The New Millennium Europe: A Natural History

21st-century Europe...

730 million people...

A relentless force of change.

Man and Nature must find new ways to co-exist.

In Europe's cities, people and animals crowd together.

The changes that have made Europe what it is today

have been ever accelerating.

400 generations had to pass to take Europe from Stone Age farming to industrial agriculture.

Yet just 100 generations laid the densest road network in the world.

And it has taken only ten generations to fell more forest than all their ancestors combined.

But these are nothing compared to the changes taking us into the 21st century.

New technology,

new invaders...

..new efforts to bring back lost wildlife...

, and new wilderness...

helping natives to return.

Since its birth billions of years ago,

Europe has been in a constant state of change.

Its wildest fringes are timeless reminders of the fundamental forces still at work today,

which will ultimately shape the future of this unique continent.

Rome...where Europe's taste for city life began.

2,000 years ago, this was the sole metropolis on the continent.

Today, three out of four Europeans are city dwellers.

Not all of them are human.

For every million people in Italy there's over half a million cars,

and here in Rome, nearly as many motorbikes.

Even in the middle of winter, there's plenty of basking to be done.

But at this time of year it's not without risk.

Romans have learned to be very wary of clouds.

Huge numbers of winter tourists are flying in from the north.

Rome's ancient soothsayers used to read the future of the Empire from the flight patterns of these birds.

But today, when swarms of starlings darken the sky,

you don't need to be psychic to divine imminent disaster.

Starling droppings are extremely corrosive -

eating fabric, paints, metal and stone

and they're as slippery as soap.

Three million birds come here each winter.

For one reason only -

the city is literally a "hotspot"

significantly warmer than the surrounding countryside.

Cities burn lots of fuel.

Their buildings absorb sunlight and smog helps to retain the warmth.

Each evening, as the starlings descend on Rome,

they rain down tons of foul-smelling droppings.

But the Empire strikes back.

Volunteers set out to defend the city.

LOUD CAWING

These new legions come armed with searchlights and loud-hailers

blasting out starling distress calls.

The message is loud and clear

but will it be heeded?

Starlings are not the only birds that have adapted well to the urban environment.

Vienna.

At its heart, Saint Stephen's -

one of Europe's finest cathedrals.

Massive, yet intricate, it has caught the attention

of many a visitor over the past 500 years...

..including kestrels.

The gothic architecture mirrors the limestone crags of the nearby Alps.

Kestrels, like pigeons,

are drawn to cities because they're natural cliff dwellers,

seeking shelter in high and inaccessible places.

CATHEDRAL BELLS RING

Bats also find sanctuary here.

But a night hunter haunts these belfries -

the stone marten.

It's not after bats but pigeon eggs.

From the roof of Vienna's cathedral to Charles Bridge in old Prague,

hundreds of thousands of stone martens patrol Europe's city streets

unseen and unsuspected.

Even people can find themselves victims.

Martens can't resist cars.

Beneath the bonnet there's a cosy den and plenty to chew on.

In just one night in Munich, West Germany, a single stone marten damaged 100 cars.

Martens are wily creatures

but you'll certainly know if one has paid you a visit.

ENGINE GRINDS

On the bright side, stone martens can increase personal fitness

and even the use of public transport.

But on the down side,

are the steadily rising premiums for car insurance.

Daybreak in northern Spain.

The medieval town of Alfaro is anything but sleepy.

European white storks are natural tree-dwellers,

but with a shortage of big, old trees, they resorted to boulders.

And with overcrowding of these, they were forced to think again.

Now some 140 stork families reside on Alfaro's cathedral alone.

But they're not here just for the real estate.

On their doorstep, there's an endless supply of food.

Europe produces over two billion tons of household waste per year -

plenty of opportunity for scavengers.

Griffon vultures are only too keen to join the feast.

Rubbish dumps offer more than just food.

For urban red foxes they also provide valuable den sites.

Estimates suggest some 10,000 red foxes may live in London alone.

These highly adaptable scavengers are now establishing themselves in cities right across the continent.

And they're not the only ones.

Budapest.

