Madagascar's Mysterious Forests | Wild Lives | TRACKS

paper was light gold in medieval times [Music] i want tobacco sugar [Music] that everything we thought we knew about the world might turn out to be completely wrong [Music] our planet is full of life people places and animals inspiring filmmakers to explore finding new stories taking us on journeys of discovery into our natural world this is wild lives [Music] [Music] [ __ ] foreign [Music] [Music] today the maki are one of over a hundred species of lima found in madagascar almost all of which are endangered like ninety percent of madagascar's wildlife they are found nowhere else [Music] madagascar is an ancient island separated from africa for over 160 million years much of the land was once covered by lush rainforest but now the trees have been felled what isn't used for agriculture has been left barren seasonal burning stops the forest growing back nestled between towering cliffs a tiny fragment remains this is anza a beacon of hope and the last refuge for the making [Music] concerned that the forest was disappearing a group of local people formed a community association to protect anza and the lemurs [Music] [Music] foreign the association also established an entrance fee for the forest which is used to fund a local school many members now earn their living taking tourists to see the lemurs in the forest be [Music] foreign [Music] the maki are the biggest draw for tourists to anza [Music] as madagascar's most famous lima many people come here just to see them over the years they have gradually become accustomed to people [Music] nowadays they have little to fear from humans but this wasn't always the case [Music] [Music] one foreign [Music] as the association brings real benefits to the local people they have come to see the value of the forest that remains and their feelings towards the animals are changing too long [Music] [Music] m [Music] [Music] [Music] b [Music] now that the association is well established the true legacy of anza has become clear [Music] m so across madagascar lima populations are drastically declining but here at anza the population is over 400 strong for its size anza has the highest density of maki in madagascar [Music] the future is uncertain for much of madagascar's wildlife but at anza at least it seems the maki are safe [Music] deep within the forests of a remote island lurks a creature with a fearsome reputation meet the tasmanian devil but due to their legendary brawls this irritable icon is now facing disaster [Music] and may be in desperate need of our help [Music] when the first european settlers arrived in tasmania they were met by blood curdling shrieks [Music] little did they know that this terrifying sound came from an animal only the size of a small dog but these little devils earned themselves a formidable reputation [Music] it seems these pint-sized predators have found their way to the top of the food chain [Music] when the dingo arrived the thylacine or tasmanian tiger and the devil became extinct on the mainland of australia but we reta we managed to retain all those species in tasmania we didn't have the dingo in australian ecosystems where our fauna are mostly marsupials our equivalent of the bone eating hyena or the grey wolf is the tasmanian devil however unlike the wolf or hyena devils prefer a solitary life they only meet when they have to [Music] when they mate [Music] and eat [Music] while they're the biggest pouch predator on the island they rarely hunt large prey the majority of their food is scavenged but scavenged carcasses attract others [Music] and that means sharing [Music] to thrive in such a competitive environment the devils have had to adapt it has very robust teeth and jaws for eating bone and consuming the hard parts of carcasses and a notoriously bad temper [Applause] they do not get along so things usually flare up over dinner devils bite each other and they bite each other a lot around the face into the mouth they can inflict deep wounds as they squabble over food but while this aggression appears brutal it actually plays a very important role in devil life their battle scars are a badge of honor the sign of a successful scavenger not to mention an attraction to females come mating season but more recently their love of fighting could be the devil's downfall [Music] it may be natural but this aggression has also led to a catastrophic series of events well i'm an immunologist and i'm particularly interested in how cancers escape the immune system around about 1996 one female devil developed a cancer a photographer was taking photos in a place called mount william and he sort of wondered why the devil population was a bit low but he also noticed some devils with his horrible lesions and that was double facial tumor disease and dftd as it came to be known was no ordinary cancer this devil then fit another devil and transmitted a few cancer cells when you think of all the cancer there are and there's only three types of transmissible cancers it is extremely rare this tough and testy tasmanian icon was suddenly vulnerable to a rare and deadly cancer and due to the devil's naturally aggressive behavior the disease now threatened to spread across the island and then that was transmitted to a second devil and then from two devils to four and it's been transmitted across most of tasmania over just 20 years the disease has eliminated some 80 of tasmania's devils but while some scientists have been looking for ways we can help the devil mena jones believes an answer may lie with the devils themselves