The Lost Forest | Nobel Peace Prize Shorts

[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] Wow, so look puppy! But can you see? This is where daddy's going to go, gonna go in, climb this mountain. Yes, my name is Julian Bayliss. I'm a conservation scientist. I'm an ecologist. My job is to try and help conserve and protect areas that are not previously under any form of official protection.

I saw this site through satellite imagery and I've never ever come across a site like this. What was interesting about this site was the surrounding land was heavily cultivated, and then the crater containing rainforest was very dense and intact. I thought that's a little bit strange because there should be evidence of human disturbance today. I thought, well, maybe actually you cannot get to the forest; therefore, potentially this forest has never had any human interference.

To actually find a site with no human interference gives us this unique chance to investigate and measure aspects of climate change. Okay, and daddy help you. The speed at which climate change is occurring at the moment, there is only one variable that wasn't there before, and that's the number of human beings that are on this planet. We're planting a forest up, Eddie.

Thanks, my hopes of this expedition, ma'am, Rico, is that it will help us understand various aspects of climate change. [Music] It looks a bit like a volcano—it's about a kilometer across, it has a crater, it has a rim, and it has a basin of rainforest. It has these very smooth granite edges that rise up to over half a kilometer. It looks a little bit like a fortress from dear Zambia.

Thomas, there, everybody, welcome to this expedition to Mount Nebo. You've got a great team together: lots of specialities, lots of nationalities, young and old, and everything in between. The two climbers, Jules Lyons, one of the best free climbers in the UK, and Mike Robinson, also one of the best free climbers in the UK, have been rigging the climb at 125 meters the last couple of days now, and it's basically ready. They're going to finish it off this morning, and then we're gonna start sending people up.

So good! I think this is going to be a really interesting expedition. I think it's going to be a really exciting expedition, and I'm expecting to find lots of new stuff, new species hopefully, and make this trip really worthwhile. Anyway, everybody's welcome. Thank you very much for coming. Let's start working.

[Music] And very nervous about the climb. Yes, the thought of being alone and exposed on the rock face is terrifying to most of the scientists because none of us are actually climbers. The local people know of nobody in the surrounding communities who has ever been up to the forest.

Okay, so that feel okay? Yeah, okay, take it. You keep doing that, for the patient to be trying their leg live all the time. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]

Okay, oh wow! Look at all these beautiful better place. [Music] Beautiful! Very, very nice to be as a scientist and very lucky to be able to visit for these largely unexplored natural areas such as these rainforests and to spend time in them and to see the magic and the beauty that they have to offer and to show people.

And we can't camp up here unless we find some water, but I know it's from down the base. Can there's a massive seepage thing coming off the cliff over that side? So, we can find the source of that, have a camp nearby; there should be good. Okay, let's go to this faculty up here. [Music]

This would make a lovely campsite! Look at it: beautiful, nice on the edge, nice and open. Okay, let's set up camp. [Music] We have the best scientists in the world on this expedition. We have a truly international and global team. There's nobody being paid for this expedition; everybody here is here because of the desire to conserve these places.

Exciting! [Music] Climate change will change habitats. [Music] Nothing works in isolation. So, the climate changes, then the forest changes, the plants change, the animals change. When you've got human interference on top of these habitats, it's very difficult to actually distinguish between what is actually relating to climate change and what is actually relating to human interference.

So, here we have a very unique experience where the forest which has had no human interference; and so therefore any changes that we find among leeko compared to other forests that we looked at will be down to climate change to have a good baseline to compare it to. So, to be like this is the carbon that should be in the forest and then compare that to other sites that are disturbed, we can see effectively what the human influences and add that to the man-made climate change part of the equation because it's not the forests releasing carbon; it's us causing the forests to release carbon.

We're looking to maybe, through the soil, go down, go back in history, and see if we can get some estimation on what the climate was like maybe a thousand years ago. Here, we're looking for a history, a bit of a storyline between then and now.

The other major aspects of this expedition will be to look for new species to science. Put them level with the soil. So, what we're doing is putting in brackets so that we can more vertebrates. So, any shrew we get up here is almost certainly going to be new to science. So, any shrew I will be very excited about!

The world is full of secrets, and we have not discovered a fraction of them. The more new species a particular site has, the more importance you can then attribute to that site, and that can then leverage us protecting these sites. [Music]

The idea is to raise a butterfly trap as high as possible, and then you bait it with a fermenting banana mix, and that attracts the canopy flying butterflies such as your car axis. We could find a new species of Texas; that would be as big as it gets in the butterfly world. That's like finding a new monkey.

This time, probably tomorrow, we'll come back and we'll have a look at it, and I can almost guarantee we'll have butterflies in there. They are magical creatures. Most of the time, I just like watching them. We only have a limited amount of time in the forest on mountain eco to discover as much as we can. It's going to be intense work, sighs vision. [Music]

I've been lucky enough to find quite a few new species over the years, including many butterflies, and for my daughter's first birthday, I named a butterfly after her: papi Anna Simon Toby Vale aside. Papi, honor my beautiful daughter. Papi, she's very inquisitive, so she says daddy's going to the mountain while daddy's going to the forest, so she already knows where I am.

It is a unique experience to see the wonders of nature, see the magic of nature, and for my daughter not to be able to experience that would make me very sad. It is a possibility that she won't because it is possible that these sights won't be there. They're just being destroyed through climate change or through human destruction. [Music]

These animals and plants that are being forced into extinction have been evolving over millions and millions of years to get to where they are today, and for them to be just destroyed in a matter of years by ignorance and shortsightedness makes me very angry. [Music]

Antelope! It has this big—but this is obviously his part of the mansion. So maybe we put a camera trap—You and the new, new species of me. But me? Yeah, there's somebody inside today. Have you got something? Ever? We got a mess true! Yes! Hey, that could be our first new species! [Laughter]

Discovery! Every layer of soil is going back in time, and at this point, while the deepest part of this pit is probably at one point three meters, and at the average rate of deposition around here, we'd expect to be several thousands years old. We were expecting maybe a 30-centimeter sore pit to go back this deep, back in that many thousands of years of life history of this forest, and knowing that that's been without people is what would be fascinating. The results for this will be incredible, and they could dramatically improve our understanding of how climate change is affecting our planet.

Well, I'm surprised how many animals have… maybe there are things that your family. And there's antelope. We haven't seen the antelope yet; we put camera traps out. But how would an antelope get affected? Face this? This is a very interesting [Music]

10 is 5, three of them on the black car axis, which is that group like margarita. Another two that are remaining. So, these are the infestation [Music] of the black corrects. This group, which is a very interesting group, has potential for this to be new.

So, there's a fair chance at this, but these new species within these forests could have all sorts of medicines and new antibiotics that we, as a human race, could actually use to make our lives more valuable and richer and healthier. A rainforests are also where 70% of all terrestrial life is found on this planet. [Music]

What is being lost is disgraceful! It's actually disgusting, and I'm almost a little bit ashamed that we, as a human race, cannot actually gather ourselves together and see the magic and the quality and the value of all these habitats that they contain, grunty.

Hopefully, the evidence that we generate, the research, the new species—all of that—we're going to use towards protecting these sites and conserving them for future generations. [Music]

Is that puppy? Hello, puppy! It's daddy. Daddy's in the forest on the mountain. I'm having a lovely day on the mountain, thank you. Papi, I wish you could be here! Papi, I think we have it in us to find a different class. [Music]

I have to believe that it's not too late. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music]