Primal Survivor
Season 4 Nat Geographic (*181) 20:00 Reality
Survival expert Hazen Audel has been exploring the wildest places on Earth since his first trip to Ecuador when he was 18. Now 43 and the host of Primal Survivor (2016- current), he says that “I’m living my dream – I wanted to be a nature host. I went to Ecuador to see animals I’d always been fascinated by. I found that there were these people living alongside the animals and my passion has grown.” For season 4, he’s headed to Guyana, South America to meet the Makushi tribesmen and learn how they have adapted to jungle life, as well as meeting Kenya’s Rendille desert warriors and Vanuatu’s Salkon tribesmen, among others.
1 Hazen’s education has focussed on science, nature and education. He has a BSc in Biology, with graduate studies in ethnobotany, Meso-American traditional hunting practices and tropical ecology at the University Of Hawaii before earning his Master’s in teaching from Whitworth College.
2 Hazen keeps contact with the tribespeople he’s met, adding that “I visit them almost every year. That has been going on for 25 years now”.
3 He takes his environmental message home with him. “I plant a lot of trees that attract certain wildlife. I’ve made a pond. I’m doing the best I can to avoid paying some sort of electricity bill because what makes electricity is building a dam and if you have dams, there no animals can go up the river,” he explains.
4 He has that exact same focus on sustainability in his work as an artist, sculptor and furniture maker.
5 Hazen has one luxury though. “No matter where I am, I’m going to invent a way to have a hot shower.”