Our Changing Planet

The launch of the BBC's ambitious seven-year natural history project, in which six presenters visit six of the planet's most threatened ecosystems to meet the people fighting to restore the Earth's delicate balance.

In this first episode, Steve Backshall, Chris Packham and Ella Al-Shamahi visit the Maldives, Iceland and Cambodia.

Steve Backshall travels to the Maldives, an area facing significant challenges because of climate change. Warming seas and the acidification of the oceans have led to coral bleaching on a massive scale, destroying the surrounding ecosystem. The biodiversity of the reefs provides food security, income and other benefits to the people of the Maldives, and Steve finds that they are working hard to try to stem the tide of destruction. He also goes diving off the reefs to check on a group of manta rays, whose presence offers a clear indication of the health of the reef.

In Iceland, Chris Packham learns more about the effects of global warming. Temperatures in the Arctic are rising at more than twice the annual global average. Snow and ice are melting at an increasing rate, which contributes to rising sea levels and is likely to provoke extreme temperature events beyond the Arctic. As one of the eight Arctic States, Iceland is being dramatically affected by rising temperatures, with the lives and livelihoods of many islanders being threatened. Chris also discovers that melting sea ice is opening the Arctic to navigation. These seas are home to many species of whales, so Chris joins a team of young scientists monitoring the impact of increased commercial shipping on humpback whales.

On the other side of the world, Ella Al-Shamahi visits Cambodia in Southeast Asia, an area experiencing increasing economic growth. However, growth is putting massive pressure on natural resources, with ever-expanding cities and devastating overexploitation of the natural world. The Mekong river is the lifeblood of this region, but whole sections of it are under pressure. Ella meets a fishing community living on the Tonle Sap lake. The lake used to offer rich fishing grounds for local communities, but the construction of many dams along the wider Mekong is now threatening to destroy the biodiversity of this once abundant lake.

The building of new roads has given poachers easier access to forests, and the illegal wildlife trade is big international business. Ella visits a project in Cambodia that rescues and rehabilitates illegally trafficked wildlife, including pangolins, the most trafficked mammal on Earth.

In this second programme, another three presenters visit people fighting to rebalance vulnerable habitats around the world.

Liz Bonnin travels to California to learn about the increasingly invasive wildfires hitting the headlines. Scientists can see clear links between the fires, climate change, raised temperatures and an extended drought season. There is one crucial element that is key to a sustainable future in California: biodiversity. Loss of keystone species and large carnivores is a threat to the state's ecosystems, and conservationists and scientists are mobilising to save wildlife from wildfires and to treat their burns.

Liz also visits the Pacific coast of California, where warming seas have brought with them a new resident, great white sharks. With each shark consuming up to 18 kilos of prey at a time, the impact they could have on the marine ecosystem is being studied intently.

Ade Adepitan travels to Kenya to look at the effects rising temperatures are having on the land. Hundreds of millions of Africans depend on rainfall to grow their food and keep livestock, and the capacity for adaptation is low. Ade also visits a project in Kenya that is going to extraordinary lengths to safeguard the future of its most charismatic creature, the African elephant.

Over in Brazil, Gordon Buchanan discovers a pioneering project that is trying to save one of the Amazon's iconic predators, the jaguar. Brazil is the most biodiverse country in the world, and as well as the Amazon rainforest, it is home to one of the world's most important wetlands, the Pantanal. This area is home to high numbers of jaguars, but in 2020, wildfires destroyed 30 per cent of the Pantanal, killing an estimated 17 million animals. More than a quarter of the resident jaguars were directly impacted by these fires, through habitat loss, food shortages, injury and death.

The second year of the BBC's ambitious, seven-year, natural history project sees six presenters visit six of the planet's most threatened ecosystems to meet the people fighting to restore the earth's delicate balance and adapt to the changes that have already taken place.

In this first episode, we travel to three locations with presenters Steve Backshall, Liz Bonnin and Chris Packham.

Steve Backshall visits the Maldives, a country facing significant challenges because of climate change. Warming seas and the acidification of the oceans have led to coral bleaching on a massive scale. And increasingly unpredictable weather patterns could deal the final blow. 2022 saw the first mass coral bleaching during La Niña, a climate pattern that historically keeps oceans cool enough to avoid bleaching. The earth's reefs are now at a tipping point. But these extreme challenges are galvanising the science community to get out of their labs and into the field, experimenting with more novel and innovative techniques, trialling ideas that could just make a difference.

