This film transports us around the emerald band that encircles our planet – our jungles. And begins by tackling one of the biggest puzzles about the world’s rainforests: why do these places have such a bewildering variety of life, far greater than any other habitat on Earth? The quest begins in Panama, where more varieties of bird have been recorded in a single day, than anywhere else on the planet. We then travel to Borneo to see how some of the largest animals of the jungle, the orang-utan and the forest elephant, are crucial in protecting the biodiversity of the rainforests. Finally, we travel to the Amazon to witness a truly amazing web of relationships, centred around the Brazil nut tree.
In this episode, we travel to the savannahs of Kenya; the grasslands of Australia; and the Cerrado of Brazil to witness how one of our most important ecosystems works – grasslands. In Kenya we witness the surprisingly important role that rhinos play in making the grasslands fit for antelope. In the Brazilian Cerrado, we reveal how maned wolves get by on a low nitrogen diet, with the help of an odd dietary supplement – a fruit. In Australia, we encounter a weird cast of mini grassland characters, like bandicoots, rock wallabies and quolls. Finally, we return to East Africa to reveal how one extraordinary part of the ecosystem works – one built around the acacia tree.
Seasonal forests are special. Their ecosystems have to cope with drastic change twice a year, in Spring and Autumn. Not only do the individual inhabitants have to deal with that change, but the entire ecosystem has to transform itself at exactly the same time – and it can only do this if all the animals work in perfect synchronicity. This entire episode is spent in the vast seasonal forests of North America, over the course of a year. Episode hi-lights include footage of flying squirrels leaping from tree to tree in the fall, how a lynx survives the winter, the crucial effect that caterpillars have on the forest canopy, and the importance to the forest of a bear’s fishing exploits.
In this, the final episode, we follow water on a journey that will take us across the world – from the remote mountain streams, via luscious wetlands and swamps, to coral reefs and the deep ocean. We begin high in the mountains of Iceland, in the North Atlantic. We then travel across the world to South America, to the world’s greatest wetland – The Pantanal. We then travel to the Sunderbans – a vast mangrove swamp at the mouth of the Ganges in Bangladesh. We then head out to sea, to the coral reefs of the Maldives, where we investigate the puzzle of where reefs get their food. Finally, we sail far out into the deep ocean to reveal how ocean currents rescue much of the lost nutrients that end up on the seabed.
