in common.

Grazers...

..which come in all shapes and sizes.

Their relentless nibbling
and trampling

stimulates fast growth.

And as the grasses grow,

they're doing something amazing.

They absorb carbon from the air...

..which is then transported
down into the roots,

where some of it is transferred
into the soil.

If undisturbed, it can stay
there for hundreds of years,

locked safely away
from the atmosphere...

..where right now,
there's too much of it.

And because grasslands cover
around 40% of all land,

their potential
for storing carbon is immense.

But that can only be realized
if the ecosystem is healthy.

Countless species are bound together
in a powerful web of life...

..like here in south-west Uganda,

in the rain shadow
of the Rwenzori Mountains.

Dr Perpetra Akite
is a grassland ecologist.

She's dedicated her life to
understanding tropical ecosystems...

..knowledge she passes on
to her students.

The life of a teacher
is one interesting life.

When I want to inspire
the younger people,

I take ecology out of the textbook

and take them out
into the field like we are here.

And then you will
understand ecology.

Here.
Oh!

That's an entire grasshopper there.

Amazing. Yellow legs.

Grasslands are very rich ecosystems.

The biodiversity within grasslands
have always been underestimated.

We have a lot of Uganda kob,
which happen to be our...

The Uganda national animals.

Waterbuck,

buffaloes.

We have a lot of warthogs.

So there's heavy grazing
in grassland ecosystems.

Grasses cope by regrowing quickly,

but in doing so they draw nutrients
and minerals from the ground.

These need replenishing,

and the best source of fertilizer

are the animals themselves.

But getting this dung into the soil

requires a helping hand

from a creature that likes
to emerge at night.

OK, it's now night.

Let's see if there's anyone
coming out

to do some more building
of the mound.

Ah, there are some
worker termites coming out.

It's actually lovely.

There are more termites
living beneath this savannah

than there are animals above it.

Between them, they consume
a third of all herbivore dung.

The mound is a nest
where there's a lot of reproduction.

The more termites we have,
the more services we get from them.

As termites recycle
the nutrients back into the soil,

they complete the relationship
between grass and grazers.

In any ecosystem, there is
always this interconnection.

Nothing is living in isolation.

So from the smallest thing
to the biggest,

they're actually interlinked

and their survival is so connected.

As night falls in the savannah,

many animals take advantage
of the cooler air.

Especially hippos,
which can weight over three tonnes

and eat more than 50 kilogrammes
of grass in a single session.

Their constant mowing
suppresses trees and bushes,

keeping the grasslands open.

But hippo numbers in
Queen Elizabeth National Park

are down by 90%.

Recent increases
in poaching and disease

have decimated the population.

When grazer numbers drop,
the landscape responds.

And not in a good way.

Jimmy Kisembo has lived and worked
in this park for over 15 years,

and is witnessing
this decline first-hand.

With fewer grazers,
bushes are taking over...

..and this means
there's less grass to eat,

unbalancing the savannah even more.

It threatens to destroy
this once-pristine habitat.

Jimmy is here to meet
fellow conservationist,

Joseph Arinaitwe
from the Uganda Wildlife Authority.

He leads a team
of local community members

pushing back against the takeover.

There are several
invasive plant species

that are causing a real problem.

Kalema Njojo means
"defeater of elephants".

These animals are on the rise here

due to improved anti-poaching

and the recent ban
on the elephant ivory trade.

But even the elephants
can't touch Kalema Njojo.

It's far too tough and spiky to eat.

Problem plants have taken over

an estimated 580 square miles
of the park so far,

and less than 2% of this
has been cut back.

The work can only be done by hand.

Previous efforts with machinery
have spread the seeds

and made the problem worse.

These bushes threaten to destroy

one of Uganda's greatest
wildlife strongholds.

For Joseph and his team,
it's a war of attrition.

Some of our greatest wildernesses
are beyond the reach of most people.

"Tundra" means treeless plain.

At this high latitude,
it's too cold for forests to survive.

A unique biome of grasses,

sedges, mosses and lichens
thrives here.

We're out here
in north-east Greenland.

We are in one of the most remote
locations that you can get to.

It's a fascinating place.

We have heath,
we have grasslands, we have tundra.

Professor Torben Christensen

leads a team of scientists
monitoring this ecosystem.

The valley is only free of snow
for three months of the year.

Not long for the team to collect
the data that they're after.

It's also the time for tough plants
like Arctic willow and polar grasses

to do all their growing.

