Wed, May 23, 2012
Venezuela's inland is mysterious, dominated by the Oriniko and its tributaries, the nation named after pole villages recalling Venice to the conquistadors in search of mythical El Dorado, but rich gold reserves were found only lately. Much of its land and wildlife still is barely explored, shielded by natural factors like inaccessible terrain, monstrous predators, lacking infrastructure and the remaining native tribes, some of which remain relatively pristine and in harmony with nature, which modern exploitation is rapidly endangering.
Mon, Jun 25, 2012
The Pantanal wetlands, mostly in western central Brazil but extending into Bolivia and Paraguay, flood up to 80% about half of the year, due to tropical rain torrents and even more water descending form the Andes highlands, supporting an extremely rich wildlife, mainly fish and its predators, infested with caymans, with a jaguar subspecies double its cousins' size. May animals migrate or perish when the rivers shrink and large areas turn desert-dry.
Mon, Jun 4, 2012
Spanning nine countries and covering eight million square kilometres, the Amazon is so big that if it were a country it would be the seventh largest in the world. This episode uncovers what makes the Amazon such a powerhouse of evolution and how it has come to home a third of all species on the planet.
Mon, Jul 2, 2012
Covering 800,000 square kilometres of Argentina and Chile, Patagonia is the southernmost part of South America. It's a place of extremes - of vast ice fields and snow-capped mountains; of windswept deserts and violent oceans. Survival here means being tough enough to cope with brutal winters, and canny enough to exploit brief seasons of plenty.