Lost Land of the Jaguar (2008) s01e03 Episode Script

Guyana, South America.
A land covered in rainforest that's unexplored and under threat.
If we're concerned about species lost, we should be concerned about keeping the forests intact.
For the last three weeks, an international team of scientists and film-makers has been cataloguing the animals that hide in this wilderness.
It's one of the most spectacular places on the planet.
They're discovering it's one of the world's richest and most pristine rainforests.
(Fantastic) The diversity must be absolutely incredible.
It's hard to think that this could disappear.
It really needs to be preserved.
Now the team has split up on different missions.
Gordon and George are travelling to the headwaters of a remote river where the animals are rumoured to show little fear of man.
Oh, wow! They could really mess this area up in a very short space of time, and that's terrifying.
Justine is in search of one of the planet's strangest animals.
And the climbing team is attempting the first ascent of a remote mountain.
I don't like this.
Oh, God! Steve Backshall is finding it tough.
Last night, they camped 115 metres off the ground, suspended in space.
I'm starting to think whether I really am capable of this, whether it really is something I should be trying to do.
Guyana, the size of Great Britain.
It's one of the few tropical countries where most of the rainforest is still intact.
Just over the border in Venezuela, the trees meet an extraordinary range of table top mountains.
The climbing team spent the night perched high on this rock face.
Getting out of bed on the wrong side here is not an option.
Hello, mate.
Bit scary.
This would have to be one of the most glorious places I've ever woken up.
The view's extraordinary - you can see all the way to Brazil.
There are wisps of cloud below us, and the light is beautiful.
The summits of these mountains have been isolated for tens of millions of years.
They're a lost kingdom of strange animals and plants.
No-one has ever climbed Mount Upuigma before.
If they reach the top, they hope to discover new species.
I hope that we make a lot more progress than we did yesterday - we were very slow yesterday.
The less time we can spend today, the more time we have on top to go finding animals, and that's what we're here for.
Steve's an accomplished climber, but to keep up with his world class team, he's having to raise his game.
Steve, just above the belay, on the right, there is a loose boulder, a really dangerous, large boulder, right above Ivan.
Whatever you do, don't touch it.
Over.
I've got this great big flake here .
.
which is ready to go.
It's the size of a fridge freezer.
If it came off Oh, God, I don't want to think about what would happen if it came off.
Shattered boulders far below lie silent witness to the unreliable rock face.
How the hell am I going to get round that? Oh, God Oh, God, that's loose, too.
Oh, shoot.
Take in, John! (Please don't go, please don't go, please don't go) Oh, Jeez! Oh, I can honestly say that's one of the scariest things I've ever done.
The thing about it, Steve, this is not a good position to be either, so On you come, boyo.
Cameraman Keith is also in a precarious position.
Are you on something loose too? I'm not on anything, that's the thing.
All right Oh, God! (I don't like this) Over the border stretches the vast jungle of Guyana.
The country wants to keep its forests intact.
But it's a poor nation, and timber raises much-needed cash.
Team members Gordon Buchanan and George McGavin are heading to an area that is today remote, but could soon be opened up for logging.
Their destination, the headwaters of the remote river Rewa.
Ahead of them, mile after mile of ferocious rapids.
Wow Well, that's quite fast.
It is tough, just getting your head round this concept of using the river as a means of getting around.
And then suddenly, you hit this big barrier, and if we want to go on, we've got to do some heavy grafting to get over.
The wildlife of the upper reaches is protected by these treacherous falls.
The few fishermen that have ventured past have returned with stories of animals that show little fear of man.
This is the point where you work out exactly what you need and what you don't need.
We've got three boats, three engines, all the fuel, all the food, all the kit It's a lot of stuff a lot of stuff.
They're not the only ones trying to climb the cascades.
There are literally tens of thousands of small fish here And they're all heading - this is a holding area - they're all heading up this tiny crack here, it's the only bit on the falls which they can actually leap up I've never seen anything like it.
Well, you wouldn't starve here! Wow Look at that! That is just unreal.
Poor things, they're just absolutely pooped.
George and Gordon are faring little better.
Their boat's being dragged back against the current.
If it flips, they'll lose their kit.