Spanning the river Danube, Hungary's capital is a city

flanked by woodland, making jogging something of an adventure sport.

During the rutting season, wild boar can give you a good run for your money.

The woodlands around Budapest, Berlin and Vienna are full of them.

BOARS GRUNT

The increased protection of wild boar in central,

eastern and southern Europe has allowed numbers to soar.

Many of these normally secretive forest dwellers have now lost their fear of man.

They're over-running villages, city suburbs and farmland.

Farmers often find there's been an early harvest, and that their fields have even been ploughed.

Over millennia of agricultural growth,

some wild animals have found ways to exploit the intensively groomed landscape.

All of this was once impenetrable forest.

Europe's moderate climate

and rich geological past

make it the most fertile continent on Earth.

Six million square kilometres of prime fields and pastures.

From the rice fields of Italy

to the tulip fields of Holland,

Europe's agriculture is big business.

Each year three billion tulips are harvested in Holland and sent all around the world.

The continent produces around 250 billion euros worth of crops.

Where does all this leave wild nature?

In the days of traditional farming, hares were a frequent sight, but heavy use of chemicals

and radical landscaping drove them from the fields.

But now there's a greater awareness of the needs of wildlife.

Hares are making a healthy comeback across much of Europe's farmland

but they've still got to watch their backs.

For roe deer, some fields make important fawning grounds.

But thousands fall victim to agricultural machinery during the summer harvest.

Pink-footed geese use the farms of western Europe as valuable stopovers.

Here they refuel during their long journey to Europe's remotest corners.

The untamed north -

an arctic wilderness...

stretching from Scandinavia to the Pole.

It's one of the world's most inhospitable climates,

only the hardiest can live here all year round.

But come summer, under the midnight sun, the skies are alive with visitors.

Europe's remote northwest fringes are peppered with islands and bathed by the Gulf Stream.

These ice-free waters are among the most productive in the world.

But it's not just Europe's highest latitudes that have remained beyond our easy reach.

The Alps...

..a wilderness towering over the very heart of the continent.

Europe's tallest and most extensive mountain range.

The Alps are flanked by sprawling forest

but Europe's most prolific woodlands are found further east...

..here, among the Carpathians and Balkans.

Traditional farming persists, more in harmony with nature.

For centuries, little has changed.

In Europe's wild east,

farmers and herdsmen have always lived peacefully alongside big predators.

In the west, these same animals were feared and persecuted.

These forests are now crucial reservoirs for animals

that have vanished from much of the rest of Europe.

Slovakia and Romania are home to the greatest numbers of bears, wolves and lynx on the continent.

For half a century, this thriving eastern forest was largely cut off

from the remaining pockets of woodland in western Europe.

From the Baltic to the Black Sea, Europe was split in two -

the dividing line 3,000 kilometres long.

The Iron Curtain was a border of death...

..inhumane and unnatural.

Secured with mines, booby traps...

..electric fences, watchtowers, attack dogs

and thousands of military troops and border police with the order to kill.

DOG BARKS

Day and night, guards watched for any movement along the border.

Inside the fence was a five-kilometre-wide strip of land -

for decades, a no-go zone.

When the Iron Curtain eventually came down, the fence was demolished, minefields were cleared

and watchtowers levelled.

Today, only a few traces of the Curtain still linger,

like the odd patrol track.

But what does remain is a green corridor across the continent.

And here, wild Nature is quick to reclaim abandoned buildings

and derelict military bases

creating a new kind of wilderness.

For the first time in a century, wolves are back in Germany.

They have made their own way from the east.

A former Soviet military base not far from Berlin is now a refuge for returning wildlife.

The old border of death

has become a new corridor of life.

Along its length, countries have united to help create a string of new national parks.

There are few places on the continent where Nature now has such free reign

and already wildlife is on the move.

Lynx thrive in the vast woodlands of Poland and Slovakia,

but for the past century they've been on the brink of extinction in western Europe.

Now, Europe's big cats are slowly making a comeback.

The wild back country of former Yugoslavia has always boasted a healthy population of brown bears.

Some have already made their way back to the west, reaching as far as the Alps.

But even with the help of new green corridors,

they and many others face serious obstacles.

