Wildcard: The Forest Game - A scientific adventure across Europe's hidden forests 

Proforestation - the strategy of allowing existing forests to grow naturally without human harvesting or management - sounds simple in theory. Let trees grow, store carbon, and protect biodiversity. But what happens when this ecological ideal crashes into human reality?

In Romania's Făgăraș Mountains, Mihai Zotta from Foundation Conservation Carpathia discovered that buying forest land was just the beginning of a much more compl...

Deep in Switzerland's Seeliwald Reserve, carnivorous plants digest insects to survive in nutrient-poor swamps, while ancient trees accumulate carbon undisturbed for over half a century. This is proforestation in action - not planting new forests, but allowing existing ones to grow wild and free.

Professor Harald Bugmann from ETH Zurich has been studying one of Europe's most fascinating ecological experiments: what happens wh...

In Europe, only 1-3% of forests can be considered truly "primary" ecosystems that have never been directly managed by humans. But how do scientists distinguish between genuinely untouched wilderness and forests that have naturally regenerated?

Tzvetan Zlatanov thought he'd struck scientific gold. The forest ecologist from Bulgaria's Institute of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Research was standing in what appeared to b...