The team battle to regain control.
Somehow, they manage to hold on.
It was very deep there - really deep.
You'd be amazed at how strong it was.
You think you're in control, then suddenly, the current just takes the boat Pphwoof! Yeah, you really have to be careful out there.
There are three sets of falls.
Every item of kit must be hauled over land.
The support team consists of an ex-military medic .
.
one cook five boat drivers and a jungle guide.
Who's got a machete? This is exactly similar to what WE have been doing, actually.
Carrying heavy loads of food and boats up and down the jungle.
This is very similar.
Some of the smaller worker ants are hitching a ride.
Because there are small flies, who fly over the swarm here, and they actually try to lay their eggs in the heads of the ants who are holding a load.
And so what's involved is this very smart trick where the very smaller workers actually sit on the leaf load and fend off the flies as they come in, so it's a really smart trick.
And if you see an ant which has had a fly egg in its head, the fly egg hatches and grows inside the head, and eventually, the ant's head just falls off - just drops on the ground and rolls away, and a fly hatches out of it.
That's the last of the kit.
So only three boats now.
And we're done in more ways than one.
It's the hottest part of the day, and the worst job is still to come.
Dehydration and exhaustion are a real danger.
Steve has climbed some of the world's highest mountains, but this first ascent of Mount Upuigma is pushing his technical skill and stamina to the limit.
Oh, God That is the move.
Got no foothold Oh, no! You all right, Steve? Just came off Sorry, John.
Can you get on again? Ha ha(!) It's impossible for him to climb up the rope with his bare hands.
For the moment, he's well and truly stuck .
.
250 metres up.
On three One, two They've been dragging kit through the forest for eight hours - they've saved the worst until last.
It's a good one.
Here's the top.
Steady, steady, steady Wait, wait, wait, wait Whoa, whoa, whoa.
At last They've made it! Yay! Reaching paradise was never going to be easy.
Straight away, this river seems rich in wildlife.
Was that what I thought it was? A giant otter.
Yeah, yeah, right there.
Down it comes, lovely.
Look There they are! Oh, fantastic.
Look, there's three of them! Giant otters make a beeline for the water to check out the strangers.
So what, we're only two hours on the Rewa, we're already seeing big, classy animals.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
This is really unspoilt.
What a thrill to be what, 15 feet from a giant otter.
None of the animals seem concerned about the newcomers.
Macaws.
That's the first time I've seen them in full colour in the sun, because they're always flying overhead, so all you see is a dark shape.
If you don't actually see them in the sun, you don't get that fantastic blue and gold.
They are stunning Really beautiful.
Wingspan about that about that, Gordon? Yeah, yeah.
They're big.
Big birds.
They're a parrot parrot species, and it's the one that pirates most frequently have on their shoulders in cartoons.
Arrr, Gordon lad, ha! They don't speak.
Since George and Gordon visited this area, plans have been announced to log some of the trees in the forest.
The future of the wildlife is now uncertain.
Have you got it, Gordon? They could be the last biologists to record the animals in the forest's pristine state.
As they journey deeper, they hope to find some of Guyana's most impressive creatures - powerful eagles, big cats, giant snakes.
Now I'm in a real quandary.
Steve is still dangling 250 metres up in thin air.
The team is preparing to get him back on the rock face.
He's handed a device to help him climb back up the rope.
OK, here it comes.
Mind your hands as well, take your hands away from the blue hook.
Mind your head.
Here she comes.
How does that work? Right, what you do is you open take it off.
Lift the red up a little bit.
Pull it like you're prising it apart.
That's it.
Then spin it, clip it round the rope.
Right, does that work? It does.
Thank God for you! OK Steve's troubles aren't over yet.
The safety rope is the team's lifeline.
They must avoid it snagging on the sharp rocks.
The rope's rubbing really, really badly above me.
Ooh! That's going to ping.
I'm sorry, Keith, I might swing into you if that happens.
No problem.
I'm well anchored.
You're clear now, mate.
Everything's cool.
Well done.
They can't afford another setback.
The more time they spend climbing, the less time they'll have to explore on top.
But there's no guarantee they'll even make it.
270 miles to the south-east, forest gives way to natural grasslands.
