Cleaning up Chernobyl and Canada’s war in the woods

23:53This is done out of desperation and an attempt to recover some of what they might need in case aid does not arrive. As the water levels reduce, people begin to leave the shelters. The BBC follows one couple on their journey back home by boat. William and Eva Moscoso are going home. Back to the house they fled a week ago as the rain started to fall. Neighbours who stayed scrambled for the rooftops where they've been marooned ever since.

24:35water was pumped out of two rivers nearby and there was a kind of natural evaporation of the water with the level of heat so i would say approximately it took three weeks more or less for people to be back on the street with no idea what they'd find william and eva's greatest The greatest hope was that the looters had stayed away.

25:04But nobody could have prepared them for this. Everything, including the fridge, under several feet of water. It's freezing cold. The camera of our children. This is where our children sleep, William explained. Or at least they used to. Eva considered herself lucky to retrieve some of their school books.

25:32Tabasco flooded again in 2020 and Marco believes that with climate change it's only a matter of time before it happens once again. Unfortunately, Tabasco is an area that has experienced very severe deforestation as well as the rest of the country. So, being realistic, it's very probable, because the amount of water that falls in the region, and that there is no vegetation to soak it up. Another problem is that the rivers have been rerouted in order to create dams.

26:16Marco Franco, an emergency coordinator for the Mexican Red Cross in Tabasco, back in 2007. He was speaking to Tim. Apple Vacations, where your story starts. Need a vacation? The Apple Vacations foundational sale is here, so you can save up to$150 on your next escape. Book by April 30th for instant savings on trips to Mexico, the Caribbean, Hawaii, Central America, and top U.S. destinations. If you're ready for a break without breaking the bank, save up to$150 at applevacations.com or contact your travel advisor. Apple Vacations, where your story starts. Make Mother's Day even more special at Whole Foods Market.

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27:28Still to come, the Canadians who turned to civil disobedience to defend a rainforest and how the River Danube dried up in 2011. The Sand Islands in the Danube, which are close to Tutrakhan, usually they are not accessible by foot, but at that time you could walk to them. You didn't need the boat to get there. But first, we're on a dangerous rescue mission in the rainforests of South America. This is from the early 1980s, a time when Paraguay and Brazil were working on a massive hydroelectric power project. Building a dam to hold back the water on the river which marked the border meant flooding a vast area of pristine habitat for wildlife, and it was the animals which needed rescuing.

28:12Here's Stefania Godsa. It's the 13th of October, 1982. Almost 200 men are gathering on the left bank of the Paranareva, which separates Paraguay from Brazil. Paraguayan scientists, doctors, keepers and volunteers have been preparing for this moment for the last two and a half years. It's hot, it's raining, but they're ready for a race against time in a rainforest that is about to be flooded to create a hydroelectric power plant. The biggest hydroelectric scheme in the world has been inaugurated on the border of Brazil and Paraguay. Built jointly by the two countries, the Itaipu Dam has cost about£5 billion, but it's been attacked for the damage caused to the environment.

28:58From the site of the project, John Arden reports. In front of the dam, vast tracts of forest and farmland are being inundated to create an artificial lake of 540 square miles. Conscious of past errors, the Itaipu planners launched an expensive campaign to rescue local wildlife. That was a BBC report from 1982. The campaign to save the wildlife that was about to lose their home in the flat was called Mimbacuera. It means the animals in Guarani, the local indigenous language. The man in charge of it in Paraguay was 43-year-old crop scientist Darío Pérez Chena. The Brazilians were responsible for rescues on their side of the river, and the Paraguayans for ours.

29:47Brazil had less forest and more farmland, so there were greater chances of finding animals in Paraguay. But before we continue hearing about that rescue operation, let me tell you more about the area. The Itaipu Dam was built in the Atlantic Forest, home to more than 30 ,000 species of animals and plants. It's one of the richest regions in biodiversity in the Americas, second only to the Amazon. And it's endangered. Most of it has been lost to deforestation, and only a small fragment remains today. In 1972, the UN met to address environmental issues for the first time. From then on, environmental protection took on new significance and Itaipú was built at the height of all that international debate.

