Tue, Jan 18, 2011
It's the largest and most ambitious habitat recreation project ever known: to bring back to life one of the world's greatest marshlands. And it's happening in Iraq. Considered to be the original Garden of Eden, the marshes were once Iraq's wildlife jewel, where man and nature thrived for 5,000 years. But in the 1990s, Saddam Hussein drained these gigantic wetlands and turned them into a desert, destroying a home to thousands of people and millions of birds. Donning his body armor, filmmaker David Johnson travels to the Mesopotamian Marshes to follow the work of Azzam Alwash, the visionary Iraqi engineer at the center of this extraordinary scheme to re-flood hundreds of miles of desert and bring back life to the sands. This is a view of Iraq the world never sees, a world of huge reed beds and vast flocks of birds that fill the sky. But nothing ever quite goes to plan in Iraq.
Tue, Feb 1, 2011
In the 1960s, Born Free captured the world's imagination with the story of Elsa, an orphaned lioness who was taken in by George and Joy Adamson and returned to a life in the wild. The book and film sparked a new love of nature that has blossomed ever since, but the true story of what happened afterwards was far more tragic as both George and Joy were murdered. Fifty years on, this emotional and revealing drama documentary re-lives those events - with intimate contributions from Virginia McKenna and David Attenborough.
Tue, Feb 8, 2011
A real-life drama about a family of chimps trapped in a lost world. They live in a deep and ancient forested gorge that runs though the African savanna and for fifteen years it has been cut off from the rest of the jungle, leaving the chimps imprisoned. Here, they face a daily life-or-death dilemma: whether to leave the safety of the gorge and venture into the predator-ridden savanna to find food, or face hunger. There's now only twenty of them left and as Brutus the alpha male loses his grip, can the family hold it together or is time running out for the Kyambura chimps?
Tue, Feb 15, 2011
Passionate English conservationist Collin Stafford-Johnson and his Indian local friend - Hindi interpreter Salim started a unique documentary on a tiger family in Ranthambhore National Park, an abandoned royal fort in in Rajastan, putting the focus on exceptionally bright and inquisitive male cub 'Broken Tail'. It took a tragic turn when the tiger youngster went missing for over a year, only to be found killed by a train. The film mainly shows how the probably hopeless plight of tiger - and wider nature preservation in India, with its expanding population and economic space use, essentially caused the drama.
Tue, Feb 22, 2011
From the giant King Cobra to the tiny sawscaled viper, India is home to many of the world's deadliest snakes. Now a new report has revealed that India is in the middle of a snakebite epidemic of epic proportions, with a loss of human life far in excess of any official figures. Armed with more than forty years of field experience, snake expert Romulus Whitaker and his team set out on a journey around India to investigate the natural history behind these chilling new statistics and to see what can be done to help India's people and ultimately, its snakes.
Tue, Mar 1, 2011
Wildlife documentary following the search for grizzly bears in the beautiful Cascade Mountains of Canada. Wildlife filmmaker Jeff Turner has spent a lifetime tracking grizzly bears around the world, and now he has come home to spend a year in the mountains of his youth to discover if the grizzly is still surviving in this beautiful area of British Columbia. Tracking the wildlife through the four seasons of one year, he encounters many animals from his childhood, including black bears, ospreys, coyotes and mule deer. But with all the changes to his old stomping ground, do the wild grizzly still survive?
Top-rated
Mon, Aug 1, 2011
Biologist Joe Hutto was mother to the strangest family in the world, thirteen endangered wild turkeys that he raised from egg to the day they left home. For a whole year his turkey children were his only companions as he walked them deep through the Florida Everglades. Suffering all the heartache and joy of any other parent as he tried to bring up his new family, he even learned to speak their language and began to see the world through turkey eyes. Told as a drama documentary with an actor recreating the remarkable scenes of Joe's life as a turkey mum.
Wed, Aug 10, 2011
Natural World visits the Arizona desert, where a new honey ant queen wages an intense battle for survival as she attempts to build and defend her empire. Eliminating rivals with ruthless efficiency, sacrificing thousands in her quest for domination, murder, cannibalism, genocide - she will do anything to keep her crown. Empire of the Ants is the epic story of one honey ant queen's dramatic rise to power - her brutal fall from grace.
Wed, Aug 17, 2011
Charlie Hamilton-James captures the animals that live in the Gardens of Heligan throughout a year. The gardeners voice their appreciation of the work nature does in promoting the gardens. Narration by Philippa Forrester, his wife. Heligan is open to the public. One of the founders is Tim Smit, who went on to start the Eden Project, also in Cornwall.
Wed, Aug 24, 2011
The Komodo dragon was discovered one hundred years ago, yet the true nature of the biggest lizard in the world is only just being uncovered. Using hi-tech tools to take a fresh look at this prehistoric beast, Dr Bryan Fry discovers there is a lot more to the dragon than meets the eye - from hidden venom glands to its secret origins.
Wed, Aug 31, 2011
The killer whale is one of the most feared predators in the ocean and most would consider it madness to enter the water with one. But New Zealander Dr Ingrid Visser thinks differently - and by swimming with her beloved whales she has come to know almost all of them by sight. But there's been an unusual number of deaths recently and Ingrid is on a mission to find out what is going on. Her findings reveal disturbing new information about the health of our oceans.
Wed, Sep 7, 2011
Sir David Attenborough tells the stories of the world's best animal architects. There are house-proud bower birds, who only find a mate if they decorate their homes perfectly. There are hornets, who build electric central-heating systems, and the star-nosed mole whose house is so well designed that his favorite meal of worms literally drop in for dinner. From larders to nurseries and from high-rises to subway systems, Attenborough shows that the animal architects have designed it way before we humans.