During this summer, there's
a lot of biological activity here,

and the plants are very fast
in utilizing this time

where they can do
their photosynthesis,

their exchange of carbon
with the atmosphere.

An invisible process that Torben
and his team are here to assess.

This experiment
we're looking at here

is a fantastic,
very simple technique

to measure the exchanges
of greenhouse gases

between the ecosystem
and the atmosphere.

Did you also check
the other one over there?

Yeah.
Nice. Perfect.

It's 51.7.

These instruments can calculate both
the amount and direction of carbon

moving in and out of the ground.

Growing plants absorb it,

but it can also be released
from the soil

by microbes and bacteria.

If there is
more drawdown than release,

then we start to get
accumulation of carbon.

And that's what the data shows.

That across this vast landscape,

the carbon drawdown is huge.

These types of ecosystems,

they have been consuming
carbon dioxide

since the last glacial times.

They are even doing it today.

The carbon that's taken in
by the vegetation

is building up in the Arctic soils.

The tundra is so important
to the planet's climate,

Torben's team wants to know
how it could be affected

as the world heats up.

Temperatures in the Arctic are rising
up to three times faster

than anywhere else on the planet.

It's a major problem
for the carbon stored in the earth.

Permafrost is where
the soil has been frozen

more than two years in a row.

Here, it's been frozen
for thousands of years.

It covers
14 million square kilometers

in the northern hemisphere.

When the earth is frozen,

the breakdown of organic matter

like dead grasses,
slows right down,

so the carbon release is minimal.

But rising temperatures

are threatening this ice-bound store.

We have known this area
for 28 years,

and this collapse that happens
right under our feet

was quite unexpected.

What's happening here
is fascinating,

but also a bit frightening.

The foundation was made out of ice.

That ice has now melted...

..and this has caused
a complete collapse.

With the soil defrosted
and exposed to the air,

carbon is escaping
back into the atmosphere.

A piece like this

is a little piece of 1,700 billion
metric tons of carbon

that is stored
in the Arctic at large.

This type of permafrost collapse

is happening all around
the top of the planet.

The concern is that with the warming
that we are causing,

we are starting
a feedback mechanism

where the warming leads
to increased releases of carbon

to the atmosphere...

..and that in turn leads
to further warming.

That's a bad trajectory for mankind.

To win this fight,

we need to drastically reduce
fossil-fuel emissions

and support nature in drawing
the excess carbon back down to Earth.

One group of scientists
believe there is an ally

that's critical to changing
the fortunes of the planet...

..right below our feet.

The Netherlands famously allows you
to do high-risk research.

We are allowed to try
all kinds of new techniques

to unlock the secrets
of the underground.

Dr Toby Kiers works as part
of a team of scientists

in an organization called SPUN -

the Society for the Protection
of Underground Networks.

This is beautiful.
You have to see this. This is good.

This is what we have here,

is a plant root growing
in the lab that is colonized

by a symbiotic fungal network

that encases the root system.

Mycorrhizal fungi
are a class of soil fungi

that trade resources
with plant roots.

It's a partnership

where the plant is feeding carbon
into the fungal network

in exchange
for phosphorus and nitrogen

and all the nutrients
that the fungi collect.

The fungal network penetrates
into the root system itself

and forms
these beautiful structures.

The partnership
between fungi and plants

is one of the oldest on Earth,

and it underlies basically
all terrestrial ecosystems.

To be able to see inside
the fungi themselves

and to see the nutrient flows,

we have to use a much
more powerful microscope.

Toby takes living fungal networks
to be imaged at a physics laboratory

on the other side of town.

Tom works
with really powerful microscopes

that can see things that we
simply could not see in my lab.

We can see
the traffic patterns inside.

A lot of the things
that are moving are carbon.

It starts to bring us
towards an understanding

of how carbon can be drawn down
into the soil and kept there.

So now I'm just gonna switch
to the fluorescence.

- Whoa!
- Whoa!

That was so cool.

It's so full of carbon.

- And it's all flowing.
- It's all flowing.

Right now what we're looking at

is carbon moving through
the living fungal network.

It wasn't until we could start
labeling the carbon

with fluorescence that the game
really started to change,

because now we were able
to pinpoint exactly

the carbon inside the network.

This year, for the first time,

we harmonized all the datasets
that had ever been published

where people actually measured
how much carbon

was going from root systems
into mycorrhizal fungi.

It's a big number.

Our estimates are about
13 billion tons of CO2 per year

are processed by plants

and then fed to mycorrhizal
networks below ground.

