The Lost Forest | Nobel Peace Prize documentary

So look Poppy, can you see? This is where Daddy's going to go. He's going to go and climb this mountain. 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. Daddy's going. 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. And I thought that was a little bit strange because there should be evidence of human disturbance. So then 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. OK. Can 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. Daddy, please. My hope for this expedition to Mount Liko is that it will help us understand various aspects of climate change. Mount Liko 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. Everybody, welcome to this expedition to Mount Liko. We'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. It's 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 going to 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. 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. I'm 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. OK, so does that feel OK? Yeah, it feels OK. OK, just keep doing that. If you can, your foot should be tight and your leg should move all the time. OK, I'm up! Oh, wow. Look at all these beautiful butterflies. Beautiful. Nice to be here. As a scientist, I'm very lucky to be able to visit 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. We can't camp up here unless we find some water. But I noticed from down the base camp there's a massive seepage thing coming off the cliff over that side. So if we can find the source of that and a camp nearby there, it should be good. OK, let's go to this flat bit up here. This would make a lovely campsite. Look at it, beautiful. Nice on the edge, nice and open. OK, let's set up camp. 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 who is here is here because of the desire to conserve these places. Come, come. Hi, Jo. Are you exhausted? Not excited, excited. Climate change will change habitats. Nothing works in isolation. So if 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 with a forest which has had no human interference and so therefore any changes that we find on Mount Lico compared to other forests that we looked at will be down to climate change. To have a good baseline to compare it to, 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 influence is and add that to the man-made climate change part of the equation because it's not the forest releasing carbon, it's us causing the forest to release carbon. We're looking to maybe through the soil cores, 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 and the other major aspects of this expedition will be to look for new species to science. Pass me a bucket. There's a bucket right here. See how you're doing. We put them level with the soil. What we're doing is putting in buckets so that we can catch more vertebrates. Any shrew we get up here is almost certainly going to be new to science. Any shrew I would be very excited about. The world is full of secrets and we have not discovered a fraction of them. And the more new species a particular site has, the more importance you can then attribute to that site and that can then leverage of protecting these sites. The idea is to raise the 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 Caraxes. If we could find a new species of Caraxes that would be as big as it gets in the butterfly world. That's like finding a new monkey. Not too far off. 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 Mount Lico to discover as much as we can. It's going to be intense work. 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. Popiana. My beautiful daughter Poppy, she's very inquisitive. So she says daddy's going to the mountain or 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, makes me very sad. It is a possibility that she won't because it is possible that these sites won't be there. They're just being destroyed through climate change or through human destruction. 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 short-sightedness makes me very angry. This is obviously his part of the mountain. Maybe we put a camera trap here. A new species of beetle. There's somebody inside. Have you got something Aaron? We've got a musk true. Yes. That could be our first new species. It's pretty cool. Yeah, I was very happy. Our first decent discovery, excellent. All that hard work paid off already. Every layer of soil is going back in time. And at this point, well the deepest part of this pit is probably at 1.3 metres. And at the average rate of deposition around here, we'd expect to be several thousands of years old. We were expecting maybe a 30 centimetre soil 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, well it would be fascinating. The results from this will be incredible. They could dramatically improve our understanding of how climate change is affecting our planet. I'm surprised how many animals have made it up. And the droppings that you found that you collected. And there's antelope, we haven't seen the antelope yet, we've put camera traps out. But how would an antelope get up that cliff face? It's just bizarre. Very interesting. There's five here. Three of them on the blacker axis, which is that group. Black margarita. And now the two that are remaining. So these are the interesting ones. The blacker axis group, which is a very interesting group. There is potential for this to be new. So there's a fair chance that this could be a new species. Within these forests you 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. Rainforests are also where 70% of all terrestrial life is found on this planet. 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 that these habitats actually contain. Oh yeah. It is grumpy. 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. Is that Poppy? Hello Poppy, it's Daddy. Daddy's in the forest on the mountain. I'm having a lovely day on the mountain, thank you Poppy, yes. I wish you could be here Poppy. I think we have it in us to find a different path. I have to believe that it's not too late.