Steve returns to Laamu Atoll to find out about one such cutting-edge project. Professor Steve Simpson and his team from Bristol University have identified that coral larvae, baby corals no bigger than a pinhead, move towards the sound of a healthy reef, a response that guides them to settle amongst a more biodiverse and healthier habitat, and in so doing, add to the coral population. Steve dives with Professor Simpson and records the sound of a healthy reef. With the help of a 360-degree camera, they are able to identify key marine life that make up these coral playlists.

Liz Bonnin returns to California to investigate some surprising solutions for the relentless onslaught of the state's wildfire season. California's wildfires are becoming a yearly catastrophe, with the state government spending billions of dollars in the last five years to fight these out-of-control blazes. Liz discovers that ancient forest management techniques and the beaver, a misunderstood mammal, could help prevent them in the first place, providing powerful tools to sustainably protect our planet against the ravages of climate change.

Liz visits the traditional reservation of the indigenous Tule River tribe, who have been practising a technique called ‘controlled burning' for thousands of years. By regularly burning the twigs and leaf litter that collect on the forest floor, they reduce the amount of material that typically collects in forests and fuels megablazes. Liz joins the tribe on one of their cultural burns and finds out how they have protected their land and, importantly, their sacred sequoia trees.

To prevent the fires from moving at speed across the landscape, scientists and indigenous communities are hoping that beavers can help solve the problem. Once found across North America, by 1900 beavers had been hunted virtually to extinction. Liz joins scientist Dr Emily Fairfax, who has been studying the benefits of introducing beavers into a landscape. Surrounded by burnt-out forest, a green oasis sits at it centre, the territory of a beaver family that has created what Emily describes as a ‘speed bump' for wildfires.

Chris Packham is in Greenland to learn more about the effects of global warming and the rate at which snow and ice are melting and retreating in the Arctic. He travels to a science research station on the island's remote north east coast, one of the most important locations in the world for the understanding of warming in the Arctic and its global impact. Chris joins an Arctic expedition as scientists from Aarhus University and Copenhagen Zoo track across the snow-covered tundra in search of musk oxen, an ice age survivor that can tolerate temperatures ranging from - 40 to +10 degrees Celsius.

With the gradual warming of the Arctic, future conditions may not resemble anything the species has ever encountered. Now moving slowly northwards as temperatures rise, there are many questions to be answered: will populations become vulnerable to warm weather disease? How long will they have a territory that's cold enough for them to survive in? And what will they leave behind them? The conditions are gruelling. Chris and the team have to move fast across the vast landscape, hoping to dart and collar 21 of these huge, powerful creatures, taking hair, blood and stomach samples. We learn how the sophisticated collars and an array of science techniques will be able to tell us if they breed, feed, survive or perish in the years to come.

In this second programme we join another three presenters as they celebrate the experts and communities fighting to rebalance another trio of vulnerable habitats, Gordon Buchanan returns to Brazil, Ella Al-Shamahi to Cambodia and Ade Adepitan to Kenya.

Gordon Buchanan returns to Brazil. Covering almost half of South America, it's the most biodiverse country on our planet and as well as the Amazon Rainforest, it's home to one of the world's most important wetlands, the Pantanal. Gordon's here to revisit a pioneering project that's committed to saving one of the Amazon's iconic predators – the jaguar, and to understand the importance of a healthy ecosystem.

On the other side of the world Ella Al-Shamahi returns to Cambodia in Southeast Asia, an area experiencing increasing economic growth. But the growth is putting massive pressure on the natural resources and is leading to expanding cities and potentially devastating over-exploitation of the natural world.

Biodiversity plays a vital role in building resilience in these threatened landscapes and every species is critical. Ella joins an expedition which will reintroduce the nearly extinct Siamese crocodile into the depths of the Cardamom Mountains. To date, the survival of these critically endangered crocs has been down to the cultural connection between the local people and the crocs who they consider sacred.

When Ade visited Kenya in 2021 the elephants were being severely affected by drought but 2022 saw a new and sinister problem; people and elephants now fighting over dwindling food and water supplies, even killing each other in the desperation to survive. This is the new scourge - human elephant conflict.

But Ade finds out about an ingenious project that could help farmers and elephants to co-exist until the next rains finally arrive. Using biology and behavioural science, leading elephant scientists with the input of locals, have created affordable tools for repelling elephants from farms and reducing conflict.