30:44Because of that pressure, the directors of the company hired a group of technicians to carry out a full survey of the areas fauna and flora. Berillo's work showed just how diverse that unexplored area of Paraguay was. It convinced the company to buy land and create a reserve to relocate as many animals as possible. It was an unprecedented project in South America. And a dangerous one too. We camped in remote areas because we were afraid people would be curious and come to see our work. and it was dangerous work for the untrained. We worked with poisonous spiders. There was only one case of a young man who refused to go into the forest.

31:33I asked him why and he said, I'm young and I don't want to put my life in danger. He was 21. So I asked him, why are you afraid? And he said, because my neighbors told me there will be many deaths. There are too many snakes there.

31:56The river was closed off on the 13th of October at four in the morning. We couldn't do anything that day because it was pouring. On the 14th, we carried out the first rescue, a six-banded armadillo. Then we found a tree porcupine, one of those animals covered in long quills. and we also rescued a hare. That first day we saved eight animals. After that, the numbers kept rising until the 28th of October when we rescued 635 animals in a single day. That was our peak. Over the following weeks, Darío supervised small teams in boats rescuing distressed animals. Some were in the water, Others clang to the tops of flooded trees or to tiny islands that would form and disappear as the water kept rising.

32:54We prepared to rescue mammals, reptiles and spiders, not birds, because they can fly. But on the second or third day, we started to see birds in the water, either splashing around or drowned. What happened was that as the water rose, many insects gathered in the branches of the trees. The birds would come to eat them, but when they took off, their tail feathers would get wet. That made them lose control and fall into the water. So we had to start finding special cages for birds. We managed to save about 2 ,300. Many of the animals were sent to either zoos or the reserve, as the BBC reported. Well, now this rather rare and lovely beast, the tapir, was found swimming across the rising waters.

33:50Two of them were found altogether, and both of them will be released in a large game reserve. But what's not known is how many others died in the waters as their environment changed dramatically. But others weren't that lucky. We rescued 27 ,150 animals. 45 % were snakes, and about half of those were venomous. Most were sent to the prestigious Butantan Institute in Brazil, one of the world's largest producers of anti-venom. And that's what they were used for. Sometimes the Institute doesn't have enough snakes to extract venom from, so this was a brilliant opportunity. A plane left Fos do Iwasu every day at six in the morning.

34:39We would send the crates with the snakes in the climate-controlled section of the plane.

34:48The rescue went on until the 26th of November, when we scaled back the searches. there were still a few animals in the tops of the trees, including some monkey families. By the 10th of January, there were only a couple of animals left to rescue each day, so the company ended the operation. Apart from a few monkey bites, everyone made it out safely. Minbacuera rescued more than 35 ,000 animals as the forest flooded to form the Itaipu Reservoir. Most of them were rescued by Darío's team in Paraguay. Itaipu now provides more than 85 % of the country's electricity and sells the surplus to Brazil, making Paraguay a net exporter of energy.

35:36It was the world's largest hydroelectric power plant until China's Three Gorges Dam opened in 2012. We were proud to work on it because we were aware that for our country It was a project that could only be done once in a lifetime.

35:59The Rio Perez-Cena was speaking to Stevania Goza. From a controlled flooding in South America, we turn next to an unexpected drought in Europe. In 2011, the Danube, a river that flows through 10 countries, experienced a dramatic drop in water levels. Not good news for one of Europe's busiest shipping and tourist routes. Jacqueline Payne has been hearing about the drought from someone who experienced it firsthand. The Sand Islands in the Danube, which are close to Tutrakhan, usually they are not accessible by foot, but at that time you could walk to them. You didn't need a boat to get there. That's Christian Yakimov, an ecologist and tourist guide in Tutrakhan, a town on the banks of the Danube in northeastern Bulgaria.