mena has been focusing on a problem created by the devil's mating behavior as males and females fight during the breeding season transmission of the cancer increases devils are getting the disease when they first become reproductively mature because that's when they start biting other individuals and getting bitten and they are dying within 6 to 12 months of reproducing so they're dying at very young ages but menna and her team then discovered an extraordinary change in the devil's behavior where there's very high mortality there's very strong selection pressure for the animal to survive we're finding that one of the responses to the disease is that devils are breeding much earlier they're breeding as teenagers only four or five months after they're weaned and they're tiny little animals there it seems the devils have started to mate before they are exposed to the disease this remarkable adaptation has slowed down the spread of the cancer and has given other scientists like greg woods a chance to come up with their own solution that's my total research now understanding the immunology behind dental facial tumor disease the next step is to develop a vaccine to protect devils from getting the tumour rather than curing devils with established disease people might ask well vaccines aren't very useful in human cancers but the problem with human cancers is that we all get a different cancer but while this cancer can potentially be fought with a vaccine it will take time to develop the biggest challenges are developing a strong vaccine getting access to enough animals and tests testing enough animals in the wild it's quite it's quite an interesting challenge there's lots of questions we still have to ask with time running out for the tasmanian devil it seems these infamous brawlers have found an even more remarkable way to fight back despite our best efforts menna has discovered an even more extraordinary response to the disease so for the first 10 or more years populations were declining precipitously and we haven't seen any further population decline in those areas since 2008. we have also recorded rapid evolution in the genome now if you put all of those three things together i think we are seeing the early signs of the evolution of resistance to the disease i think we're going to see changes sooner rather than later and not only are they fighting back they are doing so incredibly quickly i've been talking about evolution for 10 years now but i was thinking maybe 20 30 years we might see some evolution of resistance in the devils and i think we're seeing it you know within eight years of local outbreak so people talk about you know we're going to find a magic bullet or a silver bullet but really the magic bullet is evolution and it's really a matter of watch this space it appears this little devil with a big attitude is doing battle with a deadly disease and some believe they may even be winning [Music] [Music] i remember quite clearly walking into a small clearing getting close to the hair and colony i looked up and i was right underneath an eagle nest we realized these eagles were nesting right amongst the herons then this just didn't seem to match with what we understood you sort of assume the eagle is nesting near the herons because they're preying on the herons most people don't know the story hello hi it's steven hey steven come on up thanks come on in as you know we have a heron colony down here below us when i moved in to an apartment next door the herons moved here and i've been watching them for 17 years their parents come every year which is just remarkable and just love to watch them arrive and they they mate and then the babies come [Music] and of course you feel sorry for these innocent little chicks they're getting torn to shreds right in front of you so yeah there's definitely some some conflicting emotions there [Music] you coming down to get some pictures of herons [Laughter] well maybe just good to see people out looking at herons and my name is rob butler and i have a phd in zoology from the university of british columbia my name is ross venisland the field i was in was behavioral ecology mm-hmm yeah i mean ross was one of my students uh it's a good question i i've worked on a lot of different birds through the years but herons definitely have a special place in my heart i guess i have this sort of weird ungainly elegance that i find attractive [Music] on the coast of bc here we have the fenini subspecies of great blue heron the subspecies numbers about four or five thousand birds and they're considered a species of special concern here in canada that's funny the neighborhood doesn't change very much since i was here this is where the old point roberts colony was be interesting to see if there's still nests in there [Music] aha here's some some remains of nests around here it looks like a whole branch had come down here that held a nest this would have been the materials that uh that the herons were using so back in the day when when this was all heron colonies this was a crazy active environment hundreds of herons the noise was unbelievable now it's just a quiet forest mostly thanks to the eagles just a few years ago these trees were home to more than a hundred heron nests that's until a group of eagles moved into the area terrorizing the birds and eating their chicks and their eggs [Music] foreign [Applause] [Music] we were pretty shocked when this place abandoned it was our biggest longest lived colony but also very happy that they resettled not too far away so uh this is a tawassen colony