SAVING WILDLIFE - SNOW LEOPARD

“Some parts of our planet are so brutal that any animal surviving here acquires an almost mythical status.
 

This is the greatest mountain range in the world - the highest, the toughest, the most hostile - the Himalaya. Towering above India’s northern borders, these remote mountains are home to what may be the most glamorous animal on earth.

Just to see one is a dream, to film one nigh impossible - this ghost like creature is the Holy Grail - the ultimate wildlife challenge - the snow leopard”.
 
 

Those above are the opening words of narration for my film on this legendary cat, the first ever attempt at making a film about them. I have always loved cats and having made films about lions, leopards, tigers and mountain lions I had to try an even greater challenge. However, having read lots of scientific research and books, I was in no doubt about just how difficult it was going to be.

Recognised by many as the world’s pre-eminent field biologist, George Schaller described the mountains in which snow leopards live as “a land of just enough” and that refers not just to the animals but the human inhabitants too.

 The tracks of a snow leopard can be seen on the right of this photo and shows just how difficult it was to follow them with camera gear.

Like many mountain adventures, our quest was to end in tears and triumph and for one of us, the dream became a nightmare, his determination driving him close to death, no surprise I guess when trying to conquer this Everest of the natural world.

Ex Australian marine Mitchell Kelly was my main cameraman and in the first couple of years he achieved great success. For instance, snow leopards had never been seen mating, let alone filmed but Mitchell rose to the challenge and succeeded, along with many other firsts. We also managed to film a lot of intimate scenes and got to know how and where they moved around in their precipitous terrain.

However, he had to be evacuated from the mountains three times, once for torn stomach muscles from carrying heavy camera equipment up steep mountain sides, then more seriously, from altitude sickness twice, the last time nearly killing him. It was an immense relief that he survived but from then on the film became a damage limitation exercise.

We had already suffered tragedy when my original colleague and close friend on the quest, Chip Houseman was killed in a Thai Airlines crash just days before we were due to start filming. We had made an Academy Award winning film together on tigers in India and it was during the filming that we hatched a plan to tackle this unconquered challenge.

 

This is not going to be a story of how we made the film, even if we did manage to complete a film about these beautiful cats and learn a lot about how they lived in the unforgiving Himalayas of Ladakh in NW India.

I would lay awake at night, not because I couldn’t sleep in a tent with a broken zip in minus twenty temperatures but because it was the best time to hear the mating calls of the cats. Their high pitched screams would carry a long way through the valleys and give us an idea of where they were located and interestingly, those descriptions by mountaineers thinking they were hearing the yeti calling in the night were actually snow leopards!

I met an English school teacher in Bhutan who described seeing a yeti in a snowstorm on a high pass. It stood by the road edge looking at him, similar to a large grey langur monkey but more like human size, then shuffled off into the trees. When you consider that Bhutan is covered by 60% of dense forest and bamboo and impenetrable, it is easy to hide a large primate from prying human eyes. So yeti’s do exist!
 

That’s a story for another time, so back to snow leopards and our struggles to film them and though our story only scratched the surface, the film was shown on prime time ITV and around the world to big audiences. However, our main achievement was to prove to the wildlife film-making world that snow leopards could indeed be filmed and like my previous story about pumas in the Andes of Patagonia, several film crews followed.

Most notable was cameraman Mateo Willis, the son of a great friend, David Willis who took the wonderful Radio Times pic. I was able to help Mateo a bit on location details etc. and he and his colleagues from the BBC filmed some amazing behaviour for David Attenborough’s series ‘Planet Earth 2’ and if you saw it, you would never forget. The images of three snow leopards and their violent behaviour as a mother defended her cub from an aggressive male were magical.

The result of all this filming success in our chosen valleys in Ladakh is the direct way it has saved snow leopards from persecution, for just as with my pumas, tourists want to see the mythical cats. The local people are as delightful as humans get and were extraordinarily helpful during our filming and they have since become the perfect hosts for tourists seeking snow leopards.

This is our terrific team of Ladakhi helpers who were wonderful companions, some of whome are guiding tourists up there right now. The high ridge above them was a favourite patrol route for snow leopards in the evenings - sometimes!

Attracting tourists was the brain child of the world’s leading snow leopard scientist, Rodney Jackson [who is on the right of our happy snap] and who took this picture of our star cat with his remote cameras. He rightly argued that if the wildlife was worth lots of dollars to the rural economy, they would be looked after by the locals instead of persecuted for killing their sheep and goats. So he encouraged the locals to set up ‘home stays’ for tourists in the tiny mountain villages near the main travel corridors of the cats.

