The group using YouTube to rewild the planet

In late 2017, the BBC’s Blue Planet II sparked an energetic – if short-lived – movement to reduce plastic use in the UK. Featuring scenes of whales chewing on plastic containers and plastic bags floating alongside young dolphins, the final episode was credited with record attendance at beach cleanups.   

Seven years after the so-called “Blue Planet effect,” the team behind Berlin’s Planet Wild have adapted environmental storytelling for an audience used to short-form content and subscription services. The organization crowdfunds support for global rewilding projects (“missions”) each month, sharing the impact of their members’ contributions on a YouTube channel that has drawn millions of views and is closing in on a quarter-million subscribers. 

In October, the team marked their 20th mission by funding soil restoration in Kenya: digging tiny half-moon “earth smiles” known as bunds to encourage water retention. Together, thousands of these mini-oases are capable of restoring entire swaths of grassland. Over the next 20 years, Planet Wild predicts that its 65,000-euro investment will capture an extra 2 billion litres of water for the Kenyan dryland. 

The bund project – an impressive environmental return on investment by most measures – reflects Planet Wild’s approach to nature recovery as a whole: the belief that thousands of small donations and actions can add up to landscape-altering change. 

Here, Planet Wild CEO and co-founder Markus Gilles explains how his team is using effective storytelling to build one of the most engaged rewilding communities on the internet. 

“I guess I’ve always known that our natural environment is in crisis. But for me, it only came to the forefront when I backpacked from Alaska to Patagonia following the exit of my previous startup. 

I saw with my own eyes just how much nature had come under threat in so many different places. Arriving back in Berlin, I knew I had to do something. 

I launched a startup with my co-founders [Jonas Brandau and Andreas Pursian] to target CO2 emissions. In the process, we spoke to so many frontline rewilding projects that needed funding and visibility. That’s when the idea for Planet Wild was born.

A lot of people tell themselves that they ‘need to do something’ but don’t how to start. I felt that way at first, too. A community-driven model is an incredible opportunity to get those people involved. It shows that we can achieve a lot if we band together, which is an antidote to the doomerism of our time.

I think what our community members appreciate most is the ability to support grassroots projects they wouldn’t normally have access to. It’s a chance to see their money making a real difference. The reverse is also true, though: our rewilding partners are all doing impressive work on the ground, but fundraising often lags behind action. Building a bridge between these two sides is ultimately what Planet Wild is about.

Everyone [in the Planet Wild community] votes for the impact areas they care most about, and that’s reflected in how their money is actually put to use. By giving our members a voice in deciding how funds are invested, we make the entire process more transparent, inclusive and engaging.

When it comes to engaging potential supporters, it is absolutely crucial to be present on the platform where your community naturally gathers. It’s also essential to understand the unique workings of those platforms to deliver your message in a way that feels native and actually resonates.

On the other hand, who you are and the work you do will naturally make you gravitate towards one platform versus another. For us, YouTube was a natural fit. It encourages longer-format videos compared to something like TikTok, and allows us to go a bit deeper. 

Part of our mission is to educate our viewers about the biodiversity crisis and its many solutions. Laying out basic information about an ecosystem takes a bit of time. There is always an emotional story to be told as well – often about our personal connection to nature. Helping people understand what’s at stake also requires a bit of breathing room. 

Transparency is at the core of our documentation effort. We want people to see their impact with their own eyes. That was the initial reason we decided to bring a camera with us on rewilding missions, and it remains one of our guiding principles.

The feedback has been overwhelming. People write to tell us that our videos made them think about the world in a different way, or that we gave them a bit of hope. Some even tell us that Planet Wild has inspired their own rewilding projects. 

To me, this makes storytelling the biggest and most under-used lever in nature protection.

Those of us who are genuinely trying to fix the world are at a disadvantage in the attention economy: we need to do environmental work and compete with those whose only job is to attract views. 

The truth is, though, that those of us who are genuinely trying to fix the world are at a disadvantage in the attention economy: we need to do environmental work and compete with those whose only job is to attract views. 

In other words, we need to work twice as hard – but it is possible to stand out. Finding an authentic voice is one part of it. Integrating storytelling into your operation, rather than treating it as an afterthought, is another. At Planet Wild, planning and documenting our rewilding missions go hand-in-hand.

If you get those two things right, you can actually capitalize on a major advantage that many don’t have: you have something to talk about that really matters. 

I think a lot of our success is down to consistency. We do one rewilding mission every month and always share the video on the same day. New viewers might discover us for the first time and really like our video. By the second or third time, they realize that there’s a method to the madness – and that they could actually help make it happen by backing Planet Wild. 

We also aim to be very approachable. Many of our members get in touch with us directly before they sign up, and we want people to be proud of joining once they do: after each mission, supporters earn a digital badge that they can collect in our app. One of our members recently wrote to tell me that his wife was a bit puzzled by just how much he wanted his first badge.

Everyone on the team has a different ‘favourite project,’ but my big dream when we started out was to work with blue whales. So when that happened a year later on our mission in Mexico, it was literally a dream come true. 

Only about 5 percent of the historic blue whale population survived global whaling. Their numbers are still not recovering in the southern hemisphere, and nobody knows exactly why. We worked with Ocean Alliance – some of the all-time legends in whale research – to develop new methodologies that help us better understand the world's largest animal.   

I’m continually blown away by the commitment of the conservationists we work with. 

Marina Palacios built up a highly professional organization of 30+ deep sea divers while living in her van. Nobody believed in her vision, but Coral Soul is now cleaning up a 200,000-year-old deep water coral reef from ghost nets.

There’s also Dr. Wong Siew Te, who has devoted his life to the protection of sun bears – the world's smallest bear species. His team takes on orphaned sun bear cubs and literally moves into the rainforest with them for two years. They serve as a surrogate family in the rainforest until the bears are able to make it on their own. 

And a community of civilian wildfire fighters in Sicily – they’ve self-organized to protect their forest against fires that have become more and more devastating, leaving official fire brigades overworked and understaffed. What they’re doing is an absolutely inspiring act of community solidarity, and real heroism. It was actually hard to believe when I got there.

For those looking to follow in their footsteps, I’d suggest starting small and then growing – it’s nature’s way. 

The beauty of rewilding is that it can be done at any scale, from balconies to entire landscapes. You can start by not mowing your lawn, or by introducing permaculture practices in your garden. From there on, you’ve got an entire world to explore. There are amazing resources online.

There’s momentum stirring, and we want to help accelerate it. Planet Wild is about getting more people aware, informed, and involved – as supporters, as sponsors and as activists. I hope Planet Wild will continue to play a growing role in this growing movement, because I think this is just the early days.

The biodiversity crisis is here. But instead of doomsday scenarios, we need to create a narrative focused on what we can do. Rewilding initiatives around the world are proving that we can help nature bounce back.”