美国国家公共电台 NPR 'Our Planet' Nature Documentary Addresses The 800-Pound Gorilla — Human Impact

 

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

"Our Planet" is the kind of nature show that's full of shots of sweeping¹, dramatic landscapes peppered with colorful animals.

AILSA CHANG, HOST:

But among the high-definition scenes of tropical reefs and lions on the hunt, there are some images you don't often see in these kinds of shows - those tropical reefs bleached² into white bonescapes. Glaciers³ crumble⁴ into arctic seas.

CORNISH: While other nature programs might make passing reference to the impact of humans, that message is at the center of "Our Planet." Here's how the narrator, David Attenborough, puts it in the opening sequence.

(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, "OUR PLANET")

DAVID ATTENBOROUGH: This series will celebrate the natural wonders that remain and reveal what we must preserve to ensure people and nature thrive.

CHANG: Our co-host Ari Shapiro spoke⁵ with the series producer of "Our Planet," Alastair Fothergill.

ARI SHAPIRO, BYLINE⁶: You've been responsible for some of the most high-profile nature documentaries of the last decade - "Planet Earth," "Blue Planet," "Frozen Planet." Tell us what made the mission of this one different.

ALASTAIR FOTHERGILL: We decided⁷ way back, actually, in 2012 the time had come to try and do a series which would be as entertaining and as accessible as series like "Planet Earth" but for the first time deal in-depth with the challenges that our planet faces. There's no doubt that, you know, it is seriously under threat. And we felt that it was a story that urgently needed telling now.

SHAPIRO: I imagine those threats are inescapable when you're filming any kind of nature documentary. Had you tried to include that narrative⁸ in some of the other shows you'd produced and been unable to?

FOTHERGILL: To be honest, yes, it was difficult in the past to get broadcasters to include environmental messaging. And even with "Our Planet," we've been very careful not just to film destruction. We've filmed the beauties, the amazing stuff that's still there because, you know, the planet is still, in many places, very healthy. And the important thing is that nature has an amazing ability to bounce back.

SHAPIRO: Can you give us an example of a time that you thought, oh, maybe that goes a little too far; we need to pull it back a little bit and not make people feel quite so bleak⁹, necessarily?

FOTHERGILL: Well, there is an absolutely extraordinary sequence of walrus¹⁰ in the Arctic Ocean.

SHAPIRO: I was going to ask about the walruses¹¹, yeah.

FOTHERGILL: We went to film what's called a haul-out, where these animals - walrus - prefer to live out on the sea ice. They don't like coming to land. But in recent years, as the sea ice in the summer has declined, they've been hauling-out. And we saw a haul-out of over 110,000 walrus.

And so desperate were they for space that some of them climbed up cliffs 100 meters up. These animals have very bad eyesight. And once they got to the top, they could hear their compatriots at sea, going back to sea. And in desperation, they leap off the cliff to their death.

SHAPIRO: It's an incredibly disturbing sequence in the second episode. I mean, to be frank, I know more than one person who watched that sequence and said, I can't continue to watch the program. Were you afraid it would have that impact?

FOTHERGILL: Of course we were. In editing it, we were very, very careful. There was a lot more of walrus falling off those cliffs than we showed, and we tried to balance it.

But, you know, climate change is happening. And there are people that deny it. And I think it's very, very important that you really make people realize that it's not something that's going to happen in 10 and 20 years. It's happening now in the natural world.

SHAPIRO: Many of the events you capture in this program occur once a year, maybe once a decade. What was it like to calendar this out as you started to make plans for what you wanted to include?

FOTHERGILL: We spent a whole year planning, talking to scientists, talking to conservationists, deciding on our stories. And then we filmed over three years. And we spend a record 3,500 days in the field. To give you an idea, that means for every final minute of the show you watch, we spent 10 days in the field.

SHAPIRO: It makes me feel bad for the moments that I reached for popcorn¹², given all the work that went into it.

(LAUGHTER)

FOTHERGILL: You know, but we were very specific. You know, although the animals don't read the script, we have a very, very organized and planned script. And we knew exactly the narrative that we wanted to tell.

SHAPIRO: Wait; so you're saying that when you decide you're going to profile this particular animal, you know you want a hunt scene, but for that animal, you want a procreation scene?

