The Forest Rescuers

Two-and-a-half centuries ago, most of Europe's woodlands were healthy. But those days are long gone. Across the continent, this habitat that stores water, restores the atmosphere, and hosts countless species of flora and fauna is now threatened.

The documentary tells the story of people committed to preserving the last pockets of primeval forest and woodland in Europe. It follows a group that tends Lübeck's city forest and works with researchers to examine how woods fare when left to themselves.

The journey moves on to Lapland, where the indigenous Sami people are fighting to stop the paper industry from clear-cutting. The reindeer herders need the forest because their livestock eat the lichen that grows on the trees. The challenge they face is great, as the booming mail-order business drives up demand for wood used to make cardboard packaging.

From there it's off to the Massif Central, where a German-French couple is fighting to improve a forest economy plagued by clear-cutting and monoculture. Together with 130 others they have bought up woodlands and are managing them ecologically. Yet wood is valuable and often prompts greed. In Eastern Europe, corruption and violence have led to the murder of six foresters in Romania in the last year alone. What is being done to stop such crime?

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