All our true rainforests are on the Equator and they hold the greatest biodiversity on Earth. They are home to some of humanity’s closest cousins that can tell us a lot about who we are. We meet gorillas in Africa, who are slowly learning to befriend people, and orangutans in Borneo, who have an intimate bond with the caregivers saving them from extinction. We also travel to Ecuador on a search for jaguars and to Galapagos, to learn how tourism is altering the evolution of Darwin’s famous finches.
The magic of the Equator is in the constant sunlight. It’s a great place to farm -- if you can keep the animals out of your plants. Wild Lands looks at the many forms of conflict between animals, farmers and the conservationists that stand between them. In Indonesia elephants are saved from slaughter by a young female mahout; in Uganda farmers are saved from elephants by a clever female bee keeper. In Kenya, a phalanx of guards protects the last of the northern white rhinos.
The warmth of Equatorial waters makes them a riot of colorful life. But, in this era, there is such a thing as too much heat. Hot Waters takes viewers to a remote coast of Colombia where villagers are learning to love humpback whales; to Galapagos where researchers risk their lives to study penguins; to a chilly river in the Andes in search of a miraculous frog and beneath the azure waves of the Maldives, where the ravages of global warming are being repaired by incredibly inventive “coral doctors”.