Road accidents account for about half of the all the animal fatalities on the continent -

most of them on the smaller country lanes.

With five million kilometres of tarmac, Europe's roads could wrap around the equator

a hundred times.

There are 110 million cars in Europe.

On some carriageways, tens of thousands streak by every day.

Roads like these are totally impassable.

With more and more roads under construction, what chance do animals have?

What's happening here and elsewhere across the continent

is actually a glimmer of hope...

..a green bridge 200m wide

and spanning motorway.

It's carefully planted with shrubs and trees

and positioned to reopen an old migration route.

And there's another means of access across the continent from east to west - waterways.

They've always been important corridors for wildlife.

Thousands of trees are being felled along these backwaters of the Danube.

The loggers -

beavers.

After endless persecution they'd all but disappeared

from central and western Europe by the end of the 19th century.

But since their reintroduction near Vienna just a decade ago,

they're busily reclaiming their old territory.

These sheltered wetlands along the former Iron Curtain are ideal,

and beaver numbers are rising fast.

It's one of Europe's most successful homecomings.

Now, thanks to reintroduction programmes in several countries,

the population across the continent has recovered to over 250,000.

So few western Europeans have ever seen a truly pristine riverscape.

Only 2% of all the waterways on the continent are still natural.

And this is a river delta in its natural state -

the Danube -

meandering its way through Ukraine, Bulgaria and Romania

a vast expanse of wetland.

The lower Danube is now the only place on the continent where,

far from being a disaster,

annual flooding is welcomed.

The flood plains sustain a wealth of aquatic life -

some 80 kinds of fish and as many molluscs.

They, in turn, support one of the richest congregations of bird life

on the continent - nearly 300 different species.

For Dalmatian and white pelicans, the world's largest reed beds are crucial breeding grounds.

But wildlife does not have this special river all to itself.

This is the same river in the west,

cut off from its natural floodplains.

Both the Danube and the Rhine rivers have been radically straightened,

deepened and narrowed, dyked and dammed.

As road networks are overloaded,

traffic turns to these rivers as alternative highways.

200,000 vessels a year cross the Dutch-German border,

making the Rhine the world's busiest waterway.

By the mid-20th century, industrial waste and domestic sewage

polluted Germany's biggest river.

A chemical disaster in the '60s was the coup de grace.

It killed off the last fish.

Until the 1920s, the Rhine supported commercial fishing

all the way from the North Sea to the Alps.

Most prized of all was salmon, but now, the tales of monster catches

sound like fishermen's yarns.

In recent years,

the tide has turned.

Rather than forcing the river to accommodate big ships,

they're being replaced by smaller vessels.

Strict anti-pollution laws are now in force -

rivers and lakes across western Europe are significantly cleaner

than they were 50 years ago.

While some wildlife is returning to the Rhine by its own accord,

the Atlantic salmon hasn't found it easy.

It needs a helping hand.

Each summer for almost 20 years, millions of youngsters are bred

and released into the tributaries of the river.

If just one in 10,000 of these survives, it's counted a success.

Young salmon face all sorts of hazards along the way

both natural and man-made.

Just a few adults get back to Germany each year from their feeding grounds in the north Atlantic.

They're given an official welcome by the press and politicians.

Some of these re-introduced salmon are now spawning,

raising the hope this busy river will return to its former glory.

Each year, more and more visitors come to Cologne,

to attend the River Rhine festival.

They now have good reason to celebrate.

Like the Rhine, only a decade ago, the Elbe was poisoned and dead.

Here, too, a clean up is underway

and wildlife is returning.

But with the return of life have come surprises.

The fishermen are netting more than just fish.

It's eels they're after

and it's a good haul

but their catch is being plundered by a stranger to Europe's waterways.

Mitten crabs.

These voracious invaders pose a serious threat to resident wildlife.

Mitten crabs are not native to Europe.

So how did they get here?

Europe's big coastal ports -

Dover, Hamburg, Rotterdam, Bilbao, Folkestone

are all gateways for intercontinental shipping and trade.

A port like this might deal with three million containers a year.