Here, jungle wildlife shares space with the cattle from a few remote ranches.
Camerawoman Justine Evans is on her mission to find the creatures which live here.
Look at that! Beautiful.
We've got marsh around here.
Some of it's quite deep.
The horses can cross it really easily, but for us it's a real pain, wading through all this water all the time.
It's such a great way to get about.
She's heading to the shade of the forested islands that pepper the landscape.
Trying to find a way through this so I can get to the top to see if I can get a view of some howler monkeys that are supposed to be up here.
Lots of gnawing, signs of gnawing going on here.
You can see up here That looks really like monkey damage to me.
I don't know about howlers.
Maybe something like squirrel monkeys.
Well, that's a good sign.
Definitely monkeys around here.
It looks quite fresh, this, as well.
After an hour of searching, she discovers the hideout of a colony of bats that feed only on blood - vampires.
Hmm! They've got their echo-locating They've got their leaf noses and big ears.
They're vampire bats at the back.
Oh Wow! They are the stuff of nightmares, aren't they? Vampire bats are perfectly designed to feed on blood.
Razor-sharp teeth pierce the skin, and two channels under the tongue help draw it up.
Whoa! I don't like the idea of falling asleep out on the savannah and having one of those crawling up onto me and licking my blood.
You can see where they've been defecating down the wall.
That will all be blood.
Whoa A healthy population of vampire bats signals there are plenty of animals to feed on.
Tonight, Justine will camp out on the grassland.
Tomorrow at dawn, she starts her search for the savannah's strangest creature - the giant anteater.
It's going to be a rough night.
So we've only got one tent that's waterproof, have we? The tents have got no outer sheetsno way of holding them down.
It's all a disaster.
Everything is in here.
I don't know what we're gonna do when it pours with rain.
We can't all sleep in here.
We're just gonna have to hide away for a while.
Animals are pretty smart.
They don't come out in the rain.
Even insects don't come out in the rain.
We're gonna have to sit and wait it out, unfortunately.
But we've got so few days here that we've lost a day, effectively, just because of the rain.
In this untouched forest, they had been hoping to find Guyana's top predators - anaconda, jaguar and harpy eagle.
Just when I said it couldn't get any worse the porridge is burnt! That's not good for a Scotsman, is it, burnt porridge? Mmm The rain's eased off a bit.
Yeah, it has.
That's good.
It's a bit annoying, because peak jaguar time is eight until sort of ten.
And it's now ? It's now nearly ten.
Despite the delay, Gordon decides to take his chances.
Ah, a gasteracantha spider! I nearly plonked myself on that.
This is a fantastic spider.
It's got these amazing spines in the abdomen.
It's quite hard, actually.
If you were to sit on that, actually, it would be quite painful.
Very heavily armed with spines.
In search of the elusive jaguar.
The heavy rains have swollen the river, and most animals have retreated into the forest - except one the normally nocturnal pacca.
It's a fairly large rodent quite commonly found, but not during the day.
These things could be taken by certainly an anaconda round herejaguar Lots of things eat them.
They should be spending the days underground, the whole family group, and then they come out and about at nighttime, but this one's been scared out by something.
Come on, Mr Pacca.
Get out of there.
Because a slippery, muddy bank on the side of a river is not a good place for a plump pacca to be.
Justine has enlisted the help of a local cattle rancher in her search for giant anteaters.
He thinks there's one roaming this area.
Shall we go and tie up over there? This is interesting.
You can see where this termite nest has had the top knocked off it, and it's definitely an anteater that's done this.
It looks like a good area.
Lots of termite nests here.
Orvin's spotted one.
But the anteater has sensed them.
Made too much noise.
Stuck in a bog! And off he goes.
Right.
Giant anteaters have bad eyesight but a good sense of smell.
She must approach quietly downwind.
Fantastic! It's just really fascinating to see how it's using this landscape.
It's just specialised with what this landscape has to offer, which is lots of ants and lots of termites.
It's just perfect for it.
Giant anteaters have no teeth, but their elongated heads hide a 60cm tongue covered in sticky saliva.
They're just like aliens - just bizarre looking.
It's feeding on something now.
It's got its head right down in the grass.