 

One entertaining story from the village which I'm assured is true is of a young girl who took out the family's sheep and goat herd for their daily feed int the hills. It wasn't long before a snow leopard rushed out of the mountain side and grabbed a sheep and the girl, instead of running away, rushed forward and grabbed the other end of her sheep. A tug of war followed and eventually the snow leopard let go and slunk away into the mountains. One sheep saved by a young girls bravery!
 

My friend Mateo Willis who filmed the wonderful snow leopard behaviour for Attenborough’s ‘Planet Earth’ close to this village told me recently that the remote mountains where we filmed in the ’90’s have now become a honey pot for wildlife seeking visitors from abroad and the valleys are full of tents and telescopes. 

 

He also said that the cats have become more tolerant of humans, just as our pumas did in the Andes Mountains and this has now made them easier to see. So it's a win win result all round.

Given the recent skirmishes between the Indian and Chinese armies on the Ladakhi border nearby, this tourist hot spot wouldn’t be a healthy place to be right now, but we are praying that all the snow leopards survive and flourish as they have done these last few years.

 

 

Our films legacy was a small contribution to start the ball rolling in environmental tourism in our chosen patch but you could argue that the peace and tranquility of the area has been spoilt. Maybe George Schaller would think that ‘the land of just enough’ has become ‘a land of too much’, but a lot of wildlife has been flourishing, including the rare and endangered snow leopard and this in turn has allowed many folk to enjoy seeing this mythical creature for the first time.

Given the increasing climate crisis makes me wonder if an increase in wildlife tourism is such a good idea but that’s a debate for another time. However, it’s a likely truth that if wildlife isn’t worth money it’s unlikely to survive and for better or worse, that’s a contribution that television has made a reality.

The wonderful drawings of snow leopards are by that leading artist Gary Hodges, so thank you for sending them to me Gary.

SAVING WILDLIFE - PUMA

                               

                  SAVING WILDLIFE - PART ONE - PUMA

 

Having been passionate about wildlife since childhood, it seemed natural to want to help it flourish, so once I'd achieved my goal of becoming a wildlife film-maker, it was a no brainer to try to benefit the animals I was lucky enough to make films about for broadcasters around the world.

Three programmes stand out as examples of how television can directly help wildlife, the local people and their rural economies. One on Snow Leopards in the Himalayas was a success, a film about Newfoundland's fishing industry very moving and one about Pumas in the Andes Mountains of Patagonia a life saver for those big cats.

Yes, I know the common attitude is that ‘it’s only television and all the programmes are rubbish’ but no-one can deny that the many BBC films with David Attenborough are wonderful and have not only entertained but educated us about wildlife around the world and the increasing challenges that so many species now face. Global warming is a threat to us all and Sir David is making us increasingly aware that we need to act and we need to act now. 

I’ve been privileged to contribute to several of David’s films and though the three examples I’ll tell you about were my own productions and less 'important', they did directly benefit the local wildlife in ways that make me proud.

   

                        “PUMA - LION OF THE ANDES” 

Heading into the mountains in Southern Chile in 1993 to try to make a film about pumas for National Geographic TV and the BBC was a daunting task, not only because they had never been filmed before but because they were persecuted relentlessly by the local gauchos for killing sheep. 

These big cats are notoriously shy everywhere, so much so that the world’s leading authority on them, who goes by the wonderful name of Maurice Hornocker only saw them four times during his eight years of study in North America. Up in the Rockies they are called cougars or mountain lions and in South America by the native name puma, meaning ‘strong and powerful'.

 

I was camping out in the glorious wilds of the Torres del Paine National Park but despite the protection this Unesco site provided for wildlife, the gauchos would come into the park and kill the pumas to protect their sheep, then claim the bounties from their estancia owners. 

My sole companion and assistant Donaldo McIver, himself a gaucho from Argentina, found the early stages of our two year quest really difficult, for the big cats would flee at the mere hint of a human presence. Finding out where the cats might be and how to creep around without being seen was a steep learning curve and after our first few weeks we had only a few sightings and hardly any worthwhile film. 

Failure wasn’t an option, so I decided to try to concentrate on one particular young female we'd located. She seemed slightly less scared than all the others and playing on the theory that ‘curiosity killed the cat’, I started a game of cat and mouse to try to habituate her to my presence … and no prizes for guessing who was playing the mouse. Progress was slow but after about four months she allowed me to walk in the mountains with her, even sleeping just a few metres away from my camera. Being trusted by a big cat that is normally terrified of humans is as good as life gets for a wildlife film-maker.

