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A place where wild meets weird - and nothing is quite what it seems. Presenter Peter Elliott unravels the ancient past of New Zealand revealing astonishing new facts about the origins of our iconic animals. Be prepared to be shocked.
Life in the ocean is a constant battle to eat but not get eaten, to find a mate, to pass on your genes to the next generation...to survive.
Pacific Islands range from coral atolls and smoking volcanoes to pieces of a lost continent. Discover the wildest stories of adaptation and survival on these Islands of Life.
At the Dunedin Wildlife Hospital, Dr Lisa needs to urgently assess a pair of unwell kākāpō, and Lizzie must convince a traumatised shag that it can swim. Many other animals are reaching the end of their rescue journeys as the southern summer draws to a close. The yellow-eyed penguin chicks brought in after an oceanic famine are finally old enough to be released into the wild. So too the four kākā chicks that were hand-reared by the Wildlife Hospital. The rascally parrots make an epic journey to the dazzling wilderness of Abel Tasman National Park, where a bright future awaits.
At Dunedin’s new Wildlife Hospital, the team have been thrown a curve ball! Some yellow-eyed penguins have tested positive for avian malaria, and what’s more terrifying is they’re not alone. The team must jump into action to prevent an all-out epidemic. But the penguins aren’t their only patients. At two months old, the kākā chicks have become quite the handful, and need a new home quickly! In the quarantine wing, the population of kākāpō chicks is steadily increasing, but four new-borns have developed a potentially deadly disease. Lisa and her team will have some long nights ahead of them to save these precious babies.
It’s mid-summer in Dunedin, and the city’s wildlife rescuers are in a flap. Eight newly-hatched kākāpō chicks have landed at the Wildlife Hospital, requiring Dr Lisa’s expert care. Lizzie and Emily need to deal with a very angry Fiordland crested penguin (who they soon nickname ‘Purple Rage’). And nurse Gina can’t help but laugh at the antics of the naughty kākā foursome. Out on the Otago Peninsula, the search for a mother sea lion and her pup goes to the dogs, literally, while a penguin researcher lives out her worst nightmare, and Purple Rage goes to rehab at Penguin Place.
Its early summer in southern New Zealand, and the Dunedin Wildlife Hospital has been inundated with wave after wave of starving penguin chicks. Dr Lisa Argilla and her team pull out all stops to save the hungry youngsters. Add to this a clutch of endangered kākā parrot chicks that need ‘round-the-clock care, and a kiwi that’s refusing to eat; the results are bedlam. The hospital is being stretched to its limits. Meanwhile, out on the Otago coast, Pete investigates the arrival of a rare leopard seal, and Rosalie helps get an ex-hospital patient back into the wild.
The new Dunedin Wildlife Hospital provides a second chance for injured native animals. Every day, Dr Lisa Argilla and her small team of wildlife vets give their all to save our precious fauna – from kererū pigeons with internal injuries caused by flying into windows, to a yellow-eyed penguin chomped on by a shark. Not all the arrivals survive their trauma, but thanks to the dedication of Lisa’s team and a network of local wildlife carers, most are successfully rehabilitated and finally released back into the wild. In an era where every animal counts, these are the precious moments that wildlife rescuers live for.
South America’s Weirdest Animals is a 3-part series about South America’s wildest, weirdest and the most diverse animal life – from northern reaches of Colombia to the southern tip of Argentina and Chile.
South America’s Weirdest Animals is a 3-part series about South America’s wildest, weirdest and the most diverse animal life – from northern reaches of Colombia to the southern tip of Argentina and Chile.
Sue Neureuter grew up visiting the Noises Islands which have been in her family since the 1930s. Having witnessed the decline in marine life and seabirds in the Hauraki Gulf first-hand she recalls her parents' stories. “When Mum first got to the Noises which was the late fifties, Dad used to make her row out and he’d put his rugby jersey on and plop over the side and pick crayfish up and dump them around her feet.” This personal account is the first of a New Zealand Geographic-produced web-series—made in association with Live Ocean and Pew Charitable Trusts—that examines the former abundance of the Hauraki Gulf through the memories of those who can still remember these Songs of the Sea.