this is where the birds moved when they left point roberts we were quite surprised they moved in here with a level of development but even more surprising was they they moved in and surrounded the active eagle nest that was here [Music] so it couldn't be more obvious at that point the herons were the ones following the eagles around and uh yeah it's just such a surprise like why would herons be nesting so close to this eagle oh yeah yeah yeah look at that right there that picture says it all so about four out of five of the herons in the lower fraser valley are nesting around eagle nests like this the eagle is a major predator of herons so why would they nest there back in 2006 we had a really big wind storm here and i think the wind speed was essentially a hurricane force it blew the eagle nest in chilliwack out of the tree and the heron colony started to do worse the number of young that were raised in that colony dropped dramatically the following year the eagles came back built their nest and the number of young increased we knew that the herons were nesting with the eagles and we knew that they were doing better by doing so but how did this actually work [Music] eagles set up big nests and uh they're very territorial around these nests they seem to be looking up too there is an oh look there's a couple more eagles over here so that's what they picked up on and there's another one over there well any eagle that gets closer to the nest of the nesting eagle here will be chased away an analogy we came up with was the mafia protection racket the mafia is uh making life difficult for the population near them the eagle will take some of the chicks and some of the eggs but they're also offering some level of protection look at this one coming down here we're gonna get something oh look look look here there's the chase it's chasing them off the eagle has provided a safe place for them to nest by keeping all the other eagles away there it is look at him go whoa look at he's coming down down down down [Music] so the herons that are nesting near eagles are essentially sacrificing some of their young for an overall protection the herons know exactly what they're up to you've got to remember that you only have one pair of eagles around that big colony whereas if you're out away from an eagle nest you've got all the eagles with their eyes on you for the herons it's kind of the the devil you know versus the devil you don't know and in this case it's better the devil you know than the devil you don't [Music] the white-tailed sea eagle is britain's largest bird of prey for many it is the king of scotland's skies once extinct on these shores the sea eagle has now returned and made the isle of mull its home it'll always be known as the first place that they bred it was those early pioneering birds which set the scene for the return of the white toad eagle however for others their presence brings peril it must be really easy if you're all you're into his eagles and you just see eagles you glow and you blinker yourself from what happens beyond that [Music] local rspb officer dave sexton has been watching and monitoring sea eagles on the isle of maul since the early eighties today he's travelling deep into the heart of tirorin forest to visit a very special pair of eagles fingal and iona we know this pair really well the female was hatched in 1998 she's a scottish bird from north west scotland but the mail here is actually a norwegian import from 1997 so they're good mature birds now and have been raising chicks for for many years this year the pair have a hungry new mouth to feed but already there has been tragedy [Music] after losing their first chick of the season fingo and iona must now work harder than ever to raise their only surviving eaglet helping to restore the sea eagle's original population we've got 21 22 pairs at the moment it's been between 20 and 22 pairs for about the last five years there is still room here for more and we're not there yet whilst dave has seen the population improve 100 years ago it was a very different story we had systematically exterminated this bird which was once the commonest eagle across the uk and there we are we've just done it we got rid of the last one fearing that these prolific hunters would prey on sheep they were hunted leading to their untimely demise in scotland but 50 years later conservationists hatched a plan to reintroduce the native sea eagle from norway and one of those pioneering birds was fingal who like dave was eventually drawn to the magic of the isle of mull we were driving back along a sea lock and we knew the sea eagles might be around they'd been released on rum but they were beginning to explore and one or two sightings from mull and suddenly as we were driving back there was this massive bird flapping hard across quite low over the water over the sea lock and we left out the vehicle and there was a seal and it was just an incredible experience and that's what really inspired me to get involved in this project to bring sea eagles back to scotland i made a nuisance of myself ready by pestering the the guys in species protection department and i was sent on this secret mission to protect the only pair of nesting sea eagles in britain dave continues to fight to protect the sea eagles here and this year his thoughts are on the future of fingal and iona today he's heading down to their nest with a team from the rspb what we're doing is trying to ring the check of this pair the ringing process is is really important because it helps us monitor the overall population justin