Shark Queens, part of #Sharkfest, premieres Tuesday 26th July at 9pm on National Geographic WILD UK!
This enormous female tiger shark swoops in to take the bait in Fuvahmulah, Maldives… Be sure to tune into the UK premiere of our long awaited show TONIGHT! It’s been quite a journey for me and @benwylson and we’re super excited to finally be airing in the UK. Massive thanks to all the team, too many to list - it’s been an enormous pleasure working with you all!
And… here’s a taster to whet the appetite: https://youtu.be/mQRgDYwBuXw
The 4th episode of our #NotAPet is live on Waterbear! If you haven’t already, please sign up to @waterbearnetwork and watch this important film on the trade in wild reptiles and amphibians. These animals form up to half of illegally traded wildlife. In this episode we identify the loopholes in international law that enable this to practise to continue. It was a great pleasure to interview speakers from @ifawglobal who explain how a paradigm shift in the way we trade animals is necessary for both humanity and our planet to thrive.
“When you see a tiger in the wild, it changes you forever”, these are the opening words of our latest episode of Not A Pet, from conservationist and author @bindraprerna . Last March I spent a week looking for tigers in the jungle of Nepal, and this was the fleeting moment when I saw my first wild tiger. It’s not the most amazing of pictures, but the moment will certainly stay with me for a lifetime. The fact that there are more of these most magnificent of animals in captivity in the US alone than are found in the wild is shocking, particularly because few of these tigers hold any conservation value. These “Tiger King” animals are bred purely to rake in the dollars. Of all the #NotAPet series, this film had the most information to cover, and I felt very fortunate to have been able to tell this story with such a fantastic cast of tiger experts including @stevewinterphoto@traffic_wltrade@eiaenvironment@ifawglobal@four_paws_international
Not A Pet - Episode 2 is now live on Waterbear.com! This film is all about the trade in pet primates, which is still happening today (even in places like the UK). This film is perhaps the most difficult to watch for me, for the obvious reason that these animals are so like us. As Alison Cronin from Monkey World says “you see a reflection of yourself”. Please watch, share and sign the petition!
A passion project that I have been working on with @thebigsky_productions and @trianglemonday since 2018 finally launches today on @waterbearnetwork !This 5-part original documentary series sheds a light on the illegal trade in exotic pets, and the huge impact it is having on wild animals around the world. Starting with Cheetahs, each week a new episode will be released focusing next on Primates, then Tigers, Reptiles & Amphibians and finally Birds.
Episode 1, Cheetahs, is now available the amazing (and free!) WaterBear Network. Be the first to watch and sign the petition to support new legislation to help end this trade.
It's been a great pleasure working on this project with an incredible team, and meeting so many inspirational people. A huge thanks to everyone who has been involved, and particularly to Andrea Walji aka @trianglemonday for making it happen!
#NotAPet
A Halloween themed image from a jungle walk in Nepal. This humble spider is a really rather remarkable creature when you think about it...We had the pleasure of working with #bbcearthkids to write and produce a series called Wild Bites for their Youtube channel. Search ‘Wild Bites Spiders’ on YouTube to see the episode penned by @benwylson and share it with the toddlers in your life🕷#spiders #spidersofinstagram
This male Oriental Pied Hornbill was loving life as it delicately plucked fruit with it’s massive bill then, with a flick, deftly tossed it right down it’s gullet. So sad that many hornbill species are becoming rarer and rarer as people kill them for the casques on their bills which they carve as ornaments. Luckily around #chitwannationalpark we saw plenty, including some massive Great Hornbills. These gigantic birds are the size of a turkey, and their swooshing wings sound like a pterodactyl when they fly over. I was too rapt and in awe of them to even think to take a photo #hornbill #tigertops #birdsofnepal #orientalpiedhornbill
Where did I get to? Oh, yes back in March, it was a trip down memory lane visiting #tigertops #TharuLodge and seeing our old friends from making the documentary ‘Mahout - The Great Elephant Walk’ back in 2012. I swear the elephants remembered us, even if the mahouts didn’t! Spending 4 weeks walking, camping and journeying with elephants across Nepal 8 years ago now was certainly one of the most memorable experiences of my life. To have a film to chronicle the whole experience too means the memories are that much clearer. Excited that it’s going to be on the new @waterbearnetwork platform, streaming soon...
I didn’t want to get sucked into social media over lockdown, but now that it’s October I think that excuse has worn a bit thin... so i’m gonna pick up where I left off in mid-March (when I narrowly managed to get back to the UK from Nepal and the world was in Covid free-fall). After an epic two weeks in the jungle there, it was hard to believe just how much things had escalated. Turns out it was quite an interesting time to have almost no contact with the outside world. Blissful ignorance was the name of the game, weighing up returning to inevitable lockdown in London vs searching for tigers in the jungles of Nepal. Me and @thetravelsofjd opted for the latter for as long as we could hold out... #langurmonkey #bardiyanationalpark #precovid19
Today marks 10 years since the The Big Sky was born, which means that the Earth has rotated entirely around the sun precisely 10 times, Mercury has done it 40 times, Venus 17, and Jupiter is over four fifths of it's way round, on one long, slow arc. Not to get too existential about it, but it's also been over a quarter of my life... so I'd like to say a stellar thank you to everyone who's been involved and particularly to the lifelong friends we've made along the way, which has made it all the more rewarding.
Hello instagram. It’s been a while. Did I miss anything? Oh good. Now, how does this thing work again? Oh, yes I remember... Here is a picture. This one is a very large mountain as seen from a very little plane. I hope you like it.