It's got its tongue and it's sticking it down the holes, All the termites get stuck on the tongue and they just lap up as many as they can.
They're only walking on their three main toes, which are curled under, so they only pull the claws out when they're actually digging.
They're basically walking on their knuckles.
Which just looks weird! They're all together quite strange - real specialists.
This discovery marks the end of Justine's journey.
Tomorrow, she must head home.
It's great to see a giant anteater.
First time ever! First time I've got a shot.
First time I've ever seen one.
Brilliant! After three days of relentless climbing, Steve is just 30 metres from the top, but it's not over yet.
I'm actually not sure how I'm gonna tackle that.
Got a foothold there, but that's another that might peel off.
Oh, God! MAN: Well done.
I think I can see the top! The next of it's a nasty bit.
Oh, dear! That's all gonna come off.
Oh, God! He's almost there but, in this final push, he's having to cling on to loose soil and roots.
Go on.
Good.
Go on.
Excellent.
Hey-heeeey! Nice one, Steve! Yes! Ah! Oh, fantastic! Steve's work as a climber is done.
Now he must break through the thick wall of vegetation, before he can start his search for wildlife on the summit.
Look at this! We've popped out into a moss, bromeliad, fern forest.
This really is the lost world! As the rest of the team searches for animals, Steve is exploring a rocky shelf above.
They're running in tracks.
You can see there's almost like roads.
These here are bird prints.
But these are definitely mammal prints.
Kind of polecat.
A medium-sized mustelid perhaps, something from the weasel family.
Which means there are mammals up here.
If we find them, they're almost certain to be a new species.
They have just three days to track down the mystery mammal.
Well done.
Who found it? It was just lucky.
Be careful, he's very jumpy.
Look at that underside.
Beautiful colours.
Ooh! Good catch.
What are you? I'm gonna have to hold him still like that.
I think what's particularly special about this frog is I've not seen it in any of the guides or any of the textbooks for the frogs of this area.
What's particularly beautiful, if you look at the underside, quite dull on top, but underneath, the belly, and the underside of the pads, look at those colours.
That's really quite dramatic, isn't it? Unfortunately, it's very difficult to name a new species without taking it back to a museum and running all sorts of tests on it, and to do that, we'd have to kill it, which I'm not prepared to do.
So, I'm gonna put it back where it belongs, in this bromeliad here.
Unidentified frogs, unknown footprints.
Who knows what else the mountain holds? It's been a frustrating day for George and Gordon.
But at least the rain has stopped.
I have to say this is not the sharpest tool in the kit.
OK, onions done.
Potatoes? I've been fantasising about a slow-roasted lamb shank for most of last week.
Before dinner, George has important work to do.
After rain, insects come out.
This is the first ultra-violet trap that anyone's ever set in this area.
What on earth ? I've never seen that before.
That thing there is a very strange family of bug.
It's not much recorded.
How many things are here? I mean 200 species easily.
I think it'd be safe to say that at least 5%, if not 10% of them .
.
may be undescribed.
That's the fact of it.
So if we could save all the forests in hot countries like Guyana, then you would immediately save over 50% of all the world's species.
So that surely is worth doing.
Look at that! That is just stonkingly beautiful.
This pale, ivory-coloured moth.
Yet at the right angle, you see these beautiful little golden beads all round the edge there.
That's just That's incredible.
This is a monster! I've never seen this.
Look at the size of this guy! Whoa! That is a mole cricket and a half! That's an absolute beauty.
I'm in my element here and it makes all the portaging and the sweating It makes it all worthwhile.
George must get some rest.
He needs to be up early to search for the giant anaconda.
On the top of Mount Upuigma, the climbers spent the night sheltering under an overhang.
Now they're preparing for another day searching for animals.
All this climbing takes quite a toll on your hands.
You just tend to get nasty, kind of, blisters, particularly in the points where the ropes rub through your fingers.
MAN: Does it hurt? Yes.
It's not too bad.
Hundreds of swifts are feeding above, watched on by their predators, falcons.
From the second we reached the top of the climb, To begin with, we thought it was a bat falcon, which is quite common.
But those don't occur at anything like this altitude or in this kind of terrain.
