Original subtitles

EPIC Thank you

This is Guelta de Arque, in Central Africa,

a hostile, seemingly empty world.

There is life here.

But it exists at the very limits of survival.

For this is a world with almost no water.

Lands like these cover over a third of our planet.

Here, life is forced to do things differently.

This is the most ancient desert of all. The Namib, in South West Africa.

It is one of the hottest places on Earth.

Yet this male ostrich and his mate have come here to start a family.

Few predators venture out during the heat of the day. But

such safety comes at a price. Out in the open, the newly

hatched chicks are exposed to the crushing heat of the sun.

But not all of the brood have hatched.

Until they do, the family will stay here.

The adults take it in turns to protect the brood.

So whilst the female takes a well-earned break,

the male takes over for the most testing shift.

He gently rolls the unhatched eggs, calling to the young

within them. He doesn't want to leave anyone behind.

The temperature continues to rise by five degrees Celsius every hour.

He protects the chicks that have emerged, shading them with his own body.

At the end of another grueling day in the sun,

he's lost almost all his energy.

But he must resist the urge to rest.

The cool of the night brings some relief, but now predators are out and about.

It's going to be a long night.

Dawn brings a surprise.

Three additions to the family. To greet the returning female.

But there's a problem. The chicks won't survive another day in these temperatures.

Yet the male is reluctant to leave. Some of the eggs have still not hatched.

But time has run out.

They must depart.

Just a few minutes later. Too late.

The chicks have hatched.

Alone and without the protection of its parents, this hatchling's chances are slim.

The chicks have hatched.

The chicks have hatched. The chicks

have hatched.

The chicks have hatched. The chicks have hatched.

Survival here, as in all deserts, is on a knife edge.

So desert dwellers have had to evolve in remarkable ways.

Some have even given rise to legends of dragons and unicorns.

And even the dunes have their own magical quality.

Indeed, some have their own voice.

Here in Arabia, this extraordinary sound is created by

billions of moving sand grains vibrating against one

another.

The eerie song they produce can be heard for

miles across the world's biggest sand desert.

Winds have also built sand into surreal shapes.

Deserts around the world can appear so alien that

they seem to belong to another planet altogether.

Few more so than here in Australia.

Yet one little creature chooses this desert to

prepare for a most important event in its life.

A male spotted boa bird. For the last two months,

he's been busy in anticipation of brief rains.

That is when females will look for a mate.

So he's built a bar, a sort of theatre, a stage on

which he will dance with the female, if she's willing.

He decorates the entrance with piles of empty snail shells and bones.

How could any female resist?

The rains are due any day, so it's his last chance

for improvements. You can never have too many shells.

But in his absence,

a rival male drops by to size up the competition and

cause trouble.

Wreck your neighbor's boa and your own might look better.

And perhaps one of the best bits would look good in his boa.

The owner is back and something isn't right.

Repairs are needed.

Still no sign of rain or females.

Undeterred, he continues his preparations.

Time to rehearse his courtship display.

But sadly, he may only ever dance alone. For

the last three years, the rains have failed.

Without them, the females won't mate. They need

the rains to provide food for their family.

Changes in the climate are affecting these birds, just as they are affecting us.

A quarter of the world's people live in arid lands.

So we too have to deal with climate change.

Less rainfall and extended droughts allow deserts to grow.

And as they do, so does the likelihood of one of nature's most intimidating events.

A dust storm.

A wall of dust up to a mile high, traveling at almost 70

miles an hour. Today, these destructive storms are some of

the most powerful ever seen.

Unstoppable, they can travel thousands of miles,

overwhelming towns and cities across the world in an

instant.

It takes millennia for life to adapt to the extremes of deserts.

These baboons manage to survive in one of the driest environments on Earth.

The Irongo region in Namibia.

Not a single drop of rain has fallen here for eight months.

Life here for these baboons is as hard as it gets.

And it's especially difficult for this young female.

She has just given birth to her first baby.

She's desperate for water. Without it, she can't produce milk.

The tiny amount of moisture in her food is simply not enough for both of them.

The troop must constantly search for water, and they won't wait for her.

At last, one of the troop's scouts finds a tiny trickle on a rock face.

Relief. But not for everyone. The young mother will have to wait.

Access to the precious water is determined by rank.

She is so low in the pecking order, she might fail to get any drink at all.

Because jumping the queue is severely punished.

It's risky, but she can't wait any longer.

A dangerous move.

But there's no match for a mother's determination.

This will be enough to keep her and her baby alive until rain falls.

Rain brings salvation not just to her and the troop, but to the thirsty lamb.