That's over 300 every single hour,

day and night, arriving from every part of the globe.

Although measures are taken to keep out pests,

the overwhelming volume of goods makes it nigh on impossible.

Every year, 150 new alien species make it ashore.

Most will not survive.

Others find a small niche.

But some become massive invaders.

Mitten crabs first arrived from Asia decades ago.

Ironically, it was the cleaning up of Europe's rivers

that allowed them to advance inland and wreak havoc.

But as invaders go, the mitten crab is not the most destructive.

The killer that could cut a swathe through Europe does not arrive in spectacular swarms.

Finding one is like looking for a needle in a haystack.

It may be hidden in any wood product from East Asia.

It's a deadly monster -

the Asian longhorn beetle.

Most wood parasites specialise in certain trees.

Their populations only explode under rare conditions.

But the larvae of the Asian longhorn beetle can feed on any wood.

If they escape into the wild and reproduce freely,

Europe's forests may look like this.

A graveyard in Swansea, Wales.

British cemeteries often look wild,

but this one is different.

For years,

the local authority has battled against an overwhelming onslaught.

It's a struggle against a seven-headed hydra.

Japanese knotweed, imported from Asia long ago

to grace Europe's gardens, has jumped the fence.

Its poisonous roots can reach three metres down

and its powerful shoots will outgrow any native competitor.

Even if all the trees are killed off by alien beetles,

at least the countryside will still be green

thanks to alien plants.

If ever there is a lack of greenery in Europe

it's probably man-made.

Just consider this landscape.

It looks like some future fantasy,

but this is Europe today.

The Mar de Plastico, the Sea of Plastic

in Almeria, south-eastern Spain.

It's visible from the moon.

Below the surface, optimum growing conditions.

Computers regulate the water and nutrients,

the temperature, humidity and the carbon dioxide.

400 truckloads of peppers, cucumbers and tomatoes

are packed every day of the year.

Climate control has made Spain's poorest region, Europe's richest.

But all this depends on one thing - the sun.

Life on our planet is driven by energy sent in from space,

from 155 million kilometres away.

The amount of energy the Earth gets from the sun is unimaginable,

but you can get a glimpse of it here in Spain,

at Europe's first solar power station.

In a ballet of perfect synchrony,

200 mirrors concentrate their reflections on a single receiver.

The operating temperature here reaches 1,000 degrees Celsius.

Even a slight variation in solar power reaching the Earth

can radically change our living conditions.

Across the continent, we can already see this happening.

Europe is heating up

with dramatic consequences.

In recent years, Alpine resorts have taken matters into their own hands.

Tens of thousands of snow cannons bombard the slopes.

Without them, the tourist industry would already be in meltdown.

Chillingly, from now on, the most dramatic transformations

on this continent will be driven by climate change.

When glaciers melt, sea levels rise.

And as oceans warm up, they expand, drowning coastlines.

The Thames barrier was built to save London from exceptional tides.

Already, the barrier is proving too low.

It's not certain how much longer the sea can be kept at bay.

A rise of a metre per century is entirely possible.

At the next millennium, London might still look like this...

but not when the tide comes in.

If global warming persists,

England's capital would be completely swamped.

But then the pattern of the last two million years has been a seesaw

of cold and warm periods, with the Gulf Stream changing its course.

And that could put an entirely different spin on things.

London and Berlin.

Both stand where the last ice sheets ended.

During the next ice age, life might only be possible under glass.

At the peak of the last glacial period,

everything north of Berlin was a white, windy waste.

This would be nothing new.

It's happened countless times before.

Equally possible -

Paris might become a tropical forest again

or be swallowed by desert sands.

There's no reason to think that climate change will ever end.

Nor will any of the more fundamental forces

that have shaped the continent come to rest.

250 million years from now,

Europe is destined to merge with Africa,

forming a new super-continent.

But for now, this is a continent of living treasures - abundant,

but not infinite, to be shared by humans and wild nature.

Europe's treasures...

its teeming cities...

its pleasant farmland...

and its raw wilderness.

They're all worth keeping.

They're all worth sharing.

They all combine to make this continent unique.

Subtitles by BBC Broadcast 2005

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