In the cold, steep world of the fiords, tannins block out sunlight to the world below. The fiords are cold and inhospitable in winter, when they receive little light and freeze over at their extremes. In this unforgiving world there are no second chances
In the Bay of Plenty, New Zealand’s most active volcano fills the sky with plumes of white cloud. Sterile and inhospitable, the forces that built White Island influence the seas around it.
New Zealand’s Poor Knights Islands is considered one of the world’s top dive sites and for good reason, with a rich collection of extraordinary characters and bizarre behaviors, including a unique congregation of stingrays and sex-changing Sandagers Wrasse.
A mysterious and beautiful life form, the Pacific’s coral reefs are challenging the very definition of what makes a species.
Ecuador’s Andes are mountains of paradox, where tropical species live alongside ice age relics in an unpredictable alpine desert.
In 2021, Better Ancestors produced 50 stories profiling people and organisations doing their bit to find solutions to some of the world's most pressing environmental issues. So what did they learn through that process? As executive producer Warren Begley says: "If individually and collectively we act as long-term thinkers, as if we wanted to be regarded as a better ancestor, then we will find the answers together." betterancestors.org
The Ngā Mōtū Marine Reserve Society was set up in 1997 to support a network of small marine reserves on the Taranaki coast - Parininihi in the north, and Tapuae near New Plymouth. The society is made up of locals who are interested in the study and preservation of local coastal and marine biodiversity and their efforts to protect kororā (little blue penguin) have helped us understand what we can do to protect other taonga species in Aotearoa. betterancestors.org
After Sir Peter Blake's death, The Blake Trust was set up to continue his work educating people about the state of our oceans and getting them to do more to protect the marine environment. NZVR, a partnership between Blake and New Zealand Geographic, does just that by bringing the ocean to our country's classrooms. It uses virtual reality to show rangatahi what it's like under the surface, introducing them to issues like over-fishing and pollution and, ideally, inspiring them to take action. As Blake's Alice Ward-Allen says: "Often they ask us stuff that I have never thought of. Kids just think in such different ways. The reactions we get every day are completely different. The questions we get are always different as well. They're the next generation, the ones who are going to have to step up and take care of our environment." www.betterancestors.org
Untangled Landscapes started off working with domestic jungles, transforming them into well-manicured ornamental spaces. None of what they did was regenerative, however, and eventually the weeds would return. Since then, their approach has evolved and it's more about untangling people from the need to use chemicals and industrial materials in their gardens. They have stopped using poisons and weed mats - in part because they just don't work very well - and have instead started using natural principles and techniques borrowed from regenerative agriculture. As Matt Bates Cummings says: "Too often we see a symptom of something and we go 'I can't have that. I need to stop this.' And then you stop the regenerative process. We need to let things play out a lot more. It needs a bit of trust. You need to trust the process and watch it and observe it until we understand it completely." www.betterancestors.org
Dave Lowe's journey with the atmosphere began in 1970 as a 23-year-old physics graduate, where he made the first measurements of carbon dioxide levels in New Zealand. The data he collected at Baring Head became an important part of David Keeling's research into the seasonal changes of carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere - and, due to the steadily increasing levels he charted over the years, an inescapable record of what humans were doing to the planet. "I think everyone's aware now that the climate is changing very rapidly, but this is a horror I've had to live with for over 50 years," Lowe says. So can we turn the tide? "The thing that Covid-19 has taught us was that when there's an existential threat that's in your face, human beings can collectively get up and do some remarkable things. And in the same way, human beings can get to grips with global heating and dramatically reduce carbon emissions. We know how to do this." www.betterancestors.org
What was once a mess of mud after being chomped and stomped by cattle is now teeming with tūī after flax and cabbage trees were planted on the land more than ten years ago and pest control was undertaken. "The wetland has returned to its original function of being the kidneys of the land," says Dean Baigent-Mercer. "It slows down water during floods and cleans the water as it goes through." www.betterancestors.org
Forest & Bird's annual campaign to give a voice to New Zealand's native birds* has grown from a small-scale promotion to a national obsession. Led by teams of volunteers who employ creative - and occasionally fraudulent - methods to drum up votes for their chosen bird, the 'country's most anticipated election' is fun and engaging, but it also aims to draw attention to the serious plight of many of our most-loved birds. As Forest & Bird's Lissy Fehnker-Heather says: "They disperse seed, they pollinate our native trees, they recycle nutrients and because humans are interconnected with nature they're part of our extended family. It's really important that lots of people are fighting for nature." *Controversially, in 2021, the long-tailed bat / pekapeka-tou-roa was also added to the list.