When it does fall, it can transform a desert.

And turn it into one of Earth's most productive landscapes.

Grasslands. They support the greatest concentrations

of large animals to be found anywhere on the planet.

Here, nature is at its most spectacular.

This Leopardess, believe it or not, is ready to hunt at a moment's notice.

She is one of the few special Leopards that have learned

to hide in the treetops and wait for their prey to come to

them.

Without making a sound, she gets into position.

The Leopardess is ready to hunt.

The Leopardess is ready to hunt.

The Leopardess is ready to hunt. Not this time.

And now her presence is known to all.

But Leopards will go to astonishing lengths to succeed.

And some are more daring than others. And some

are more daring than others. This Leopard climbs

up to a branch nine meters above the ground.

She's higher than the roof of a two-story house.

Leopards have killed themselves jumping from these heights.

The Leopardess is ready to hunt.

To succeed on these equatorial grasslands, you must be adaptable and sometimes brave.

The Eurasian steppe, the largest grassland on

Earth. It tests animals in a different way.

Here the wind can blow at speeds of nearly 80 miles an hour.

And temperatures drop to below minus 30 degrees Celsius.

Yet one bizarre creature has evolved ways to survive in these extremes.

Saiga antelope. Small but tough animals that lived alongside woolly mammoths.

A male's enormous nose both filters out the dust and

warms up the cold air before it reaches his lungs.

But at this time of year, it also serves a very different purpose.

It impresses the females.

And the bigger it is, the better.

This old male knows what it takes to hold their attention.

But they make him work for it.

And if that isn't effective, he has other ways

of impressing them. A bush. Very majestic.

But when you are king of the steppe, there's always someone

waiting to claim your crown. This young buck fancies his

chances. He aims to steal the king's harem.

The challenger charges, ready to do battle.

This could be a fight to the death.

70% of rutting males will die.

The older male eventually begins to gain the upper hand.

And with one final effort, he drives the young rival away.

The king has kept his crown and his harem.

Only the stonkiest sagas can endure and

succeed in one of the harshest places on Earth.

But close to the equator, where there is constant warmth

and water, there are grasslands close to paradise.

This is the most biodiverse grassland in the world. The Cerrado in Brazil.

Here, there are thousands of species of both animals and plants found nowhere else.

A rich and complex community that is kept in balance by this ghostly creature.

The maned wolf.

Quiet and shy, it's little known and seldom seen.

Unlike any other wolf in the world, their diet is mostly

vegetarian. And they particularly like luberia fruit. This

plant increases the fertility of the land and helps to sustain the entire Cerrado.

The maned wolves, odd though it may seem, are

in effect the gardeners of these unique plains.

The dense grass, in turn, provides this female with a comfortable home.

And somewhere to hide her three puppies, just one month old.

She is so rare that she's been fitted with a radio

collar so that scientists can study her continuously.

And our remotely controlled den camera reveals a mother

only comes here for a few hours a day to suckle her pups.

She spends much of her time foraging to provide for her growing family.

Now, alone in the den, her puppies are suddenly in danger.

Not from other predators,

but from fire.

Their home is being burnt all around them.

These fires can race through a mile of grassland in a matter of minutes.

The Cerrado devastated.

Why? In order to clear land to grow crops.

This particular fire didn't reach their den, but

it's empty.

This time, the family were lucky.

But her species faces an alarmingly uncertain future.

At the current rate of habitat destruction, these may

be some of the last main wolves to survive in the wild.

In grasslands, the land and the animals are so closely

interconnected that the loss of one key species could well

trigger the collapse of the entire ecosystem.

That's what happened here in Central Africa, when 95% of

the elephant population were killed for their ivory. Without

these essential gardeners, life couldn't flourish.

This male is one of the few survivors.

He still bears the scars from his persecuted past.

But the slaughter was stopped just in time.

With an end to poaching, this male is part of a growing herd that now lives in safety.

Today, it's thought that this is one of the largest

groups of African elephants surviving in the wild.

As they recovered their numbers, their grazing

encouraged a healthy growth of new grasses.

And they created space for other animals,

bringing life back to Zakuma.

This miraculous transformation shows what can happen

if nature is allowed to restore its own balance.

Abaka is part of the team of local rangers who

risk their lives to protect these elephants.

And the elephants didn't just heal the land,

they did something no one had anticipated.

As we understand more about the wonders, the connections and

the fragility of these landscapes, the consequences of our

actions are thrown into sharp focus. They show that we

urgently need to do everything we can to help nature heal

itself.

