Gordon Buchanan on rescuing grizzly cubs
Gordon Buchanan on helping six orphaned cubs to return to the wild
Grizzly Bear Cubs and Me Tue, WED / BBC2 / 9PM
Get ready for some serious ‘ahh’ moments this week as Gordon Buchanan helps rescue six orphaned grizzly bear babies for his new BBC2 series.
The two-parter sees the wildlife cameraman spend eight months in the snowy Russian wilderness with the Pazhetnov family, who for 25 years have been rescuing bear cubs orphaned or abandoned because of hunting or logging.
Gordon became a ‘surrogate mum’ to a group of six five-weekold male cubs – Slava, Pasha, Tolya, Tyoma, Zhenya and Zhora – feeding them and giving them the skills they needed to return to the wild.
TV Times caught up Gordon,
46, to find out more…
How did this inspirational project come about?
I’d always wanted to film grizzly bears and then I discovered this phenomenal Russian family, the Pazhetnovs, who have devoted their lives to rehabilitating grizzly bears back into the wild and have
rescued over 100. What were your first impressions of the cubs you helped rescue?
I thought, ‘They’re unbelievably cute but they make a lot of noise!’ They sounded like velociraptors from Jurassic Park! I also couldn’t see how these tiny cubs could ever be released back into the wild
– they were so defenceless.
You had to bottle-feed them and clean their fur – how was that? Bottle-feeding isn’t something that’s instinctive to them, so it was a wrestling match and you’d end up covered in milk! I love getting close to wild animals to observe them but there’s something different about physically nourishing them – it was really special. But I couldn’t become too attached so that these cubs had a shot at living free in the forest.
What else did you do to prepare them for the wild?
It was a process of giving them the opportunity to do the things their mothers would encourage, like climbing, swimming and exploring the forest to find food. A lot of it is instinctive for them, though.
What was it like when you finally released them into the wild?
I expected it to be emotional, but actually I was just delighted to see them have a chance to be wild bears and I felt we were doing something really good for the natural world.