That's equivalent to about a third
of all emissions from fossil fuels.

These mycorrhizal fungi,

they are an ally in our fight
against climate change.

But the clock is ticking

to find and safeguard
these amazing networks.

We're not protecting
these fungal systems.

And I think one of the big problems

is that there are no maps
of the fungi themselves.

We don't know where the Amazon
of the underground is.

Part of SPUN's goal is to identify
where these places are.

Let's see what we got.
Have a core.

We go to those spots,

and we actually work with local
scientists and collect soils

to understand what fungal
communities are there.

Just to give you
a bit of perspective,

we have sampled about 0.01%
of terrestrial earth.

So that means 99.9%
of terrestrial earth

has not been sampled
for these fungi.

So we have a big job ahead of us.

Grasslands are huge.

As well as capturing carbon,
they help produce our food.

Our staples of wheat,
barley, oats, and rice

are all cultivated grass species.

But the way we farm them
is harming soil biodiversity.

Digging and tilling
can break up fungal networks

and release the carbon they hold.

Globally, a third of all soils
are degraded,

and getting worse...

..not only contributing
to climate change,

but threatening global food supplies.

Many farmers recognize this

and want to boost
underground biodiversity...

..returning soil to health.

This unproductive field has been
set aside to let nature help it heal.

And student Robbie Sidhu

is monitoring its recovery
in an unusual way.

I think it's really important
to develop new ways

of looking at how we can
help save our planet

as the climate crisis
moves forwards,

try new approaches that
we haven't looked at before.

The first time I listened
to soil was in my own garden,

(soil rumbling and clicking)
and I plugged the microphones in

and wasn't prepared
for the amount of noise

that I heard and the variation
of the noise that I heard.

(rumbling and cracking continues)

Robbie is trying to make sense
of this subterranean chorus.

There's a lot of cracks
and pops and rustling going on.

It's soothing to listen to,
in a weird way.

Bioacoustics is a promising way
to observe soil biodiversity

without disturbing it.

We're thinking of
this fieldwork as kind of

an orchestra
that we're listening to,

and now we're going back
into the laboratory

and trying to identify
what all the instruments are.

It's quite surprising to hear

the rustling
from the root systems...

..and the percussiveness
of the insects.

These methods
are in their early stages,

but the difference between
healthy and unhealthy soil

is obvious.

As things become more restored,

you get a lot more noise
from an improved ecosystem.

It's really exciting to be
at the edge of something that

could garner quite important
results going forwards.

A lot of the methods
of monitoring soil at the moment

are quite invasive, quite expensive,
quite time-consuming,

whereas monitoring the acoustic
aspects of soil is quite easy.

This tool is a simple way
to understand if our efforts

to restore nature are working.

All of the animals and the
biology that lives in the soil

is what captures that carbon
the most.

And if we can encourage
that biology to flourish,

then we're doing our job
in terms of capturing carbon,

and listening to the soil is an
important way that we can do that.

It's only been a few years,

but already when we compare
this field that's being regenerated

to those around it
that are still in constant use,

we can hear a difference.

And it's getting louder.

If protected,

all of the world's grasslands
can help us fight climate change.

Like those found in
the prairies of North America.

But less than a fifth
of these ecosystems remain...

..and over a million acres
are lost to crops every year.

But there are those
who believe that wild prairies

can coexist with our human needs.

We're going to go see if we can find
bull bison, these kind of...

I'd say solitary,

but I think there's a group
of, like, three of them up here.

It's pretty typical this time
of year, outside of the rut,

that they're on their own
for the most part.

Here in Montana,

there's a large area of prairie
that looks wild...

..but it's really just a shadow
of its former self.

The biggest difference
between the prairies today

and the prairies
let's say 150 or 200 years ago

is the absence of big herds
of large mammals,

predators and migratory birds.

Large indigenous grazers,
things like bison,

have been replaced by domestic
species, cattle for the most part.

For wild animals to return,

they need substantial areas of land.

The best available science

says that a fully functioning
prairie ecosystem

needs to be about 3.2 million acres.

That's 5,000 square miles.

And that's just how much land
a project called American Prairie

intends to rewild.

That's Yellowstone
National Park,

Glacier National Park,

and then eventually,
we hope to create

this kind of comparable
large protected area

for wildlife right
in the middle of the state here.

Much of the land has been owned
by ranching families for generations,

and many have made their
feelings clear about rewilding.

