How FernGully Taught Us to Love the Jungle & Save the Rainforest

Before the late ‘80s, most people didn’t really think about the rainforest; the concept of such a place hadn’t yet entered into the public consciousness. When people thought about dense, tropical forest environments like those found in the Amazon, Congo, and elsewhere, they were mostly thought of as the jungle. That’s a word which conjures the stories of Rudyard Kipling and Edgar Rice Burroughs, it evokes images of fearsome places filled with mysterious and monstrous creatures. Jungles weren’t exactly places most people were worried about protecting.

Then the modern environmental movement happened. Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring educated people about the perils of pesticides, astronaut William Anders snapped his famous Earthrise photo from lunar orbit, and humanity’s relationship with the planet started to shift. The first Earth Day happened shortly thereafter, on April 22, 1970. Of course, astronauts on their way to the Moon can provide a fresh perspective, but real change is driven by people on the ground.

Back on Earth, the jungle needed a new brand and a new name, which is when most of us heard about the rainforest for the first time. In the late ‘80s and early ‘90s there was a wide-ranging movement to educate the masses about tropical forest environments and then turn that newly built social capital into environmental action. The movement took many forms, but one of its most beloved creations was the 1992 animated feature film FernGully: The Last Rainforest (now streaming on Peacock).

As the title suggests, FernGully was billed as the last rainforest, an island of untouched wilderness in a desert of deforestation. But for a generation of kids, it was our first rainforest. And it remains the quintessential representation of rainforests in our collective imaginations. But FernGully didn’t just teach us about the existence of rainforests, it also taught us how to fight to protect them.

Rainforest conservation explained

In 1985, the newly organized Rainforest Action Network (RAN) began an elaborate plan to conserve tropical forests. They needed awareness and they needed money, so they set about getting both. Using magazine subscription data, RAN targeted environmentally minded people with money. They’d sent long-form pamphlets with detailed descriptions of life in the rainforest. RAN painted a specific and deliberate picture of the rainforest as the world’s garden, a hotbed of biodiversity, and perhaps most importantly, beautiful.

RAN and similar organizations worked tirelessly to craft a new vision of tropical forests and plant that concept in the minds of a generation. They set the stage for a larger movement, and they understood that successful activism needs a narrative.

How FernGully taught ‘90s kids to love the rainforest

FernGully took that idea to its extreme by crafting a feature length family film in which the rainforest itself is a character. There’s the obvious villain in Hexxus (Tim Curry), the Big Bad and the living spirit of destruction. The slightly subtler villain is us, of course, and the ways in which humanity encroaches on the wild world.

Knowing that they really needed to sell the look and feel of FernGully in order for the message to land, the production spent weeks in Australia’s tropical forests, soaking up the landscape and translating it to the screen. The movie opens with a story about a time long past, when humans and fairies lived together and the forest stretched on forever. Then the balance of nature shifted and Hexxus rose, raining fire and destruction over the world.

Humans fled in fear and haven’t been seen since. Many in the forest believe the humans disappeared entirely before Magi (Grace Zabriskie) trapped Hexxus inside a gnarled tree using the magic of nature. Now Magi is passing those powers and responsibilities on to Crysta (Samantha Mathis) to protect the natural world when she’s gone. Crysta, however, is young and flighty, she has better things to do and she takes us on a ride through FernGully, set to the tune of “Life is a Magic Thing” by Johnny Clegg.

The rainforest we see on screen is a place filled with plants, animals, insects, glowing fungi, and magical creatures of all shapes and sizes, but mostly small. It’s a magical world in miniature waiting for us just beyond the treeline. And it’s threatened by the return of Hexxus, courtesy of a massive human machine designed to rapidly fell trees. Protecting FernGully, not just now but forever, will require the combined efforts of humans and fairies and a reevaluation of how we interact with the world.

The influence and legacy of FernGully and the movement to save the rainforest

Our world was much larger then; the forest went on forever.”

– Magi Lune, FernGully: The Last Rainforest.

An estimated 35% of the world’s forests have been cut down in the last 300 years and mostly in the last century. The situation is severe but the efforts of Rainforest Action Network, FernGully, and the rest of the ‘90s-era “save the rainforest” campaign did move the needle in the right direction. A 2010 report showed a decline in global deforestation during the first decade of the new millennium, according to Reuters. From 2000 to 2010, an average of 32 million acres of forest were cut down every year and converted to other uses. That’s a lot, but it’s down from 39.5 million acres per year during the ‘90s.

“For the first time, we are able to show that the rate of deforestation has decreased globally as a result of concerted efforts taken both at local and international level,” said Eduardo Rojas, assistant director of the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) Forestry Department, at the time.

While deforestation remains a primary environmental concern, the situation has continued to improve. In the 5-year period between 2015 and 2020, global deforestation fell to 25 million acres per year, a reduction of 37% over the course of two decades. If deforestation continues to decline at this rate, we’ll soon be cutting down trees at half the rate of the ‘90s.

Fifty-five years after the first Earth Day, tropical rainforests and forests all over the world are still in danger. They hold the vast majority of terrestrial biodiversity, and their loss has complicated downstream effects on the entire ecosystem. Cutting down trees doesn’t just shrink the forest, it also leads to loss of species, release of stored carbon dioxide, increased risk of flooding, and more. There’s still plenty of work to do (not just on Earth Day, but every day) and FernGully gave a generation the tools to recognize the problem and to do something about it.

Revisit FernGully: The Last Rainforest, streaming now on Peacock!