and lewis are now going to be measuring getting the ring on it's a british terrestrial anthology ring on one leg and a color ring with big letters on on on another leg that will be able to read hopefully from a distance the team begins a long and dangerous climb to the erie they must work fast so the family aren't disturbed for long [Music] as they reach the nest they notice the chick is unusually docile showing very little resistance then as they prepare to leave the chicken piece the remains of its last meal catches their eye when we go out to visit whitetail eagle nests we sometimes find lambs in there so we know they carry them in the question is how did they get them did they kill them did they scavenge them were there lambs still born so many questions for hill farmers and murray the sea eagle is a real source of concern ian makai and his partner claire simonetta fear for the lives of their flock as the sea eagles taste for lamb has once again brought the farmers and eagles into conflict especially it's lamenting you know that really get the problems with the seagulls and they do you know take a lot of young lambs it's an easy prey you know for anybody to turn and say no they won't touch it's sitting there it's it's easy to get at so really predominantly at that time of year they go for lambs certainly in the years i've been here i've seen just how many alarms can potentially be taken by the seagull because the peak time for eagles to feed their chicks coincides with lambing season claire and ian decided to try something different in 2014 we actually trialled an earlier lambing season so our lambs were born a lot earlier than the ones on the neighbouring farms and that actually resulted in all the local seagulls being drawn into our own area and just feeding on our lambs because that was the first lamb crop available for them as an easy food source and we had the worst slamming in our own record since we've taken on this farm so that was really an eye-opener to to the seagull and as the island's resident rspb officer it is dave who is the first to receive any complaints inevitably some of them will take a few lambs each year as well golden eagles and sea eagles they're big predators they're going to take a few lambs whilst research and studies have shown a lot of lambs that are taken are already dead or sickly in some way maybe previously injured by other birds like hooded crows that can do a huge amount of damage they're either not believed or they're thought to be biased in some way but there is a much more enlightened attitude in the public people want to see these birds they deserve to be here and we just need to find practical pragmatic solutions to helping the farmers live alongside them but now dave thinks he has found a solution luring the eagles away from sheep farms and back to their natural coastal home has really helped the local farmers and even created a new tourism industry i think what we do does help the farmers because um if you want to stop a particular predator eating one source of food give it another it certainly takes the pressure off the birds at a time when they are under pressure to feed the young obviously if they're eating fish then it's doing good for the chicks and they're not taking other things either martin kivers has been feeding these eagles for a decade by mimicking fishing boats that throw fish scraps over the side hungrily taken by opportunist eagles people will flock for miles to get a glimpse of their impressive hunting display [Music] oh [Music] but whilst the relationship between these predators and farmers is beginning to change the sea eagles of mao still face natural challenges dave's concerns are now mounting for the safety of fingo iona and their chick some really unseasonably bad weather closed in storm hector as it was known very strong winds cold and wet torrential rain the storm battered the island and nest relentlessly iona could do nothing but keep the chick dry as best she could [Music] but the next morning dave and his team could see that the inside of the mest remained eerily still our climbers went back in and very sadly found the chick had died during the storm in hindsight it was very well behaved it wasn't that feisty and it's always good if a chick puts up a bit of a fight so it was a sickly chick unfortunately and the storm the bad weather was was the final straw so a really sad end um for that pair you know you just you look at them and they just look a bit bewildered and they're looking at an empty nest [Music] um yeah it's it's heart-wrenching to watch [Music] whilst it's a sad end to this season fingo and iona will have another chance next year the isle of mull is a real sea eagle success story and now a century since their extinction opinions are beginning to change the siegel my own personal opinion is it's a big vulturously creature but it is iconic there's no doubt about that and i'm not here to say i want to see them eradicated i don't hold grudge against the eagle the eagle is an animal that's just trying to make a living if the lamb's an easier prey than the fish you can hardly blame it we would all do the same so the bird deserves no hatred or anything [Music] whilst some still see these aerial predators as a menace for many they have become an integral part of this island mall is one of the key spots for them now across scotland it'll always be known as the first place that they bred that'll never be taken away so people will always come here and the economic value of them will continue to increase i hope seagulls continue to thrive