Look for the beauty beyond the beasts

In his new series ‘A Perfect Planet’, Sir David Attenborough focuses as much on landscapes and the forces that shape them as he does on wildlife. Sarah Marshall checks out the locations

Over the past six decades, Sir David Attenborough has shared stories of exotic creatures from across the globe. But this year, like so many of us, he spent time studying a habitat closer to home: his garden.

“I can’t actually remember taking three walks a day as I did almost every day this spring,” says the resident of Richmond, London. “I was more aware of flowers opening, buds forming, birds arriving, than I have ever been. It was amazing.”

From the blazing sun fuelling our earth with energy to weather patterns that continuously reshape the landscape, powerful phenomena have made earth a warm and stable environment – the perfect place to live. These earth sciences are the subject of the new natural history series A Perfect Planet. Produced by Silverback Films and narrated by Attenborough, the five episodes study in turn volcanoes, oceans, weather, the sun and humans.

We see camels in the Mongolian desert quenching their thirst from Siberian snow drifts; lizards opting to incubate their eggs in the base of active volcanic craters; and aquaphobic crabs that breed in the sea. But along with celebrating the wonders of our wild world, the series considers its fragility, summed up in the final episode which focuses on the youngest, strongest and potentially most destructive force of nature: humans.

“The planet I saw as a young man has changed beyond recognition,” says Attenborough. “If the Arctic melts, seas will rise and flood cities. This is not H G Wells. It’s not science fiction.”

But as with our flourishing appreciation of nature born out of a pandemic, there is hope. “We still have a chance to stop it happening,” he says. The first step is to understand the forces that shape our existence by discovering extraordinary habitats more mesmerising than the animals that live there. Here is our guide to the key locations.

A Perfect Planet begins tomorrow at 8pm on BBC One.

Nomadic herders lead Bactrian camels over the sand dunes beneath the snow-covered Gobi Altai Mountains. The Mongolian desert features in episode three of the new series