Natural World Season 2, Episode 6: Beneath The Keel

Plight of the Bumble-Bee

The programme is about bumble bees in the forests of New England. We follow a queen bumble bee as she emerges from hibernation to find a suitable nest site and establish a colony from the eggs she has carried over the winter. She duels with a rival queen. Honey bees, bee mites and wax moths also feature in her life story.

50 min

Salim Ali's India

Documentary which tells the story of some of the discoveries made by Indian ornitholigist Salim Ali

The Kiwai - Dugong Hunters of Daru

In their hunt for the dugong, the Kiwai people of Papua New Guinea still use magic to bewitch it and to charm their boats, whether they are powered by sail or outboard motor. The dugong, or sea cow, is the gentle creature that gave rise to the legend of the mermaid. To the Kiwai it is an important food and a central feature of their livelihood and culture. Now it is being hunted to the extent that it is a rare and endangered species.

50 min

Commandos of Conservation

Greenpeace fights in the front line of the conservation battle, where the whales or the seals are being killed, the toxic waste is being dumped, the bombs are being exploded. Their policy is non-violent direct action. They break the law and make the headlines, and in a few years they've grown from a handful of west-coast idealists into a fashionable international movement. This is the story of how it happened, told through some of their most impudent and most daring campaigns.

60 min

Long Point

Once a shooting reserve, now a rich wildlife preserve, Long Point on the north shore of Lake Erie is a testimony to the resilience of nature and to the benefits of the sport of wild fowling. In protecting their shooting, past wildfowlers also conserved the wildlife of Long Point. It is now a permanent home to rails, raccoons, toads and turtles and visited by migrating wildfowl.

50 min

Treasures of the Gulf

Pearls once brought wealth to the Arabian Gulf. Today it comes from oil that gushes from beneath the sea. The gulf's bounty of wildlife is a part of its natural riches too. Migrating birds flock to its shores and its waters conceal a stunning array of creatures: sea snakes, batfish, corals, huge shoals of jacks and blooms of jellyfish that stretch to the horizon. But for how long can these priceless treasures survive the onslaught of modern development or, worse still, the war which now threatens its shores?

50 min

Fragments of Eden

Islands which time passed by, the Seychelles appeared out of the mists of legend only 300 years ago. These tiny granite islands are fragments of a long-lost continent, and even today they retain an air of mystery and fable, for they are home to birds, trees and flowers that are found nowhere else on earth. On a palm-fringed isle giant tortoises amble in the company of rare magpie robins.... and on another, black parrots, tiger chameleons and blue pigeons live in a forest so primeval that General Gordon of Khartoum believed he had found a lost Eden.

50 min