FOTHERGILL: Yes. What is very important to us is that each individual episode tell a bigger story about each individual habitat because what's very interesting is the challenges to their habitats, the threats to the habitats. And the solutions to those habitats differ depending on whether it's the open ocean, the tropical forest or the coniferous forest.

SHAPIRO: There's a lot of footage that's never been seen before in this program, from a sequence with a Siberian tiger to an Australian lake that only fills up once a decade. Is there one scene in particular that you are really proud of having captured?

FOTHERGILL: I think the Siberian tiger is a wonderful achievement. It's the first intimate images of these amazing cats in the wild. And to give you a sense of how difficult it was, over two winters, three cameramen were literally¹³ locked away inside wooden hides. They didn't come out for six weeks. Everything you need to do to survive they did inside this small box.

SHAPIRO: Really?

FOTHERGILL: And they worked for two winters. They got one, single shot of a wild Siberian tiger. At the same time, we had about 40 motion control cameras - remote cameras that are set off by the moving animal. And again, the first winter, we got nothing, really. We got lynx going past, other animals of the forest. But over that period, we began to see the movements of the tigers - how they were moving in that area.

And the second season, we got 36 precious, precious images. For me, it's a wonderfully emblematic¹⁴ sequence of a wonderfully rare, wild, iconic species of the boreal forest.

SHAPIRO: Because you have described the excruciating lengths that you went to to get some of these images, I have to ask whether there were certain images or behaviors that you really wanted to get and just weren't able to.

FOTHERGILL: You know, failure is my job. And we failed a lot. Often, to get the sequence, we'd go one season, as I described with the Siberian tiger, back and back and back. And, yes, there are things that we still have to do and still have to film, which is great because I've still got a little life in me.

SHAPIRO: On to the next one.

FOTHERGILL: On to the next project, yes.

(LAUGHTER)

SHAPIRO: The final episode of the series has, probably, the most disheartening sequence, and also the most hopeful. This is the episode about forests. The sequence in Madagascar shows these incredible animals in a forest that we learn at the end of the sequence has since been destroyed.

FOTHERGILL: The patch of forest where we were filming was destroyed by the end of our filming period, yes. It was desperately¹⁵, desperately sad. I mean, you know, Madagascar is a poor country. There's a lot of pressure. People need land. But the traditional forest - there's only 3 percent left. It's got so many precious, precious animals there. We really need to help those people to preserve the lemurs and all the wonderful forest that they live in.

SHAPIRO: And then we go to Chernobyl at the end of this episode about forests. And this is a story of hope.

FOTHERGILL: It is. Thirty-three years ago, of course, famously, the reactor¹⁶ at Chernobyl exploded. It was probably the greatest environmental disaster in living memory. And 30 years later, we will go back. And amazingly, the forest - the resilient forest - has overtaken Chernobyl. It's a green oasis¹⁷ now. And because people can't go there for very long because of the radiation - it's dangerous for us to stay there for a long period - it's been left alone.

And we found that an enormous variety of animals had returned, including the wolf. The wolf is an apex¹⁸ predator¹⁹. The wolves are only there if beneath it, there's a very, very healthy community. And we now know that there are seven times more wolves in the Chernobyl exclusion²⁰ zone than anywhere else in Eastern Europe.

And the key point - and it's very important in our series to remind people that nature is resilient. And if we give it space, if we work together to preserve it, it can bounce back. And Chernobyl is a wonderful example of that.

SHAPIRO: Alastair Fothergill is series producer of the eight-part nature documentary "Our Planet," now on Netflix. Thanks so much for joining us.

FOTHERGILL: Very welcome.