In California, the Sutro Stewards blend conservation, recreation and the concept of stewardship in an intense urban environment. By mobilising volunteers to build trails, remove invasive species, and grow and establish native plants, a severely degraded ecosystem is being restored. "When you restore the plant communities, you're restoring the base of the foodchain that other animals can participate in. It all starts with the plants," says Ildiko Polony, the director of Sutro Stewards. The story of the area's restoration provides hope that when we make the choice to give our natural spaces more love, we can reverse some of the damage we've done to them. www.betterancestors.org
The Toroa or Royal Albatross is the world’s largest flying bird - and an endangered species native to New Zealand. When one of the majestic birds washed up on the East Coast in obvious distress last year, the family that discovered it took it to the vet, but the three-year-old bird died a few days later. It had swallowed a 500ml plastic drink bottle, which it probably mistook for a squid. Nine out of ten seabirds have eaten plastic and eight million metric tonnes of plastic make it into the ocean every year. So is there anything that can be done to stop the problem? www.betterancestors.org
The health of the soil plays a crucial role in water quality, food quality and carbon sequestration but the pressures placed on it from industrial agriculture and excessive fertiliser use means it's currently not in the best shape. There are some farmers who see a return to nature as the smartest approach, however, both to create a more efficient business and to reduce their impacts on the environment. As Nicole Masters of Integrity Soils says, if we want to feed the world and still have a habitable planet, the only way to do it is through regenerative agriculture. www.betterancestors.org
Singapore’s Marina Bay Sands is one of the world’s most complicated construction projects.
What do you get if you take sixty thousand tons of steel, 260,000 cubic meters of concrete, 2000 dedicated Chinese workers and the best design brains in the business? The Shanghai World Financial Center (SWFC).
Over the centuries China has produced some of the world's greatest engineering feats from The Great Wall to The Forbidden City. The Deep Water Port at Yangshan is on track to becoming China's latest record breaking construction feat as the biggest deep water port ever built.
Faced with the perils of permafrost and the threat of earthquakes a team of engineers race to build a railway across the roof of the world at extreme altitude.
In 2021, Better Ancestors produced 50 stories profiling people and organisations doing their bit to find solutions to some of the world's most pressing environmental issues. So what did they learn through that process? As executive producer Warren Begley says: "If individually and collectively we act as long-term thinkers, as if we wanted to be regarded as a better ancestor, then we will find the answers together." betterancestors.org
The Ngā Mōtū Marine Reserve Society was set up in 1997 to support a network of small marine reserves on the Taranaki coast - Parininihi in the north, and Tapuae near New Plymouth. The society is made up of locals who are interested in the study and preservation of local coastal and marine biodiversity and their efforts to protect kororā (little blue penguin) have helped us understand what we can do to protect other taonga species in Aotearoa. betterancestors.org
After Sir Peter Blake's death, The Blake Trust was set up to continue his work educating people about the state of our oceans and getting them to do more to protect the marine environment. NZVR, a partnership between Blake and New Zealand Geographic, does just that by bringing the ocean to our country's classrooms. It uses virtual reality to show rangatahi what it's like under the surface, introducing them to issues like over-fishing and pollution and, ideally, inspiring them to take action. As Blake's Alice Ward-Allen says: "Often they ask us stuff that I have never thought of. Kids just think in such different ways. The reactions we get every day are completely different. The questions we get are always different as well. They're the next generation, the ones who are going to have to step up and take care of our environment." www.betterancestors.org
Untangled Landscapes started off working with domestic jungles, transforming them into well-manicured ornamental spaces. None of what they did was regenerative, however, and eventually the weeds would return. Since then, their approach has evolved and it's more about untangling people from the need to use chemicals and industrial materials in their gardens. They have stopped using poisons and weed mats - in part because they just don't work very well - and have instead started using natural principles and techniques borrowed from regenerative agriculture. As Matt Bates Cummings says: "Too often we see a symptom of something and we go 'I can't have that. I need to stop this.' And then you stop the regenerative process. We need to let things play out a lot more. It needs a bit of trust. You need to trust the process and watch it and observe it until we understand it completely." www.betterancestors.org