There is a fear that native animals,
especially predators,

will have an impact
on their livelihoods.

We know our neighbors
are always going to be ranchers

no matter what this looks like.

So how do you extend
the effects of a wildlife refuge

by increasing wildlife tolerance
on the other side of the fence?

Success is only guaranteed
if everyone works together.

Brother and sister
Grant and Glenna Finkbeiner

help run the family's
livestock operation.

Well, we ranch.

We got a lot of different
enterprises, though.

We're fifth-generation
ranchers now,

pretty much in this area
since the late 1800s.

We still have large herds of elk.

You know, it's not crazy to see
a thousand head elk

coming out of the trees.

Predators as well.

Had a lion come through
and it killed 20 ewes.

Considering that year

the ewes were averaging
in the market $230 apiece...

..it adds up pretty quick,
the economic loss.

Many ranchers around here
still kill a lot of predators.

If they saw a wolf,
they'd shoot it immediately.

I feel as though getting rid
of all the predators

kind of upsets
the ecological balance.

To improve carnivore numbers,

American Prairie has a plan
to incentivise ranchers

to see them in a different way.

These cameras are owned
by the American Prairie,

and they use them to see and manage
how much wildlife is in an area.

Camera traps are set...

..and every picture taken
of a contentious species

earns the landowner money.

It helps compensate
for any financial impact

the wildlife might cause.

Over 60 sites have been
photographed so far...

..capturing over 30,000 images...

..including the rarest predators.

Schemes like this improve
relations with nature...

..which is doing better
as the project grows.

But persecution has driven some
species to extinction in Montana.

With a little help,

even those lost can be returned.

The reason
we're working where we are

is because the habitat
is intact enough

that what you can do is
just add animals back into it.

The Fort Belknap Indian Reservation

is home to the Aaniiih
and Nakoda people.

Over 650,000 acres of intact prairie

and the site of an incredible
reintroduction program.

Why Fort Belknap?

Because it's an Indian reservation,

it is a sovereign nation,

so they are able to make
essentially unilateral decisions

about how much or how little
wildlife will be in their lands

without the need to get approval
from the state wildlife agency

or the federal wildlife agency.

Scientists are joining students
from the reservation's college

to reintroduce a small but vital
predator back into the ecosystem.

Thank you guys for being here.

Tonight we are going
to release two foxes

that have been brought up
from Colorado.

Student Ethan Werk is part

of the swift fox reintroduction team.

The work is tough, it's hard,

but being able to see
the foxes on the landscape

is rewarding in itself.

They eat small rodents
and prairie dogs and insects,

so they're kind of like
a pest control.

Swift foxes are so fascinating.

They're very, very small,
about the size of a house cat.

And what's so special about them

is that you can only find them
in these large tracts

of intact shortgrass
prairie ecosystems.

So the foxes that we have
in the pen here with us today,

they've been fitted
with a GPS collar

and were placed into an acclimation
pen for five days.

And now we will release them
to find a new home on Fort Belknap.

There it is.

There he goes.

Oh! Godspeed, little buddy.

Look the other way.
You're free now.

I'm gonna call this fox North
cos he has no sense of direction.

His first steps
into his new home.

He's hunting.

We're gonna watch him catch one.

He got it!

He missed.

That was BLEEP cool.

I hope that guy caught
that on camera.

These animals, they have
a place here, too,

just like anybody else.

Their land was taken,

most of their habitat was taken,

so having a place to go
is crucial for them.

And being able
on the reservation here

to provide that is pretty great.

And it's not only the native animals
that benefit from this project.

Thriving prairies can help us

to draw down and store
staggering amounts of carbon.

I think we're so close.

It seems so very doable
to be able to rewild this place

and bring it back
so all of us can enjoy

that wild North America
that came so close

to being lost forever.

I think I will see this place
in a wild state

before I retire,
let alone before I die.

This is not something
that takes 100 years.

You could do this in 40 years

and have this place be wild again.

We know how to protect and rebuild
the ecosystems we rely on.

And the work has begun

in grasslands
right across the world...

..saving species,

keeping soil healthy

and locking carbon
beneath the ground.

This is all about urgency.

It's even hard to sit here
and talk about it

and not be in the field sampling

and restoring ecosystems
that have been degraded.

It won't be easy,
but the payoffs are huge.

There are wild possibilities
just ahead of us.

Building a future for nature
benefits us all.

There is a future,
and everyone will be involved.

Definitely.

With nature on our side,

we CAN overcome
even the greatest challenge.