I've seen our countryside falling silent. I've watched our skies emptying. We have damaged our planet and unless we act now, it will be too late.
I'm Robbie Sloan and I've made this short film - Deserves To Bloom - to awaken you to the environmental tragedy unfolding before our eyes. I want you to help me do something about it by giving money to an amazing young UK charity which exists to do one thing: rewilding.
In the race to restore biodiversity, we're losing. We're 189th out of 218.
We've lost 97% of our wildflower meadows since the second world war, and 90% of our freshwater habitats in the last 100 years. 1 in 10 species are now threatened with extinction. It's time to heal our natural environment. We must rewild - and we can.
A couple of years ago I came to the realisation that my children would soon grow up and ask me what I did for the environment.
Their future is in our hands. Inspired by David Attenborough's declaration - "we must rewild the world" - I set about conceiving the film Deserves To Bloom to raise money for rewilding.
If we keep waiting for someone else to do something about it, tomorrow's children will inherit a broken planet.
I can't let that happen. None of us can let that happen. That's why I've created this short film - Deserves To Bloom - to show people that something can be done, something simple which really works: rewilding.
Safiya Kamaria Kinshasa's poem is powerful, stark and unforgettable.
In Deserves To Bloom, Mother Nature wakes to give a message to humanity about the state of nature and the consequences of climate breakdown. We must act now to heal nature and heal the land.
A short, powerful film to raise money for rewilding.
Creating this project has taken two years and a huge team of the best people I know in the film production business. Our crew worked tirelessly to create this film and donated hours of their time. Why? Because, like me, they want to help Heal Rewilding succeed on their mission to:
With nature in charge and free to thrive, magic begins.
Soils start to brim with life. Animals browse and rootle and scuff up the land. Seeds drift in, settle on bare earth and flowers bloom. Baby trees spring up. Brambles blossom and feed hungry bees. Ants scurry, moths flutter, mice scuttle. Beetles trundle, butterflies swoop, foxes lope. Birds sing their hearts out. Beavers...beaver.
The air is bright and clear. Rain falls and runs out fresh and clean. The plants and trees capture carbon as they grow stronger. Chemicals no longer harm the land. Within a generation, creatures galore fill the place that nature has reclaimed.
Heal is a young, ambitious British rewilding charity. Its name is its purpose: heal the land, heal nature, heal ourselves.
Heal launched in 2020 as the world's first charity dedicated to becoming a rewilding landowner at scale. Their mission is to buy land in England and rewild it, not for profit but to help nature recover and to fight climate change. They will acquire ecologically-depleted land and give it back to nature, restore the natural world and create a better, wilder future for the generations that come after us.
This project is my way of bringing much-needed donations to Heal as they work day and night to take urgent, practical action to help nature and the climate.
Their goal, which will be helped by your donation, is to create their first site by 2022 in the south of England and their second site in the north of England soon after that. Their plan by 2050 is to have created a new rewilding site in every English county.
Heal's sites will be for nature and for all of us, free to enter and a place where people can spend time in a wild landscape to help heal mind, body and soul.
Your venom creeps
in the veins of my soil
my wealth
my land
you forgot your roots
together we snap
apart
brittle twigs
in a barren abyss
Your ancestors worshipped me
praised me like the sun
now you forget
there is a consequence
to your poison
Is it not I who brings stampedes of waves and monsoons of fire?
Perhaps if I were called ‘Father Nature’ you would show more tenderness
Do grasshoppers not deserve grass?
Do caterpillars not deserve wings?
Do bees not deserve their nectar?
Does the earth not deserve to be blessed with colour?
majestic
dazzling
spinning
across the galaxy
a spirit who knows no borders
and how I have stretched to bring you life to bring you life
If a distant land falls you are not immune
Every place deserves to bloom
Robbie Sloan: https://robbiesloan.com/
Safiya Kamaria Kinshasa: https://www.safiyakamaria.com/
Heal Rewilding: https://www.healrewilding.org.uk
Please help me raise £30,000 to support Heal's work to rewild land in the UK by giving whatever you can to this crowdfunder.