What does, and what were spotted in 1999 to the east of us, is the orange-breasted falcon.
I think there'll be a lot of ornithologists out there who'll be really happy to know that it's alive and well here on Upuigma.
It looks to me like we've got a pair with a youngster.
There's all sorts of interactions going on between the three of them.
Very, very vocal birds.
As Evan explores the cliff face, Steve is hunting for the mystery mammal.
There's a great little hole down here with loads of paw prints.
It would make a perfect burrow.
Let's go inside with the night camera, see what we can see.
It smells quite strong in here.
That kind of musty, animal smell.
It certainly looks like a perfect burrow for a medium-sized mammal.
I can't see anything.
There's loads of prints, but there's no droppings.
Since first light, George and Gordon have been continuing their search for Guyana's top predators.
One of the boatmen thinks he's seen a giant anaconda hidden in the bushes.
One big one.
Anaconda? Anaconda? Yeah.
And if he says it's a big one It'll be big.
It'll be big.
There's a big one.
It's a big one indeed.
Can we get in there? Goodness me.
It's like a car tyre.
Yeah, it's like a car tyre on its side.
A very large car tyre.
Gordon is just going to sneak onto land and try and get a picture of this anaconda on the ground.
Razor grass.
Gordon's about eight feet away from it.
Goodness me, that's a huge snake.
It's five metres long, its body the size of Gordon's waist.
Just doing a bit of pruning.
You can't really get a clear view of it.
I've seen an anaconda smaller than that eat a whole pig.
Something the size of me, it could possibly do it.
Anaconda kill by coiling their body tightly around their prey and stopping the blood circulation.
The victim is swallowed whole.
If you're scared of snakes, this thing would give you nightmares.
His tongue's not out.
If his tongue comes out, that means it can sense us.
It can actually taste us.
At the moment, I think it's just fast asleep.
Oh, my God! Now that is That's big.
This place really is strangely rich in wildlife.
I've never seen or heard of anywhere like this place.
This is a land of giants.
It's eyes are open.
Look.
It's great to see it and I think we should just leave it alone.
They head into the forest, where they're confronted by a yet another giant.
This is an enormous tree! It's a silk cottonwood.
Absolutely vast! That's bigger than anything we've seen.
Definitely.
Good grief! That is incredible.
Look at the size of those buttress roots.
Oh, wow.
Look, look, look! What have you got? What have you got? Oh, my God! It's one of those That is incredible! This is a hawk moth, which has been infected by Is it a fungus? Exactly.
That's grown throughout the whole animal.
The disease makes them crawl up higher, so that when they die and the spores erupt out of the animal, it spreads over a further area.
You have to be very careful what you eat in the jungle, because there are things that can make you feel very sick or things that will grow inside you and erupt out of your back, your stomach, and here's an example.
Sci-fi films, they try and dream up hideous things, but actually, in the real world, there are ten times more hideous things happening to animals all around us than we could ever imagine.
I'll be you any money that species of fungus is undescribed.
I mean It's a very under-worked group.
That, to me is quite unique.
It's only from the air that you can see the vast scale of this forest.
Guyana's trees alone lock up 2.
7 billion tonnes of carbon, vital in the fight against climate change.
But Guyana is a very poor country and needs to earn money from its trees.
It faces a dilemma.
To allow logging now or keep the forests intact and hope to trade them for carbon credits in the future.
So far, this forest is untouched, but it may not be for much longer.
It's the last night on Mount Upuigma and after dinner, the climbing team hope to find nocturnal animals.
They've laid a series of small mammal traps and Steve's rigging an ultra-violet light to attract insects.
Look at these moths! Look at the size of this.
Whoa! Enormous moths all the way down this wall here.
Look! Look at the size of that! These ones here are hawk moths.
They're sphingidae.
Look at the size of that one there! For scale, that's the size of my hand.
And they're all exactly the same species, with this distinctive eye spot here and that wonderful colouration here in the hind wing.
Whoa! Something really quite extraordinary's happened here.
My light trip has actually conned these swifts and they've flown into the wall.
This one here, he's stunned, but alert.
I think he might head off.
Come on, fella, please be all right.
Thank goodness for that.
Suddenly, there's a noise from within the mammal trap.