Sadly, her life hung by a thread, for one day two of the local gauchos illegally entered the National Park on horseback. They were armed with rifles and fifteen assorted dogs to hunt and kill pumas and judging by the blood and spent cartridge cases in several caves, they were successful. Our cat we called Penny disappeared and we sat on a mountain side fearing the worst, tearfully accepting that if she was dead, our dream of success was over. 

The park authorities called the police, including a firearm specialist from Santiago to analyse the spent cartridge cases but no gaucho would be fool enough to leave out the gun that killed the pumas, so there was no prosecution. 

Luckily, Penny had survived the onslaught and after our two weeks of desperate searching, she reappeared in her regular haunts and though more nervous, we were once again in business. Fearing that our film was threatened, Donny and I decided to bribe the leading gaucho in the hope he would leave our precious cat alive until the film was finished. So armed with armfuls of pesos, my assistant Donny’s experience as a gaucho and speaking their language, he was able to negotiate a stay of execution and Penny was left alive. So, to cut a long story short, after 250 days out in the wilds with my cat, spread over two and a half years, the film was completed and went on to win numerous awards.

However, the real success achieved by this film was the way it attracted the attention of broadcasters from around the world and many film crews followed my tracks to make films about the cats. Torres del Paine became a mecca for photographers and wildlife film-makers and this publicity of the park’s wildlife and beauty has attracted thousands of tourists and their dollars. 

This sounds like bad news for shy cats but as the money flowed in to the rural economy, the estancia owners realised that pumas were worth a lot more than sheep so stopped shooting the cats and set up lodging for wildlife tourists instead. The dollars flowed in, the number of pumas increased and they slowly became more habituated to humans which allowed great film and pictures to be taken.

I'm told by friends who visit the park regularly that the pumas have thrived ever since and everyone is happy, though I’m not so sure that guanacos, their main prey will share my enthusiasm.

However, they too have benefited from the more relaxed estancia owners and all the parks wildlife has increased too, so this is good example of how a ‘mere’ television film can directly save wildlife. 

Snow Leopards in the Himalayas and the benefits our film and BBC ones made for these charasmatic cats and the local economy will follow when I've finished preparing our marsh for the imminent spawning of our frogs.

The pics of our Penny the Puma are by my friend and ace photographer Laurie Campbell who joined Donaldo and I for a couple of weeks and who owns the copyright. Thank you Laurie.

A PASSION FOR LIFE IN THE WILDS

two of the stars in our leopard film for the BBC - "A Darknesss in the Grass"

For most of my life I’ve enjoyed the privilege of travelling to some of the remotest corners of the world to film wildlife and I realised right from the start just how lucky I was to make a living doing what I love. So it strikes me as ironic that despite rising to the top of my profession and being in demand from all the world's major broadcasters, what I'm best remembered for now is a fishing series that was only filmed when I had time between major wildlife shoots. Don't get me wrong. I've never worked harder and used all the tricks in the book to try to transport our audience to another, more magical world because I've been passionate about angling since childhood and was really keen to try do it's universal appeal justice. And so, with the help of Chris Yates and Bob James, "A Passion for Angling" was born.

This is a scene from the final programme of the series called 'Monster Myths', the story of our quest for a record carp - we did see it but no, we didn't catch it but it's my favourite film of the series because it was such a good story of a quest for a truly mythical beast in a beautiful corner of southern England.

I also loved our 'Midwinter Madness' film on the Kennet, not just because I could catch two pound roach in our downtime but because we caught many fine fish in stunning frost sparkled days, including Bob's two twenty plus pike, a suitably surprising conclusion to another good story.

The curry and port were a tasty celebration to end the day.

So, to put the record straight about my work, I thought I might add a few words about my 'day job' to put the making of our series in some sort of context.

Wildlife has been a passion of mine since childhood and after leaving film college in 1965 I started my career working with the BBC Film Unit on such legendary programmes as Dr.Who and Porridge. I left the Beeb in 1973 and since then have been lucky enough to spend nearly fifty years out in the wilds with some wonderful animals and people.

a polar bear hunting the pack ice at midnight for our BBC series of three films "Kingdom of the Ice Bear" 

One of my early productions was a three part series Mike Salisbury and I filmed and produced for the BBC Natural History Unit about Arctic wildlife, working with many great scientists, the wonderful Inuit people and of course, the charismatic polar bears.

close enough!

happiness is being high up in remote places

However, if you look up Hugh Miles on the internet you’d think, judging by the pictures I see banded about that all I ever do is go fishing … if only … but it’s simply one of many hobbies I enjoy, gardening our two wooded acres being the most time consuming, especially as a stream flows though our patch and by damming it in several places we’ve created five ponds. 