36:49The severe drought affected all 10 countries connected by the river, from Germany's black forests in the west to Ukraine in the east. But those on the lower Danube, like Bulgaria, were hit worst, with some reporting river levels at their lowest in 70 years. In some areas, it was just one and a half metres deep. One day you might go with the tourists on a boat trip around the island, show them the nature there, but the next day you can't do that because it's so shallow the boat's engine becomes grounded.

37:26or when we are out in the kayaks. You get to some places where we have to lift the boats out of the water and carry them in our hands because the water level changes really fast and you have hit the sand. So you have to carry the kayak to where the water is deeper before you can use it again. Tutra Khan's history is tied to the river. It was once known as the place to go fishing in the Danube. But nowadays you're more likely to see tourists going on boat trips or kayaking. And with one of the largest wetlands in the Balkans, the Kalimok Brashlin, it's a big attraction for birdwatchers. The area was brought back to life in 2009, after the land was drained in the 1950s as part of a project to make new farmland.

38:14It's now home to the largest colony of Dalmatian pelicans in the country and many other rare nesting birds. tourists can photograph them up close from the river but that year's intense heat and unprecedented low water levels changed that experience.

38:32It wasn't too cold at the end of the season so there were lots of tourists many of them bird watchers but it was difficult to do the usual things. You had dragged the boat to and from the river with cars because the deep water was a long way from the port. And the tourists, did they comment on it? What were they saying about it? Were they laughing and saying, what's going on? Yes, they look at the situation with a sense of humor and a good guide is always looking at the positive side. But it was reducing the number of the tourists because it takes a longer time to do everything. We'd have to go to see the natural habitats in the birds by car.

39:15instead of going in the Danube with taking them somewhere else. So I drove them to different places to bird watch instead of going by boat around the island but this reduces the number of species people can see by more than a half. Often in the water they can see around a hundred different types of species but if they go inland it will be about 20-30 types and it won't be so impressive as in the water in their natural habitat. With no rain forecast in the weeks ahead, concern began to grow in the fishing community. Although most commercial fishing in Tutrakan had been scaled back from a century ago, when half the town relied on the river to support their families, the continued dry weather was unsettling.

40:04The fishermen were worried because the water level is connected with the amount of fish reserves. Because when the temperature of the water increases even 1 degree Celsius higher, more males hatch. So you gradually get more males than females. And if it happens for 2 or 3 years and the number of female fish is decreasing, then after maybe 5 years the species will completely disappear. People were worried about what the future held for them, because they were worried that industrial fishing will be completely banned, because the number of fish are decreasing. They weren't legally stopped fishing.

40:43They stopped fishing because there weren't enough fish. They didn't go to work because there was no reason for them to go. And for around a month or so, they completely stopped fishing. From time to time, somebody tried, and they passed the message to the others. There is nothing to fish. It is concerning because not only the fishermen get their income from fishing, but the main source of the fresh fish for the local restaurants is in the river. But they had a very long wait. By December 2011, the drought had caused significant disruption to shipping between Bulgaria and Romania. It was one of Europe's busiest shipping routes, but the Danube had fallen three to four metres below normal levels, making some parts barely passable.

41:34and if water levels had dropped another 20 inches, two ferry lines had been reported to be at risk of closing temporarily.

41:45In Romania, intensive dredging had tried to improve the minimum navigation depths. Further upstream, around 80 ships were stranded on the Serbia-Hungary border. Some reports said just a quarter of the river's usual cargo was getting through. There are some specific places where the ships can anchor. They can stop and wait. Actually, one of these places is next to Tutrakhan, so they stop here and wait. There was a line of about 20 ships, cargo ships, which were waiting for the water to go up so they can move again. And it wasn't only affecting commercial shipping. River cruise ships travelling through Bulgaria on a tour of Eastern Europe were forced to ask passengers to disembark and use buses and hotels to complete their trips when navigation became too difficult on shallow and rocky sections of the Danube near the Black Sea.

