♪ Ted told Charlie that if he really wanted to understand how a landscape should look, he needed to go to see a radical experiment in Holland called Oostvaardersplassen.

Here an ecologist, Frans Vera, had a completely radical idea about how animals integrated with the landscape way before humans began to transform it.

The science believed that everywhere in Europe was like this, covered with trees.

And I'm saying that's wrong.

Not many people believe my ideas about what the natural landscape would be.

My theory was that a natural landscape is driven by big herds of large animals.

So Frans started this extraordinary experiment.

He introduced Konik ponies, a herd of ancient horses, and had cattle.

Wild breed of cattle.

The herds were mimicking the ancient animals that once roamed all over Europe.

Big animals would hold back the trees, turn over the soil and change the land.

Showing us what Europe might have looked like in the past.

A landscape which we don't have in our mind anymore.

Even the scientists think you must be almost crazy to adopt such an idea.

It doesn't make sense.

It will not work.

♪ Only when you see it, you can believe it.

♪ The trees didn't take over the land.

Instead, a patchwork of different habitats evolved, supporting giant numbers of animals where so few had survived before Charlie came.

I didn't know him.

He looked to the wild cattle, the wild horses, and the wild deer.

I didn't expect anything would come from it.

Why would some crazy Englishman adopt such an idea?

He liked it.

But I knew from experience you would have had a lot of opposition if you would adopt such an idea.