Dave Lowe's journey with the atmosphere began in 1970 as a 23-year-old physics graduate, where he made the first measurements of carbon dioxide levels in New Zealand. The data he collected at Baring Head became an important part of David Keeling's research into the seasonal changes of carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere - and, due to the steadily increasing levels he charted over the years, an inescapable record of what humans were doing to the planet. "I think everyone's aware now that the climate is changing very rapidly, but this is a horror I've had to live with for over 50 years," Lowe says. So can we turn the tide? "The thing that Covid-19 has taught us was that when there's an existential threat that's in your face, human beings can collectively get up and do some remarkable things. And in the same way, human beings can get to grips with global heating and dramatically reduce carbon emissions. We know how to do this." www.betterancestors.org
Pioneer divers Keith and Ailsa Lewis reflect on a lifetime of exploration in the Hauraki Gulf, the abundance of crayfish and their hopes for the future.
Laly Haddon and daughter Olivia grew up on the pearly sands of their turangawaewae at Pakiri, and have witnessed radical change.
Episode Three: Revolutions tells the stories of the objects and events generated by the Silk Road that helped to inspire revolutions. Paper-making spread from China throughout Asia and beyond. After the invention of the first printing press in 1440, millions of Europeans were reading printed content in multiple languages. Paper and the printing press democratised knowledge. Another world-changing implication of east-west trade was triggered by the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople, which blocked European access to the Silk Road. Christopher Columbus searched for another route to Asia by sailing west across the Atlantic and instead landed in the Americas. Jesuit missionaries in China forged close bonds with Chinese intellectuals and introduced Chinese civilization to Europe. Gunpowder transformed mining and helped to make New York a great city.
Light From Darkness explores how deathly disease and new life alike travelled along the Silk Road to change the world. Journey through time, from the decimation of the Black Death to a grain that helped to overhaul agriculture. When the Black Death reached Europe, it spread about 5 miles per day. In a surprising twist, the plague triggered positive change for some Europeans. When the lethal disease wiped out much of Europe’s work force, the nobility were forced to compete for surviving workers by offering higher compensation. A middle class was born. Explore the important highs and lows of bio-migration during the history of the Silk Road. This episode investigates the way living things, ranging from millet to pathogenic liver fluke, reached Europe – with dramatic consequences.
War explores how the Silk Road influenced conflict, from cavalry warfare to gunpowder. The series opens 2000 years ago, when the Roman Empire seemed unstoppable. However, the Battle of Carrhae saw one of Rome’s worst military defeats when the Parthians used cavalry tactics to their advantage. The style of cavalry warfare developed by Central Asian horse archers would later dominate warfare, made possible by several innovations; the recurved composite bow, socketed bronze arrowheads and a psychological shift towards cohesive groups of soldiers under military command. It was also around this time that the Roman Empire began to covet Chinese silk. Long distance trade between the peoples of Eurasia was nothing new; for thousands of years, similar relations had been impacting societies.
As archaeologists uncover ancient Peruvian tombs they piece together the mysterious lives and savage deaths of one of America’s most brilliant civilisations, the Moche.
Joseph Merrick, the Elephant Man, was the most shockingly disfigured person in history. This compelling detective story uses forensic and genetic science to provide insights never before revealed about his tragic condition, and modern imaging techniques to reconstruct the face of the man beneath the deformities.
From religious ceremony to myths and horror movies, blood is the most potent of human symbols. Whether it is being sought by a hungry vampire or used in a modern hospital, blood flows in a rich red torrent through both medical and mythical history. We travel back in time to examine the history of this vital fluid.