42:40Over the border in Romania, one of the country's nuclear power stations was at risk of shutdown because of insufficient water for cooling. Its hydroelectric power plant was already operating at just two-thirds of its usual capacity. And in neighbouring Serbia, the drought revealed sunken World War II ships and unexploded bombs, and Tutrakhan's treasures were revealed in the river too. We have ships from the First World War opposite Tutrakhan, near Romania, and west of Tutrakhan we have another ship. It's wooden and from the Russian-Turkish War, but they sank in storm, and all those were seen in 2011.

43:19The drought continued into 2012, but in February Eastern Europe was hit by heavy snow and Bulgaria saw some of its lowest temperatures in a century but when the cold snap ended the snow began to melt Afterwards there was a huge flood but that was up in the Danube and further inland It wasn't here with us, it was normal with us and the water came in calmly into the Danube here Yes, the people were relieved that everything looks back to normal but they knew. They could see that this was becoming a trend. And global warming is real actually and the river is changing. It has become the new normal.

44:06People who grew up here see that everything is changing. Temperatures are changing, the water is decreasing. They know that it's changing. Not only in Bulgaria is there a problem with the water levels. That's a future problem for everyone. The fishermen, they realised that they had to do something else. Some of them saw their boats already because they know that this trend will continue and nothing will go back to how it was before. Christian Yakimov was talking to Jacqueline Payne and remembering the great 2011 drought on the river Danube. A moment from the past next which mixes sport and the movies.

44:47In 1981, a film called Escape to Victory came to cinema screens. It was a Second World War tale of a football match in a prisoner of war camp in Nazi Germany. So this was Hollywood and soccer. As Maggie Eyre explains. In 1942, the Nazis thought they were sitting on top of the world, never suspecting that they could be toppled in one conflict, the most unusual battle of the war. It has been decided that a German national team will play a combined team from the prisoners of war of the occupied territories. Escape to Victory is about a football team in a World War II prisoner of war camp. It starred major actors including Michael Caine, Max von Sydow and Sylvester Stallone.

45:33As the title suggests, the film is about the captive players' victory over the German national team, after which they escape through a tunnel under the changing room. What makes the film unique is the casting of several world-class football players. Former player Russell Osman looks back at a once-in-a-lifetime experience on set with some of the greatest actors and footballers of the time, including England's Bobby Moore, Argentina's Ozzy Ardiles and the legendary Pele. I was playing for Ipswich Town football club at the time. Towards the end of the season, Bobby Robson, who went on to be the England national team manager, he was the manager of Ipswich Town at the time, called a meeting of the players and asked us if anybody would like to take part in the making of a Prisoner of War film in the summer.

46:25He said that we were going to go out and help make some football scenes that were going to be used in a film called Escape to Victory and it was sort of background football stuff so it sounded very nice, very pleasant thing to do. We were going to get paid for it. I ain't got nothing planned for the summer. So I thought, well, rather than just have a boring summer, I'd like to join the party and go out to Hungary where it was filmed. The first evening that we were there, we were having a little bit of a party, meeting everybody. The gin and tonics were flowing and suddenly somebody from the production team came up to me and said, your character in the film is Doug Claw.

47:10Here's a script and you have dialogue in the morning first thing with Michael Caine. And I said to him, I think you've made a mistake. We're just the footballers that are doing the background football scenes. Oh, he said, no, the understanding is that you will have dialogue in the film and you actually have a character to play throughout the film. I had a really wonderful team and to go out on a field with those guys it must be every schoolboy's dream and I felt like a big kid doing it I got so nervous every time the ball came near me that I was going to miss it you know when you give this mighty kick that's going to be great and the ball goes straight by especially as Pellis put a spin on it or something but he didn't do too much of that with me he was very kind He was an absolute gentleman he was a great fella I think he realised how nervous the footballers were It's like being in front of the camera when you're playing football.

