One Man’s Mission to Revive the Last Redwood Forests | Short Film Showcase

While people have asked me, you know, what's it like for you, David, when you, you know, what's it like when you walk through one of these groves of old-growth redwoods? By far, hands down, the most spiritual, profound, conscious-altering in a positive way experience for me is every single time I walk through a redwood forest. I can't say that I understand all of it; I've been given some insights that help the average person understand.

Wines are critically important. It's the most marvelous experience I can get it nowhere else on this planet that I found. I also feel tremendous sorrow, tremendous sorrow that 95% of them were killed, and we didn't even know what they do to anchor our ability as human beings to be able to live on this planet. We killed them; that's the badness.

It's my job when I walk through there to yell out to those trees, to hold those trees and say, "I'm here to do everything in my power on earth to bring all the human beings and all the help that I can to put this back, to put back every single tree that was cut down and killed." That's what it's like for me. And you know what? I'm going to do it.

The redwood trees of California are probably the oldest living things. The redwoods that grow along the coast live to be 2000 years old. So down they come: some of the world's oldest, biggest, and tallest trees, trees that grow over 350 feet high. Their history goes back millions of years to the time of the dinosaurs.

But when we look at stacks of redwood lumber, we may well be reminded of its ancient history, for this is lumber from a species of tree that has survived for millions of years; trees that live to be two and four thousand years old. The tallest, biggest, oldest trees in the world. We can rebuild old-growth forests utilizing the genetics, the largest, oldest, strongest, proven through the test of time giants that will help us turn this scourge that we face, this threat, climate change around.

The redwoods aren't nothing more than a model. Here we have one of the very top fastest-growing species of trees, ten foot a year, and something that's growing very, very quickly. Phytoremediation, sir, means pull out of the air tremendous amounts of excess CO2. Just an average coast redwood is a thousand tons; a thousand tons—that's a lot of carbon.

As we're losing the vast majority of our old-growth trees on this planet, the genes of those old-growth trees need to be preserved like Noah's Ark, and utilizing them to reforest the planet when we really need it. So we set off on that quest, and we did it! We did find the 20 largest living coast redwoods in this 100-mile corridor from just over Oregon down here.

We kept running into these stumps over and over and over again. These trees are dead and gone; there's nothing you can do. It's a tragedy, but gosh, we just have to learn to live with it until we learn about these right here— beetle sprouts. Okay, this tree is not dead; it's a long ways from dead. In fact, it's almost impossible to kill a redwood.

You can burn them like they have here. If they burned this out trying to get rid of it, you cut them down, burn them 140 years ago, throw everything in the world, and you can't kill it. But nobody recognized that the tree lives on because when you threaten its life from its roots, it throws off things: basal sprouts.

So the exact genetic fingerprint of this stump and any other stump in this whole region is in the basal sprouts. I have a real affinity for these stumps because I went for the hospital and died of renal failure—legally died of renal failure. But a number of minutes later, like these stumps that were given up for dead, like I was given up for dead, surprise, surprise, they came back to life.

So we went and found the biggest stump right here. We found groves of redwoods that are 30 foot plus in diameter. It's incredible—30 foot across! That's the width of most people's ranch-type houses. So Jake goes, "Hey Dad, would it be cool if we can bring this back to life?"

So we took some cuttings off of this; we snipped some cuts, Jake did, and we flew them back overnight to Kovash, Michigan, and tried to micropropagate these things. It ensures the world overt; our micropropagation in tissue culture lab—the main goals for that were basically research and development on how to make a million trees to send everywhere.

What this is, is taking very small pieces off of very small cuttings and then exponentially multiplying them through jars and reproduction hormones. So you could imagine if we use the multiplication hormones, you're going to grow many types out of one top. Then you take those pieces, then divide those, so then it becomes exponential.

So imagine large warehouses with this tissue culture going on. I mean, we could grow millions and millions and millions of trees. The Mellark family's been in the tree business for over four generations, so we've been in this for a long time. We're not going anywhere; this is just kind of taking it into the next millennia, almost making it hip again and starting from the very beginning.

We used to purchase some trees, and we used to go collect some native trees, but now we're literally making trees in the United States. 98% of our old-growth forests have been cut down in California, where these growth—the only range in the world of these—96% of all coast redwoods have been cut down. There's only 4% left. Maybe the genetics of this ancient giant tree might be valuable; maybe we should keep a few.

As most people know, California is going through a thousand-year drought. To protect and safeguard these genetics, we've picked the most ideal place with fog, cool temperatures, and an abundance of rain in Southern Oregon to make sure these trees and their genetics don't get lost.

Here in Southern Oregon, through a program called assisted migration, we're moving these trees north, where it is slightly cooler. The fog still remains in effect every day, which these trees have gotten used to for millions of years. And through assisted migration, we're moving them to a climate that's more conducive to the one that they've thrived in for millennia.

Here's one of our tags. You know what this tree is? The Barrett stump that we filmed yesterday with the playground built on it. This tree right here is the world's first column with a 3,000-year-old redwood, and it is that tree. Now this will join several hundred others as a model to the world that yes, we can fix the destruction. We can go back and we can re-establish and rebuild the old-growth forests that we've lost.

Kids just love this project when they're playing the little clone redwoods and big trees—they just have so much fun! They know they can be a part of something bigger: planting, nurturing things instead of destruction. And it's the reason that I pretty much started this thing.

I thought, you know, the kids could really show people that this is fun, this is easy. If we build a model and show the world what's possible, and if we change our thinking to help Mother Nature, to work with Mother Nature, not completely destroy Mother Nature, I think our great-grandchildren and beyond will be grateful that we did. It's my life's work.

Let's plant some more! You, you of my, this to the ground they read, be on, mom! Catch on for the song bear! We come, I'm sorry, ding, and the bone second chances; we'd all be you.