Fools and Dreamers

10/2/25 - Documenting the good Earth work being done

Hugh Wilson of the Hinewai Nature Reserve / screenshot from Fools & Dreamers

Hello everyone:

I’m offering something a little lighter, shorter, and more cheerful this week, in part because it’s been that kind of week, and in part because I want to honor the kind of work championed by the great and wonderful Jane Goodall, whose lifelong efforts on behalf of animals (including humans) enriched us all.

I may write more about Goodall next week, but for now I recommend a very brief but necessary note (“Listen to Jane Goodall’s final - and urgent - message”) from Benji Jones at Vox, and a poignant remembrance (“What Jane Goodall showed me about hope”) by

Rhett Ayers Butler

at Nature Briefs.

Something that Goodall said that’s ringing in my head at the moment is this: “empathy and objectivity can coexist.” At a time when both are rare in public discourse, her words are a balm.

As always, please remember to scroll past the end of the essay to read some curated Anthropocene news.

Now on to this week’s writing:

There’s so much good work being done to restore the living world around the globe, but the rewilding of landscapes, reintroductions of threatened species, and other forms of ecological restoration rarely make headlines. That’s probably for a few reasons: a) These stories seem to exist in some irrelevant space outside the economic bubble we think contains all human activity; b) The drama of, say, reintroducing swift foxes in the U.S. West or nurturing native forest in New Zealand plays out over timescales that daily news can’t process; and c) The global story of habitat loss from agriculture and deforestation can make these restoration efforts seem tiny by comparison.

But these efforts are vital, not least because wherever they succeed they prove, again and again, that humans can work to build sustainable cultures by restoring the living world.

What I’m offering is simple, a handful of inspiring documentaries to watch. Each in its own way demonstrates the resilience of a world in which human recognize their place as stewards of the life that surrounds and nurtures us. We are, in the Anthropocene, a double-edged sword that must be wielded with care. As Wallace Stegner wrote,

We are the most dangerous species of life on the planet, and every other species, even the earth itself, has cause to fear our power to exterminate. But we are also the only species which, when it chooses to do so, will go to great effort to save what it might destroy.

With that in mind, then, here are some good stories of folks working to save what we might otherwise destroy:

First, a lovely 12-minute documentary from the UK that provides one answer to the question, What can one person do to help heal the world? Usually, the best answer comes from environmental philosopher Kathleen Dean Moore, who says, “Don’t be one person.” We need to join or create groups who, together, take on one piece of the Anthropocene puzzle. Here, though, in The Hive Architect: Saving Britain’s Wild Bees, we find a funny, quirky, remarkable guy who is helping the UK’s wild bees survive with style and ingenuity:

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Next, an award-winning short quiet doc on a multi-year effort to restore swift foxes to the Fort Belknap reservation in northern Montana. One of the things I found moving in this film is the honest but pained determination of tribal members to see this victory as a small but beautiful step to rebuilding at least some of what was taken away:

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And here’s an introduction to the incredible array of restoration projects being done by Rewilding Europe in Spain, Portugal, Romania, Bulgaria, Scotland, Germany/Poland, Ukraine/Moldova/Romania, France, Italy, Sweden, Croatia, and more. On Rewilding Europe’s YouTube page there are the full documentaries this introduction samples, whether it’s boosting populations of white-tailed eagle, European bison, beaver, elk, wolf, Atlantic sturgeon and grey seal to the Oder delta on the Baltic coast between Poland and Germany (use captions for English translation); bringing lynx and vultures back to the Iberian highlands of Spain; or developing wildlife corridors in the Velebit Mountains of Croatia, to name just a few:

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Here’s a more news-style, longer doc about the incredibly sophisticated and comprehensive greening of Singapore. The city has already created a wide range of green spaces woven through the city, and is now working to enrich the biodiversity in its parks, forests, and waters:

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And here’s an overview by Tompkins Conservation of a massive cooperative project - The Jaguar Rivers Initiative - to create a continental-scale wildlife corridor in the Parana river watershed, which drains much of southern South America. It’s an ambitious project that works at several levels of community (natural, human, and institutional) to reestablish habitats at a vast scale:

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Finally, I want to remind you of two wonderful films I’ve highlighted here in recent years: All That Breathes, and Fools & Dreamers. I wrote extensively about All That Breathes in my piece “The Community of Air” in 2023 and again in 2024; it’s the beautiful story of two brothers and a friend in an impoverished part of Delhi devoting their lives to the care and rehabilitation of black kites, the small raptors that bring beauty to the polluted skies of the city. The full film is on HBO. Here’s the trailer:

And Fools & Dreamers is a wonderful upbeat story of regenerating native forest on tired New Zealand farmland and creating the 3000 acre (1250 hectare) Hinewai Reserve over more than 30 years. One of the remarkable things about the project was the insight that allowing the invasive gorse to grow unchecked actually allowed native plant seeds, long dormant, to grow underneath them before eventually taking over and shading the gorse out completely. Be sure also to check out Happen Films, the filmmakers behind the project; their website has dozens of other short films on living more gently and wisely on the land.

Thanks for sticking with me.

In other Anthropocene news:

From The Nature Conservancy, an announcement of a deal in Maine to purchase and remove four dams on the Kennebec River as part of a larger plan to restore fish runs (salmon, river herring, sturgeon, and more) to much of the Kennebec watershed.

From Reasons to Be Cheerful and their Fungi Week reporting project, using mycorrhizal fungi to help restore and replant damaged forests and the promise of fungi as a material source for much of what we use in our lives.

From

Sam Matey-Coste

and The Weekly Anthropocene, another of his excellent compilations of good news stories from across the globe in energy and conservation, from an electric plane in Switzerland to coral reef preservation in the Solomon Islands.

Likewise, from Earth Hope, a collection of good-news conservation stories, from mountain gorillas in Rwanda to red wolves in South Carolina.

From the Guardian, global investment in renewable energy projects is still very strong despite the attempt by the Trump administration to push US gas and oil exports.

And from the fine pen of

Bryan Pfeiffer

and Chasing Nature, “Autumn Leaves and Naked Buds,” another of Bryan’s beautiful letters from the deep woods of an examined life. This one meditates on hobblebush leaves, which are particularly gorgeous in the autumn transition, and on the forests Bryan spends so much of his time in, observing and reconnecting:

nearly every day now I head into the woods—almost any patch of hardwoods will do—and find a place to sit. Once settled, I take a few deep breaths, clear my mind, and then do little more than watch the leaves falling around me. I suppose it’s a kind of meditation. At the very least, it’s a break from the maelstrom of news, the tyranny of the inbox, and the pain of injustice.

In autumn I need no exotic destination, no rare birds, no orchids. I need only the pantheon of trees. My reward, my respite, lies in the honesty of gravity and in the grace of a single leaf floating ever so softy to earth.