48:07That's easy. But when you've got to try and remember your words and your cues and coming on time. But he told a few stories and we're in one of the old prisoner of war camps where this first scene was being shot. And he must have spent half an hour just telling stories to the lads, having a real good laugh about one or two things. And then all of a sudden he said, right, I suppose we better get this first bit done. Russell, I think it's me and you. This is where you show us how well you've memorised your lines. And that was it. And five minutes later, we'd done it. The climax of the film is the infamous football match between the Germans and the Allied prisoners.

48:48It lasts 15 minutes on screen. And the original idea by director John Huston and producer Freddie Fields was to bring in a sports director to film the game. But it quickly became apparent that that wouldn't work. so the football scenes were filmed as a mix of free play combined with staged moves. The challenge was to help the actors appear authentic as footballers.

49:24Sylvester Stallone had no experience of soccer. Rather, he'd played American football, so he was cast as the goalkeeper. I think he'd done Rocky 1 and Rocky 2 by this time, and he was still a very fit, very strong fellow. He was in good condition, but he was a bit clumsy. So when he ran into you or he was punching the ball, you made sure you tried to keep out of his way as much as possible. And introducing Pele. How would you like to play football against the Germans? Why not? I mean, Pelly was a gentleman. He would come out and mix with the players all the time. The rest of the players would go to different restaurants.

50:06His manager would bring along his guitar. So he would play the guitar, sing a song. He'd have a little bottle of scotch and have a few drinks during the evening, which we all did. And he was grateful. And then the next day, he'd be juggling the football in these big army boots. and it was mesmerising what he could do. We want you to contact the resistance for us and arrange the escape of the football team. I want to thank you all for your concern. This game was taking place in Paris and with the Paris underground and the French underground, they dug all the way through from an outside drainage tunnel all the way into the underneath of the away team changing room bath.

50:54Suddenly the plan that Sylvester Stallone had managed to hatch together, hatch is his name in the film as well, that kicked into operation. And we were down through the bath, in the tunnel, underneath. All of a sudden, for some unknown reason, I decided to say, I don't want to go, we can win this. We had a quick conflap between the players who wanted to stay, who wanted to go. Stallone, hatch, the goalkeeper. He was adamant that he wanted to make his escape. And we talked him into coming back onto the pitch and to play the second half. The climax of the game is the iconic goal scored by Pelly with an impressive overhead kick.

51:37It was a work of art in itself, you know, and to consider you're playing in army boots. It more or less happened in free play. They sort of staged it where Bobby Moore would get the ball, cross it from the right wing and Pelly would overhead kick it into the back of the net. Sounds simple, doesn't it? First take, he made fantastic contact with the ball, very acrobatic overhead kick. And the goalkeeper, little Laurie Civil from Ipswich, he made the most outstanding save of his career, I think. And everybody said, Laurie, you're supposed to let the flipping ball in, you know. So we had to retake that, and the next time it flew in the top corner and Laurie couldn't get anywhere near it.

52:22The neutral referee gave a penalty to the Germans. Sylvester Stallone saved the penalty. The crowd invaded the pitch and that was the end of the game. And that is how the Allied team escaped in the middle of a 30 ,000 crush, shall we say. It's something that I look back on now and you just realise how lucky you were to have the opportunity. One or two of the Ipswich players, the ones that didn't go, didn't think they were going to be missing out on much. Now when the film is still being shown 40-odd years later, they're starting to regret not being in Escape to Victory. It was an experience like no other.

