Godney Marshes - Rewilding our Future 

Thanks very much Mark!

Thanks very much Trevor! Hopefully one day Chris and I will work together xD You can actually see some of my footage in a documentary that is showing every night this week on RU-vid (ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-09gC_am9FRs.html) which has Chris in it.

Thanks Neal. For sure, I think there likely is a lot of context to take into account. Non-native invasives could cause a real problem in some places. I watched a rewliding doc on RU-vid the other day in NZ (ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-3VZSJKbzyMc.html), and initially weeds such as gorse did appear but apparently it was all part of a longer wilding process - I wonder if this might be the same elsewhere?

@@MattJarvisMedia Yeh I've seen that and it's awesome what was achieved there with succession using the existing gorse as the nursery plants. A real inspiration and they stuck to their guns in the face of some pretty hostile opposition at first and proved them all wrong. I'm thinking more of the areas here that have been completely denuded of native vegetation (there are probably areas here as big as the UK like that). They need intensive re-vegetation and weed control to get them back to anywhere near what they once were as the initial diversity was so high. The introduced weed species that are here without their pests and diseases that keep them under control in Europe just run rampant and totally outcompete the native vegetation creating vast areas of monocultures. It's not all bad news though. :) I've just come back from a morning of revegetating my local creek which is a fantastic project to bring back all of the small woodland birds that are currently locally extinct. It's going to be amazing in 5 years time!! :)

@@nealmasters8642 Blimey that sounds pretty dire, invasive weeds have got to be the hardest thing to remove - I just finished a project looking at Himalayan Balsam in UK, and that's mild compared to Japanese Knotweed. I wonder if the Brits took these invasives to Aus aswell. Seems like we've really screwed a lot of the Aussie (and others') wildlife with our colonisation. Where is your creek, it sounds like an awesome little project? If I'm ever in Aus!

@@MattJarvisMedia Yeh most of them are introductions gone wild following colonisation. Japanese Knotweed and Himalayan Balsam are definitely a bit of a nightmare over with you, especially down those beautiful laneways. The trouble with noxious weeds is that we always leave control of them too late and by that time it then becomes too expensive to control them properly. I live next to the Darebin Crek in Reservoir in the Northern Suburbs of Melbourne and we are linking two areas of existing habitat that are about 3-4km apart so it will make a huge difference, especially for those flocks of small riparian birds that are currently at either end but locally extinct from the stretch in the middle. Yes, you would definitely have a field day creating an awesome film about it all if you were over here. I've bought a few acres in North West Tasmania so I'll be moving over there shortly and have a few 100 metres of cleared river frontage on the Don River in Devonport so will be revegetatiing all of that soon!! There's platypus, wallabies, Rakali, Giant Freshwater Crayfish, Eagles, Harriers, Bandicoots, Frogs, Flocks of small birds, Bluetongues, Snakes and hopefully wombats all on the block so I'm so excited about moving there I reckon I'll explode at some stage :)

Thank you so much really glad you enjoyed it, and I'm positive you will be able to!

Thanks so much :D

Thanks Nico! A really interesting and fun project to work on :)

Thanks Simon, I'm hoping to head back over the next few weeks to have a look at the fields and how they are now. Unfortunately we had time constraints to get the video to a science festival so had to make do with the winter floods!