Chris Yates' children Alex and William each enjoyed catching their PB's from them, so they've proved a happy asset for us all but since the turn of the century, our local otters also think it's a splendid place to fish. It's a privilege to have them in our wildlife garden but our fish are wildlife too and they keep on being eaten, so otters are a mixed blessing.

I think he's checking to see if I have a rod licence

 

It's always a relief to return home alive and well and enjoy a few days of family time but my job as a cameraman/producer required me to ‘live on the edge’ and there's sometimes risks involved.  But I’ve always admired that famous visionary who restored the glories of the Gardens of Heligan, Tim Smit because he believes that “if you’re not living on the edge you’re taking up too much space"!  

You can't get much closer to the edge than trying to film snow leopards and though I’m no publicist, I keep on being encouraged to tell some stories from the bush ... and I’ve been extraordinarily lucky to live with charismatic animals and many marvellous folk. It's a privilege to savour and share. 

Filming in Ladakh in the Himalayas for ITV's "Searching for the Snow Leopard" created more than a few stories to tell but we usually saw only footprints. You can see some up the snow slope to the right - tough walking country but not for snow leopards! Camera traps enabled us to identify individual cats. This was our territorial male called Mikmar at 15,000ft.

 

Another challenge was filming for David Attenborough's "Planet Earth", taking me up into the Himalayas and close to Everest. I'm never happier than walking in the mountains, even if it means carrying heavy camera gear to capture the animals on film.

The Himalayas become ever more inspiring the higher you climb and the locals were wonderful, so friendly and helpful and they showed me the Impayan Pheasant, Nepal's national bird, also called appropriately 'the bird of many colours'.

the star when filming our BBC leopard film called "A Darkness in the Grass" - 

I have had more than my fair share of special memories and writing about these adventures is enjoyable, so I thought I might write a few stories about filming leopards in East Africa but on reading through my journals, I’m finding that we had so many exciting moments it requires too many words to describe, so I'll just add a few pictures from some of my other films and carry on writing about leopards another day. 

As any photographer will have already noticed, I'm not a 'proper' stills photographer because if something good is happening I need to have the film camera in my hands to capture the action. Compromising the quality of the movie isn't an option so I've never taken many stills. Those I do are strictly happy snaps but don't get me wrong, I love taking pics but don't have a fancy camera with auto focus etc. In fact, most of the pics are taken before the digital age on slide film using cameras that should be in a museum.

Anyway, the first major wildlife film I made was when I was head of the RSPB Film Unit. I'd made enough films for them about robins, blue tits and other cute birds so needed something bigger and more exciting to challenge me. I needed to look no further than one of the most charismatic birds in the world, the osprey. 

mum with two chicks almost ready to fly - one of several intimate moments filmed from the top of towering scaffolds

Such is the birds charisma that if I could nail some spectacular fishing dives and intimate scenes at the nest I stood a chance of being noticed by the BBC Natural History Unit and after two challenging but ultimately successful years my reputation rose like the ospreys splash and on completion, I joined the ranks of the self-employed.

As a postscript, the film eventually sold to over forty countries so it turned out to be a nice little earner for the RSPB and as a staunch supporter since childhood, I was pleased too.

strike action! ospreys are such exciting birds and filming them for my RSPB movie was memorable 

In spite of eight years at the BBC Film Unit in London filming all manner of programmes along with the five years at the RSPB, I was still a comparative novice in the wildlife filming business so it took a deal of courage on the part of producer John Sparks to trust me with the final shoot for what became the first of David Attenborough's ground breaking series, "Life on Earth".

My contract was for a month but within two weeks I was back home, a mixed blessing as I'd just spent over £20,000 on camera equipment and only received two weeks pay instead of four. However, my reputation was enhanced, for we'd filmed the lions making a double kill on the first day, another kill to match it on the second, then captured the rare sequence of two male cheetahs catching and killing a wildebeast. It was a remarkable run of good fortune and it's been downhill ever since!