53:06The time spent with Pele on the practice pitch and in the restaurants in the evening, that was just a one-off. And when people jokingly ask me who's the best player I've ever played with, I go, well, Pelé. And they say, well, when did you play with Pelé? I said, well, you know, there was this film back in 1980-81, but three World Cup winners, you wouldn't get that these days. And it was just a magnificent experience. The former England and Ipswich Town footballer and sometime minor film star Russell Osman. He was talking to Maggie Ayer. Finally, we're heading to Canada in the 1990s, and again we're at a moment where ecological concerns and industrial development collided.

53:51A campaign of civil disobedience was mounted after rights were granted to cut trees in a western rainforest. This episode in Canada's recent history is known as the War in the Woods. Here's Megan Lawton. It's July 1993, and dawn is breaking over Vancouver Island on Canada's west coast. There are hundreds of people blocking access to the Kennedy River Bridge. Some are sitting crossing arms with one another. Others are chanting and holding signs, as reported at the time by local news outlet Czech Media. Are we going to let them cross the bridge? Police are approaching the bridge, but they're not heading for the people blocking it.

54:35They're searching for someone. They walked around, all the people standing there who were blocking the road. and came to the side of the road and grabbed me and put my hands behind my back. And it took me a while to figure out, like, what's going on? What's going on? For weeks, environmental activists had been gathering here, trying to block logging trucks from entering Clackwood Sound, one of Canada's ancient rainforests. Hundreds had already been arrested, but this time the police were after one of the organisers. He, you know, he leans down to me and says, I'm sorry, I'm really sorry. and then taking me towards the paddy wagon and I realised, oh my God, I'm getting arrested.

55:15Sephora Berman, at the time 23 years old, was charged with 857 counts of criminal aiding and abetting, one for every protester arrested that summer. Suddenly, she was facing six years in jail. They held me overnight and tried to intimidate me into giving up names of other organisers and, grilling me. And I can remember this one sergeant came in and he said to me, do you know it's the candles that burn the brightest that go out the fastest? How did a young graduate end up at the centre of one of the biggest environmental protests in Canadian history? To find out, we need to go back, before the arrests and blockades had started, to the moment Zipporah first learned about the Vancouver Island rainforest, during a geography lecture at the University of Toronto in 1992.

56:10Professors showed an image of 300 foot tall ancient Sitka spruce trees, 800 years old. And I remember thinking, I knew Brazil had rainforests, but Canada has rainforests? And I just decided at that moment I had to go see them. That summer, she spent all of her money on a plane ticket and a pair of hiking boots and flew to British Columbia, where she worked alongside researchers. Really, I just lived in the rainforest and I just fell in love. It's an incredible feeling to be in that forest, you know, ferns that are waist high. And I'm not a small person. I'm 5 '10". And I didn't even come up to where the root balls end and the trees begin.

56:53A year later, in 1993, the British Columbia government approved plans to allow clear-cut logging across most of Clackwood Sound. It's a practice where most or all of the trees in a designated area are cut down in a single operation. The province argued it needed to ensure a long-term timber supply and maintain the forest industry, which was a major employer in the region. I remember being horrified, really depressed. I mean, I was young and I really thought if we could prove the importance of these ecosystems for regulating climate, for hydrological systems, for being the home of these endangered seabirds, that everything would change.

57:37So Zipporah, alongside a handful of others, opened a camp beside the logging road and quickly became a central organiser. I'll never forget the first day we opened the blockade camp. There were six of us. You know, we put up a banner and started building a kitchen out of driftwood and putting up our tents and that's it. We're We're going to invite people to come here with us and we're going to protest and block the logging every day. Being located in the middle of nowhere, she says they needed to think creatively about getting the word out. We were brainstorming and we came up with this idea. What if we fax all the news stations, but because civil disobedience is illegal, we make it an anonymous fax.

