Restoring Paradise, an American Story

How has a tiny group of islands, just 25 miles off the coast of Los Angeles, come to become a crucible for the re-imagining of our relationship with nature? The Channel Islands are known to biologists as the «Galápagos» of North America, to archaeologists as the site of the oldest human remains on the continent, and to anthropologists as an important piece of the puzzle of human migration. And they have been home to many unique species, like the extinguished Pigmy Mammoth. While the political history of the Channel Islands mirrors that of mainland California, there have been huge differences in terms of natural evolution. It is an island paradise that was found, lost and, in a rare ecological battle of bravery and bloodshed, regained. Restoring Paradise is a three-hour documentary series that blends new science, natural history and culture, where the stories, secrets and scandals of the islands are told through scenes with the very scientists who have been personally involved in their salvation. In a time machine journey, we travel back to the islands’ birth, millions of years ago, to tell a story that ends with a different kind of time machine, turning back the clock to a time before human activity brought the islands to the edge of ecological collapse.