The Amur’s coastal delta is one of the richest ecosystems on earth. Nourished by the mighty river’s enormous sediment load, the Sea of Okhotsk is a marine hotspot of biodiversity with arctic and subtropical species living side by side. Likewise, the land of Russia’s Far East is a unique meeting place of northern and southern plants and animals, boasting the planet’s most diverse woodlands. These wildwoods are still inhabited by Amur tigers, Asian black bears, brown bears, Siberian and Sika deer, sables and otters and countless species of wetland birds. And they are home to traditional forest and river cultures like the Udeghe and Nanai. The Pacific rim is both the end and the beginning of the Amur River system: It’s the massive monsoon clouds the Pacific sends inland which keep the thousand tributaries of the Amur flowing.
The Changbai Mountain Range found between China and North Korea is explored.
Moving upstream into Mongolia, the itinerary of the series leaves behind the boreal woodland wilderness of China’s extreme North and Siberia’s South to follow the Amur’s two westernmost tributaries across the planet’s vastest wild grasslands. Episode 3 follows the massive herds of Mongolian gazelles on their seasonal migrations and the trails of nomadic herdsmen through wilderness regions that are home to steppe eagles, wolves, black vultures, Asian marmots and black-billed capercaillies. This episode shows how the rhythm of all life inhabiting one of the planet’s greatest networks of waterways, lakes and wetlands is driven by climatic cycles. It shows the timeless flow of a mighty river in the sky flowing thousands of kilometres from the Pacific to the harsh, cold desert heart of the continent and of a thousand rivers uniting into a single giant one which drains this immense volume of water back to its true source, the ocean.
