When animal and plant life reclaim urban spaces in movies and TV series, humans have usually made a big, big, big, mistake. Think re-greened cities in walker (and zombie-adjacent) franchises The Walking Dead and The Last of Us, coveted oases glimpsed at in the water-starved world of  Mad Max, or the lush, ethereal jungle that emerges from an unexplained flood in the Oscar-winning animated feature Flow, an event that leads a singular cat on an extraordinary journey.

But regeneration can happen in the here and now without needing a catastrophe like the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear reactor explosion to precede it. Shipwrecks have become the centres for new underwater ecosystems, abandoned sites have given way to wildlife sanctuaries, and evacuated lands have been returned to their true roots.

In the documentary Wilding, based on conservationist Isabella Tree’s 2018 book of the same name, Tree and her husband, Charlie Burrell, propose something a bit more proactive: instead of waiting for tragedy, why not work alongside nature to create productive, nurturing landscapes?