BBC Earth - After We’ve Gone - Finding Little Owls in an Abandoned Mine
Back in the Summer of 2021, I assisted the BBC Natural History Unit with the production of the BBC Earth - After We’ve Gone - Finding Little Owls in an Abandoned Mine film that was filmed on location at the disused coal mine at Chatterley Whitfield in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, England. The film has now been released on YouTube and can be found here: Finding Little Owls in an Abandoned Mine.
Through the forgotten paths of an abandoned island to the spectacular ruins of a disused coal mine, wildlife filmmaker Dan O'Neill and zoologist Yussef Rafik were on a mission for BBC Earth to discover what happens when our abandoned places return to the wild. When Dan and Yussef entered the abandoned coal mine site at Chatterley Whitfield, they expected to find only rusted metal and ruined buildings. But abandoned places don't tend to stay uninhabited for long… This is After We've Gone.
For several years before the film was made, I had been documenting how nature had started to reclaim this former industrial site and the wildlife that had made it their home after coal mining had ceased in the 1970s. As well as providing information on Chatterley Whitefield and the wildlife that can now be found living on this former industrial site, I also provided the BBC Natural History Unit with access to my photography hide that I had set up to photograph the little owls that now nest in one of the disused buildings on the site and video footage of badgers and foxes from the camera traps that I had set up around the site and in one of the abandoned buildings on it.
As well as filming the little owls, Dan O'Neill was also lucky to find and film the barn owls that now live in another of the abandoned buildings at Chatterley Whitefield.
Chatterley Whitfield is an incredible location, for its industrial heritage and now as a living example of rewildling: demonstrating how nature can reclaim abandoned places, even those former industrial sires that were heavily polluted when used for the mining of coal.