Man Spends 30 Years Turning Degraded Land into Massive Forest – Fools & Dreamers (Full Documentary)

Why HN readers recommended it

Shared in climate and land-use threads as a vivid example of how letting land regrow can restore forest.

This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.

Video & recommendation details

Creator / channel

Happen Films

Topic

forest regeneration

Format

documentary

Level

general

HN recommenders in dataset

4

HN mentions in dataset

8

Recommendation years in dataset

2019–2025

These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.

From the original HN conversations

Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.

• Here’s an encouraging story for New Zealand: [VIDEO] “Fools & Dreamers: Regenerating a Native Forest is a 30-minute documentary about Hinewai Nature Reserve, on New Zealand’s Banks Peninsula, and its kaitiaki/manager of 30 years, botanist Hugh Wilson. When, in 1987, Hugh let the local community …

• I enjoy sharing the short film in this vein, "Fools and Dreamers", that follows a group that bought some land in New Zealand and let it return to forest over 30 years. [VIDEO]

• This is a great short film that goes into detail about the project and the challenges faced in getting it off the ground: [VIDEO]