To film maimed wolves, the Planet Earth

crew joined pioneering scientists in Brazil.

Without their help, the wolves are almost impossible to

track, let alone film, in the dense grass of the Cerrado.

It's so hard to find them, they're sort of solitary animals

in a huge grassland with sort of meter high grass, which is

the same height as the wolf. And it's like looking for

a needle in a haystack currently. Should we turn the car

around and check ahead that way? Yeah, maybe.

The researchers have radio collared two female wolves. Both

have puppies. They hope to track one to a den and set up

remote cameras inside. The footage will provide the

researchers with crucial information and help to protect

this endangered species. She's nice somewhere. Maimed

wolves, they're so special, it's very important to

understand more of the species. When we get more

knowledge, it's getting easier to protect them.

But the signal from one of the females takes them in a

worrying direction. So it's led us directly into this huge

epic scale farmland, the likes of which, to be honest, I've

never seen before. And it shows you what little is left of

their natural habitat.

Fifty percent of maimed wolf habitat has been lost to farmland.

And the radio collars show they now regularly

stray into this unfamiliar landscape.

Tragically, the researchers discover the body of one

collared mother wolf on farmland. The cause of her death

unknown. Her puppies won't survive alone for long.

Without delay, the researchers set out to find them.

They rescue five one-month-old pups hidden in the long grass.

To assess their condition, the pups are taken to an emergency rescue facility.

They will be cared for around the clock, until they're

strong enough to be released back into the wild.

Their mother's death is a huge blow for everyone.

For the crew, the only chance of filming in a den now

lies with one remaining collared female, known as Norinha.

She's not here to the right. Is that her there? No. Yeah, I

can see her. She's there. She's here. Oh yeah, got her, got

her, got her. So she's coming towards two o'clock now, fifty

metres away from the car. She's coming behind this tree in

the middle here. I've got her, I've got her. OK.

Eventually, the team capture the first images of

Norinha on camera. To finally see our wolf is amazing.

Using a drone camera, they follow her to her den.

The drone reveals the first glimpse of Norinha's puppies. Oh my God.

And she's moving them.

Something that's never been witnessed before.

This is very special. My heart's dark, I like. I can't

believe I'm really seeing here. We know where the den is

now.

The following morning, they return to the den site. They

want to rig their cameras, but can only approach when they

know Norinha is not at the den. Is she nearby? No, no signal

yet. Norinha is out of here, at least one kilometre. So it's

very good news for us. Let's try to approach it.

Barbara checks that Norinha is away from the den

so the team can go in without disturbing her.

Norinha. The den isn't immediately obvious, but the grass

here is flattened. So they place their cameras and hope for

the best. We're about 80 metres from the dam. This is as

close as we could be safely. This is the moment of truth.

We're turning around. And we're alive. And the camera hasn't moved.

Luke keeps watch over the cameras, while the team continue

to monitor Norinha's movements. Before long, they're stopped

in their tracks. Just in this huge plume of smoke in the

distance, you know, directly behind the den, where our

mother main wolf has been with her puppies. I'm

quite anxious. I'm sure the researchers are as well.

And the fire may well have been started by farmers. In order

to clear land to grow crops, they would be used to feed

chicken and cattle around the world.

The heat from the fire when we're working that close is so

intense. I can feel it burning the skin of my arm. It moves

so fast. There's no way you'd escape something like that.

Every single cell in your body just wants to get out of

there. But actually this whole place, this whole cerrado is

surrounded by farmlands and roads. Actually, when you

really think about it, the wildlife has no where to run.

After a difficult few weeks for Barbara and the research

team... Hello. How are you doing? How was it? That was good.

The crew have some good news for them. Oh, check. There's

one right there. Right now? Yeah. Can you see it? That's a

puppy there. That's live? Yeah, yeah, that's live. Oh, my God.

I've never seen anything so cute in one time. Me neither.

Me neither, guys. Look at this. Look, it's looking at the

camera.

Unbelievable.

That's the first record in the world. So intimate inside

the den. Nobody ever saw this. Such new information of such

important species. Can you

imagine, Barbara? Difficult not to be. I don't have

words to describe it. Like, it's too much for me.

The cameras continue to gather first of its kind footage,

providing insight into the all-important first weeks of a

maimed wolf's life.

And, crucially, how much space must be protected to support

future generations. I really hope that every person in the

world could see from their house how special and how

beautiful, amazing these animals are. I feel quite worried,

but not hopeless. I will fight every day and every year to

help them. I was born in Cerrado. I grew up in Cerrado. And

Cerrado, it's my home. I have to protect it.