WILD STREAM

THE LATEST ON iPLAYER, NETFLIX AND BEYOND

Wildlife meets detective story with In Search of the Lost Girl (BBC iPlayer, until 27 Feb), in which Chris Packham ( right) sets off to the Sumatran jungle to track down a young girl that he photographed back in 1998. It’s no easy task: he has no clues as to her identity; hers is a nomadic tribe; and in the 20 years since his last visit, millions of hectares of her rainforest home has been destroyed. As his very personal search deepens, Chris sees first-hand the extent of deforestation to clear the way for palm oil plantations.

While the palm oil we consume destroys rainforests, the plastic that packages it is wreaking havoc on marine habitats across the globe, with devastating consequences for ocean wildlife. Dutch entrepreneur and inventor Boyan Slat has a solution to how we might tackle ckle the vast mess of plastic that has accumulated in the Pacific, earning it the pleasant nickname of ‘Great Pacific Garbage Patch’. His idea is simple – use floating barriers and the very currents that gather the debris to concentrate and guide it to clearing stations. You can hear his ideas with Boyan Slat: How We Will Rid the Oceans of Plastic (The Ocean Cleanup channel, YouTube). Finally, if you missed it when it first aired, make time to see Big Cats (BBC iPlayer, until 20 Feb) – a three-part series showcasing the world’s felines: some large, some small, some rarely seen at all.