and i hope they continue to spread across scotland into their former homes the future for the sea eagle is still very much in the hands of the people who share their highland home but here on maul they are once again succeeding and even benefiting the island like never before here in a land where eagles dare eagles thrive [Music] in 2006 daniel was a 13 year old school boy living in a poor community on the edge of savo kenya's largest national park this is his story [Music] which was caused by abu falam i was left with the three siblings one sister and two brothers my dream was just becoming a pilot [Music] my name is dania zuma i live in the tower corridor around [ __ ] village and we're bothering the travel on the east and a few ranches on the west side [Music] we are five of us in our family [Music] and the two siblings who are still in school they are all depending on me [Music] my it's really hard getting a job in this village because basically it's a small village no big companies and staff so idol nurse is really really a big problem my dad was just a subsistence farmer and apart from that my dad used to burn charcoal to provide extra cash like daniel's father many here rely on illegal and risky activities to earn a living because they have few options [Music] so when daniel's father was killed by buffalo the community mourned but nobody blamed him life with your parents is really smooth not that tough as compared to when you lose your parents tragedy and poverty had conspired against daniel but he was determined to get back on his feet he wrote letters for sponsorship to pay his school face when he succeeded he kept on dreaming dreaming big my dream was just becoming a pilot that commercial pilot flying commercial aircraft but it was just a dream because with the frustration after my parents died i did that point think that one day i will become a pilot because of the foundations daniel's luck was about to change [Music] i started helping around wildlife works at their workshop [Music] wildlife works owns a sanctuary that connects two of kenya's largest national parks via an essential wildlife corridor but this corridor is also home to daniel and ten thousand others living in such close proximity conflict is inevitable seven thousand cases of human wildlife conflict in kenya each year result in the death of at least 100 people and countless more wild animals on my way helping around i met this guy by the name rob [Music] a gyrocopter pilot rob was in charge of a wildlife aerial surveillance team [Music] he took me to college and i attend my diploma in aeronautical engineering i started working at his hannah taking care of his aircraft the sanctuary between the national parks is vast it's incredibly hard to protect with only ground forces gyrocopters have become an essential tool for protecting the wildlife and helping reduce conflicts with people currently i'm helping with surveillance we got every money with a top speed three times that of an offered vehicle gyrocopters can respond rapidly to call out in remote and hard-to-reach areas having the gyrocopter airborne having eyes in the sky enables us to identify where the problems are and get our range of force in to sort those problems out as quickly as efficiently and as safely as possible when we're out flying we usually check out for poachers sometimes we get bad things like an elephant down through poaching of 13 elephants found dead in a sanctuary between september and november 2016 albert two was shot poisoned or snared i've been living in a travel corridor for all of my life but i never known the importance of wildlife until i started living with rob [Music] my passion changed all the way when i came back to wildlife learning how important wildlife is conserving it is and that's what has changed my passion to becoming a bush pilot which will make me fly around conserving wildlife every day the first time i was kind of uh scared flying because i've never flown before you know but with time flying with rob i got used to that and i loved to fly more and more [Music] and then tragedy struck again in march 2017 rob suddenly passed away robbed tried to camp it just raised the wound that was like held when i lost my parents back [Music] rob was like a dad to me he showed me lots and lots especially on the conservation part [Music] he taught me everything living with everything taught me how to fly taught me to how to sail he taught me how to drive [Music] that's how i remember yeah i'll probably never forget him all of my life in the 12 months before his death rob daniel and the surveillance team flew over 600 hours and covered nearly 60 000 kilometers the elephant population here rose by 600 over the same period i would like to be a gyropilot to keep his legacy running on [Music] [Music] king garage and traffic please advice [Music] [Music] my dream was just becoming a bush pilot conserving one life every day every moment and all of this [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: TRACKS - Travel Documentaries

Views: 53,966

Keywords: Canada, Canada Wildlife, Deserts and Rainforests, Earth's Beauty, Earth's Marvels, Fauna Exploration, Mysterious Forests, Natural Reserves Discovery, Natural Wonders Discovery, Nature Diversity Discovery, Nature Exploration, TRACKS - Travel Documentaries, Travel Tales, Unique Species Sightings, Unique Stories, Wild Habitats, Wilderness Encounters, Wildlife Encounters, Wildlife Habitats, Wildlife Protection

Id: DS05yDDhKNQ

Length: 55min 16sec (3316 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 10 2021