No, no, no, no.
Come back, come back.
Where are you? Oh, God, no! Oh, he's in there.
He's in there.
Oh, he's beautiful! You're all right.
I'm not gonna hurt you.
Look at the size of the ears and the spread of the whiskers.
This is definitely a creature that's accustomed to hunting at night.
That's ever so pretty.
There have been very, very few species recorded up here.
New mammals are found so rarely these days, but that is an extraordinary find.
Makes the whole trip worthwhile.
They could only bring enough supplies for three days.
Now it's time to go home.
Last night was definitely in my top ten wildlife moments.
Everything happened at once.
First of all the swifts, then these moths everywhere and then we found that mouse.
We've only had three days to do a rapid assessment of what lives up here on the top, but even so, I think we've had some major successes.
I'm sure that some of the animals we've found are new to science.
But even more tantalising are those footprints we found of some unknown animal and I just hope that someone gets a chance to come back and find out what that is.
It's one of the big tragedies of my life that I was born now when it's so hard to find really wild places that people haven't been to.
It does your heart good to come somewhere like this that is not only totally undiscovered, but is so special.
Gordon has been pulled away from breakfast.
One of Guyana's most rarely seen creatures is high in the trees right next to camp.
It's just stopped in this tree right here.
I have never seen a harpy eagle before.
I really didn't think we'd see one here.
It's enormous.
What I'd like to try and do is get ashore and that way I can get the long lens to its full extent and hopefully get a really close shot of it.
Please don't go anywhere.
This is just smash-and-grab filming.
You've got to try and find a position and just get what you can, because this bird is gonna fly and we're never gonna see it again.
OK, make sure everything's running.
Oh, wow! Look at that.
You know what? If the jaguar's the most difficult mammal to see, the harpy eagle is definitely the most difficult bird to see.
Beautiful.
It's easy in this place to say every second day, "This is the most amazing thing, the rarest thing that I've seen," but honestly, there is more chance of a jaguar doing the fandango through our camp than finding a harpy eagle.
He's got the remains of a monkey.
You can just see its back legs.
That's what harpy eagles do.
They're such huge birds of prey.
They catch big primates and their claws are so powerful, they'll grab a monkey, grab it by the body with one claw, grab it by the head Look at those talons.
They're enormous.
Huge.
That size.
The harpy is the most powerful eagle in the world and stands a metre tall.
Without a doubt, this is like finding diamonds at the head of this river.
The further we get away from people, there's more animals and the fact that you've got an animal like harpy eagle is a good indication that there must be many monkeys here.
And many monkeys mean you've got a very healthy habitat.
It's worrying that it's completely unprotected.
They could really mess this area up in a very short space of time, and that's terrifying.
This is so, so unbelievably rare.
It is the holy grail.
OK, it's gonna go.
It's gonna go.
This could be the last moments we have with this bird.
The harpy eagle is the final discovery for the team.
They'll soon be heading home.
The expedition has produced important evidence.
This is one of the greatest, unspoilt rainforests in the world.
There are so few places that are pristine and untouched.
This is one of them and, personally, I think that should never change.
From the tree tops to its watery depths, they've uncovered new, strange and rare creatures.
They've been burnt, bitten, and had narrow escapes.
They've catalogued and photographed hundreds of rainforest animals.
There should be room on this earth to keep 6% of the land surface area, a very small area, in which resides the majority of all the Earth's species of animals and plants.
Thank you.
For George, there's one last task.
Delivering the scientific report to the Guyanese president.
Here is a very brief report from our trip which just outlines what we did.
Obviously, there'll be more coming out of this in the next few months.
Every report, they've all recognised the importance of rainforests, especially tropical rainforests.
In climate change, the contribution to the mitigation or the reduction of greenhouse gases.
What we all find is that this particular area is one of the richest, in terms of species, probably anywhere on the planet.
It's incredibly rich.
Shortly after the team returned home, the President of Guyana made an unprecedented move.
He approached the British government to offer the intact forest as a global resource to help alleviate climate change, in return for financial help.
No decision has yet been made.
The world is just beginning to recognise the enormous value of rainforests.
Not only as home to millions of species, but as part of the solution to a global problem.