(SOUNDBITE OF DRKMND'S "BIRD CALL")

1 sweeping   

adj.范围广大的，一扫无遗的

参考例句：

• The citizens voted for sweeping reforms.公民投票支持全面的改革。
• Can you hear the wind sweeping through the branches?你能听到风掠过树枝的声音吗？

2 bleached   

漂白的，晒白的，颜色变浅的

参考例句：

• His hair was bleached by the sun . 他的头发被太阳晒得发白。
• The sun has bleached her yellow skirt. 阳光把她的黄裙子晒得褪色了。

3 glaciers   

冰河，冰川( glacier的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Glaciers gouged out valleys from the hills. 冰川把丘陵地带冲出一条条山谷。
• It has ice and snow glaciers, rainforests and beautiful mountains. 既有冰川，又有雨林和秀丽的山峰。 来自英语晨读30分（高一）

4 crumble   

vi.碎裂，崩溃；vt.弄碎，摧毁

参考例句：

• Opposition more or less crumbled away.反对势力差不多都瓦解了。
• Even if the seas go dry and rocks crumble,my will will remain firm.纵然海枯石烂，意志永不动摇。

5 spoke   

n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。

6 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

7 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

8 narrative   

n.叙述，故事；adj.叙事的，故事体的

参考例句：

• He was a writer of great narrative power.他是一位颇有记述能力的作家。
• Neither author was very strong on narrative.两个作者都不是很善于讲故事。

9 bleak   

adj.(天气)阴冷的；凄凉的；暗淡的

参考例句：

• They showed me into a bleak waiting room.他们引我来到一间阴冷的会客室。
• The company's prospects look pretty bleak.这家公司的前景异常暗淡。

10 walrus   

n.海象

参考例句：

• He is the queer old duck with the knee-length gaiters and walrus mustache.他穿着高及膝盖的皮护腿，留着海象般的八字胡，真是个古怪的老家伙。
• He seemed hardly to notice the big walrus.他几乎没有注意到那只大海象。

11 walruses   

n.海象( walrus的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Walruses have enormous appetites and hunt for food almost constantly. 海象食欲极大，几乎一直在猎取食物。 来自互联网
• Two Atlantic walruses snuggle on an ice floe near Igloolik, Nunavut, Canada. 加拿大努勒维特伊格卢利克附近，两头大西洋海象在浮冰上相互偎依。 来自互联网

12 popcorn   

n.爆米花

参考例句：

• I like to eat popcorn when I am watching TV play at home.当我在家观看电视剧时，喜欢吃爆米花。
• He still stood behind his cash register stuffing his mouth with popcorn.他仍站在收银机后，嘴里塞满了爆米花。

13 literally   

adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实

参考例句：

• He translated the passage literally.他逐字逐句地翻译这段文字。
• Sometimes she would not sit down till she was literally faint.有时候，她不走到真正要昏厥了，决不肯坐下来。

14 emblematic   

adj.象征的，可当标志的；象征性

参考例句：

• The violence is emblematic of what is happening in our inner cities. 这种暴力行为正标示了我们市中心贫民区的状况。
• Whiteness is emblematic of purity. 白色是纯洁的象征。 来自辞典例句

15 desperately   

adv.极度渴望地，绝望地，孤注一掷地

参考例句：

• He was desperately seeking a way to see her again.他正拼命想办法再见她一面。
• He longed desperately to be back at home.他非常渴望回家。

16 reactor   

n.反应器；反应堆

参考例句：

• The atomic reactor generates enormous amounts of thermal energy.原子反应堆发出大量的热能。
• Inside the reactor the large molecules are cracked into smaller molecules.在反应堆里，大分子裂变为小分子。

17 oasis   

n.（沙漠中的）绿洲，宜人的地方

参考例句：

• They stopped for the night at an oasis.他们在沙漠中的绿洲停下来过夜。
• The town was an oasis of prosperity in a desert of poverty.该镇是贫穷荒漠中的一块繁荣的“绿洲”。

18 apex   

n.顶点，最高点

参考例句：

• He reached the apex of power in the early 1930s.他在三十年代初达到了权力的顶峰。
• His election to the presidency was the apex of his career.当选总统是他一生事业的顶峰。

19 predator   

n.捕食其它动物的动物；捕食者

参考例句：

• The final part of this chapter was devoted to a brief summary of predator species.本章最后部分简要总结了食肉动物。
• Komodo dragon is the largest living lizard and a fearsome predator.科摩多龙是目前存在的最大蜥蜴，它是一种令人恐惧的捕食性动物。

20 exclusion   

n.拒绝，排除，排斥，远足，远途旅行

参考例句：

• Don't revise a few topics to the exclusion of all others.不要修改少数论题以致排除所有其他的。
• He plays golf to the exclusion of all other sports.他专打高尔夫球，其他运动一概不参加。