Through the eyes of two new recruits, we go behind the lines of the People’s Liberation Army in China to experience what it takes to become a member of Hong Kong’s defence force.
Pregnancy and childbirth make up an area of medicine that has suffered greatly from social, medical, religious and historical whims and misconceptions. This episode takes viewers on a journey through medical history from the ancient Egyptians, who linked fertility with the flooding of the Nile, to the dark ages when midwives were seen as witches and burned at the stake.
A place where wild meets weird - and nothing is quite what it seems. Presenter Peter Elliott unravels the ancient past of New Zealand revealing astonishing new facts about the origins of our iconic animals. Be prepared to be shocked.
Life in the ocean is a constant battle to eat but not get eaten, to find a mate, to pass on your genes to the next generation...to survive.
At the Dunedin Wildlife Hospital, Dr Lisa needs to urgently assess a pair of unwell kākāpō, and Lizzie must convince a traumatised shag that it can swim. Many other animals are reaching the end of their rescue journeys as the southern summer draws to a close. The yellow-eyed penguin chicks brought in after an oceanic famine are finally old enough to be released into the wild. So too the four kākā chicks that were hand-reared by the Wildlife Hospital. The rascally parrots make an epic journey to the dazzling wilderness of Abel Tasman National Park, where a bright future awaits.
At Dunedin’s new Wildlife Hospital, the team have been thrown a curve ball! Some yellow-eyed penguins have tested positive for avian malaria, and what’s more terrifying is they’re not alone. The team must jump into action to prevent an all-out epidemic. But the penguins aren’t their only patients. At two months old, the kākā chicks have become quite the handful, and need a new home quickly! In the quarantine wing, the population of kākāpō chicks is steadily increasing, but four new-borns have developed a potentially deadly disease. Lisa and her team will have some long nights ahead of them to save these precious babies.
It’s mid-summer in Dunedin, and the city’s wildlife rescuers are in a flap. Eight newly-hatched kākāpō chicks have landed at the Wildlife Hospital, requiring Dr Lisa’s expert care. Lizzie and Emily need to deal with a very angry Fiordland crested penguin (who they soon nickname ‘Purple Rage’). And nurse Gina can’t help but laugh at the antics of the naughty kākā foursome. Out on the Otago Peninsula, the search for a mother sea lion and her pup goes to the dogs, literally, while a penguin researcher lives out her worst nightmare, and Purple Rage goes to rehab at Penguin Place.
Its early summer in southern New Zealand, and the Dunedin Wildlife Hospital has been inundated with wave after wave of starving penguin chicks. Dr Lisa Argilla and her team pull out all stops to save the hungry youngsters. Add to this a clutch of endangered kākā parrot chicks that need ‘round-the-clock care, and a kiwi that’s refusing to eat; the results are bedlam. The hospital is being stretched to its limits. Meanwhile, out on the Otago coast, Pete investigates the arrival of a rare leopard seal, and Rosalie helps get an ex-hospital patient back into the wild.
The new Dunedin Wildlife Hospital provides a second chance for injured native animals. Every day, Dr Lisa Argilla and her small team of wildlife vets give their all to save our precious fauna – from kererū pigeons with internal injuries caused by flying into windows, to a yellow-eyed penguin chomped on by a shark. Not all the arrivals survive their trauma, but thanks to the dedication of Lisa’s team and a network of local wildlife carers, most are successfully rehabilitated and finally released back into the wild. In an era where every animal counts, these are the precious moments that wildlife rescuers live for.
South America’s Weirdest Animals is a 3-part series about South America’s wildest, weirdest and the most diverse animal life – from northern reaches of Colombia to the southern tip of Argentina and Chile.
South America’s Weirdest Animals is a 3-part series about South America’s wildest, weirdest and the most diverse animal life – from northern reaches of Colombia to the southern tip of Argentina and Chile.
South America’s Weirdest Animals is a 3-part series about South America’s wildest, weirdest and the most diverse animal life – from northern reaches of Colombia to the southern tip of Argentina and Chile.
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