Capturing nature’s emotions

ever before, and more emotionally involved.

Attenborough says in the past, programme-makers felt “we weren’t giving the viewers the climax that they wanted” if a predator failed to catch their prey. In real life, he said, “the failure is more common and more significant than the catching… Lions fail about eight times out of 10”.

Nowadays, producers understand that viewers often want to cheer for the underdog. When Planet Earth II aired in Britain, millions watched, caught between horror and hope, as newly hatched baby iguanas tried to make it across a Galapagos beach without being devoured by hungry racer snakes.

Series producer Tom HughJones said he thought a growing number of female producers had added “a lot more emotion” to wildlife programmes.

“They see different things, little looks or tender moments,” he said. “The male producers tend to go for the more bombastic stuff.”

The crew, who spent more than 2 000 days filming in 40 countries, also faced the fraught question of whether to intervene in life-anddeath situations.

“We wouldn’t stop a predator from catching its prey because that’s the natural cycle of things. And the predator needs to eat as much as the prey,” Hugh-Jones said.

But crew members stepped in to save a fledgling noddy bird that had become covered in sticky seeds.

“In certain situations, where you can see very little benefit of that bird dying, apart from maybe a bit of fertiliser for the tree, it feels fair enough to help the animal out of a sticky situation,” Hugh-Jones said.

It’s not just technology, but the planet that has changed in the decade since the first Planet Earth. For one thing, a majority of the world’s population now lives in cities.

Alongside episodes exploring islands, mountains, jungles, deserts and grasslands, Planet Earth II devotes one episode to urban wildlife – including Mumbai’s leopards, Manhattan’s peregrine falcons and the pesky raccoons of Toronto.

Climate change is also reshaping the globe and creating new dangers. It worries Attenborough, who has been exploring the beauty of the natural world for nine decades. He admits he is not an optimist about the future of the natural world.

“I don’t think the world is going to recover to what it was like when I was a boy,” he said “But I am persuaded that we can ameliorate things. We can prevent things getting worse than they might be if we did nothing.”

Attenborough thinks the key to that is cutting waste and getting far more of our energy from renewable sources. He’s among the scientists and educators behind the Global Apollo Programme, aimed at drastically cutting the cost of carbon-free energy.

Attenborough believes plentiful and cheap green energy is “just out there, just beyond our reach. And all we need to do is organise scientific research to solve the particular problems on that roadmap”.

“It’s not there yet, but it’s possible,” he said. “And while there’s possibility, there’s hope. – ANA-AP

PICTURE: AP Sir David Attenborough with a floral sculpture of himself at Kew Gardens in London.