58:15And we printed out this piece of paper that said blockades in Clackwood Sound start July 5th with no, you know, who it was from. and we figured out how to make the return on the fax machine not show. And then we faxed it to every news in the province. And that night on CBC News, you know, we saw the news hold up the fax and an anonymous fax just in. Blockades are going to start in Clackwood Sound on July 5th. We all clapped. Within weeks, thousands of people had moved to the island and were living in what they called the Peace Camp, a self-organised village of volunteers of all ages. It was remarkable.

58:55Bus loads of people started pulling up who had organised themselves. I remember a carload of teachers from Alberta who had driven all night long to get there. Every working day for three months, protesters formed a human blockade before dawn. Their goal was to stop local loggers from reaching the trees.

59:18As one of the organisers, Zipporah coordinated the protests, discussing who would risk arrest and how people would stay safe. We had a system. Anyone who had a vehicle would go to their vehicle and turn the lights on and flash if they had space in the car. And people that didn't have vehicles would get in and we'd make our way to the bridge. And then once we got to the bridge, I would stand on top of this van with a bullhorn and just start organising people. When it got unsafe, I would ask everybody to sit or sing.

59:53Over the summer of 1993, more than a thousand people were arrested, 300 in a single day. A local police officer spoke to Czech media. Are you guys prepared to arrest them this morning? Yeah, we're prepared to do that. In footage, police officers can be seen carrying away protester after protester, holding them up by their hands and feet. You know, I was young. I was in jail for the first time. I was terrified. and my sister ended up calling the most famous lawyer in Canada, Clayton Ruby, out of the phone book. And she explained to him what had happened and he said, yeah, I saw it on the news. And so he called the most famous lawyer in British Columbia.

1:00:31And then the next morning, the guard comes in and he says to me, your lawyer's here to see you. That's good. I didn't know I had a lawyer. And this guy walks in, this fancy guy in an Armani suit, and he says, all right, we're going to represent you. This is a violation of the constitutional right to organize and free speech. She said, a bunch of us, we're going to represent you. We're going to get you out of here. And I just looked at him and said, I don't have any money. And he just laughed and said, yeah, we figured. The courts ran trials almost daily to keep up with the arrests. But it was a few months later that the judge delivered his decision.

1:01:06The charges against Zipporah and the other campaigners were dropped. It was just this elation, like I was free. It had been hanging over me for a long time. The war in the woods didn't stop logging, but it changed Canadian environmental policy. First Nations in the area significantly increased their control over land, and Clackwood Sound gained new protections. Many of the ancient tree sipporah campaign to protect are still standing today, as are her connections to some of the people who protested alongside her, including Chris, a tree planter. So I was on the road with my friend Marn and he pulled up.

1:01:48I remember saying to Marn, holy hell, who is that guy? And Peter later told me that Chris turned to him and said, oh my God, who's that girl? And Peter said to him, well, I think that's the girl you're going to marry. Their friend Peter was right and the pair later married in those very same woods. Last year, they returned to celebrate their wedding anniversary. We went hiking, actually, and there was a moment where we just stood facing each other and we thought, this wouldn't be still standing if we hadn't all done that work, put ourselves on the line in that way. Zipporah Behrman, one of the organisers of that 1993 protest on Vancouver Island that became known as the War in the Woods, she was speaking to Megan Lawton.

1:02:37Incidentally, those items that we've just heard from South America, the Danube and Canada will all be added to our ever-growing collection of environmental stories from the past on our website. Find them by searching online for bbc.com slash witness history. And that's it for now, but we'll be back next week with more first-hand stories from the past. Until then, this is Max Pearson from all of us here at the History Hour. Thanks for listening. Goodbye. Sporting Witness takes you to the events that have shaped the sports world through the eyes of the people who were there. We weren't going to ask permission.

1:03:08We were just going to do it. It was such an amazing feeling. It was incredible. He started to write a story about how we came up with the idea for the red and yellow cars. I got to go. We cried a bit. We laughed a bit. It was wonderful. There's a magic during those moments that carries your soul. We were truly blessed to be a part of history. Sporting Witness. Subscribe wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

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