These early successes meant that the world was opening up for me and next up I was lucky enough to be picked to film another extremely popular three part series for the Beeb,"Flight of the Condor". 

the Andes Mountians in southern Chile - one of the most stunning locations in the world

Torres del Paine National Park is home to many condors and was our filming base for a few weeks  © Laurie Campbell

The three films told the story of an exciting journey from the very tip of South America at Cape Horn, following the Andes north, all the way through Peru, then into the Amazon Basin in far off Equador.

One of the most exciting moments when filming in the Torres del Paine National Park in Chile was the brief sighting of a puma. This lit a fire so inspiring that I made a vow to return one day to try to make a film about these elusive cats.  

my star cat 'Penny' the puma that I lived with on and off for more than two years ... © Laurie Campbell

My wildlife career was moving forward nicely and many new commissions came my way but I'll skip those for now because for a few years, otters became the focus of my life. 

at home on the wild and windy shores of Shetland

In the early eighties the Shetland Isles were one of the few places that otters could be reliably seen and it's difficult to believe that they were pretty much 'extinct' in most English counties. This 'rare' animal had never properly been filmed because they were regularly persecuted ... until the seventies hunters in Shetland received a bounty, so I had a big challenge ahead ... nothing like being thrown in at the deep end to film 'impossible' animals.

what a privilege it was to film these beautiful animals in Shetland's wind and rain ... though the sun did shine too

I only had one sighting in the first ten days but eventually won some success by habituating a particular female that after several weeks trusted me enough to be close to her and her cubs. 

seriously cute or maybe not? - three plus months of 'playful' but eventual killers

She would even swim up to me, so it was a magical experience and over about four years I made three films about her, the first of which was an Attenborough BBC "Widlife on One". As otters had hardly ever been seen on TV it was an extremely popular programme and garnered an impressive audience of 17.3 million. 

they were always fond of lumpsuckers, a big meal and easy to catch

I took loads of pics of her and the cubs because I decided to write a book about living with these wonderful animals in the farthest corner of the British Isles. 

Now they are everywhere in the country and it's ironic that instead of the long journey to the Shetland Isles I can now film them in our garden in Dorset, eating our fish! Their recovery is one of conservations' greatest success stories, though I doubt many ducks and fish think it's cause for celebration.

the post office in the capital, Thimpu

Many more films followed before planning a three part series for ITV on the wildlife of the Kingdom of Bhutan, 'The Land of the Thunder Dragon'. 

I had already completed an extensive recce with the World Wildlife Fund and was all set to start filming when Bhutan suffered terrorist incursions from tribes in northern India.

climbing over a high pass with the Tibetan mountains in the background

I was asked by the government to postpone filming, so found myself with the shocking prospect of no work for the three years I'd planned to be in the Himalayas.

Chomolhari - Bhutan's sacred mountain and at 24,000ft, it's highest

 As one door closes another opens and I suddenly thought that here at last was that opportunity to make a fishing film. As they say, the rest is history because by June 16th we were filming "A Passion for Angling". 

filming the crazy scarecrow sequence ... but it worked

The initial filming was funded from my wildlife travels and then the BBC commisioned the series and paid for about half the costs. The rest I had to earn and as 'Passion' cost over £400,000 to produce I had to work hard to pay for everything. This meant travelling the world on as many films as possible then filming Bob and Chris on return and hoping for good weather. Money was very tight but luckily I was invited to take part in a long expedition to Antartica.

The executive producer was Alastair Fothergill and his six part series was called "Life in the Freezer", a memorable event and winner of a team BAFTA along with huge audiences.

It was such a privilege to visit this remote and magical land, to be surrounded by a million penguins and crunching our way through the pack ice to reach them. Our skipper Jerome's steel yacht was smooth sided when we left the Falklands but after forcing our way through thick ice to find the wildlife it was distinctly corrugated by the time of our return.

More 'Passion' filming followed quickly upon my return as we now had some cash in the bank, so some summer and autumn sequences were added to the third and fourth programmes.

Chris trying to find a silver tourist on the Wye for programme 3 - 'In Search of Salmon'

 

stars of stage and screen - Bob's lovely dogs Wraps and Chester were an integral part of many sequences

Bob trotting the Hampshire Avon for our autumn film

looking for those elusive two pound roach on the Hampshire Avon - we found them too, all ten of them! 

While filming Bob and Chris I was planning that return to South America I'd promised myself all those years ago, hoping to film that most charasmatic of big cats, the mountain lion.

I managed to convince National Geographic TV that they should fund the project but I didn't make it there until late in 1993 because we had to finish our four and a half years work creating "A Passion for Angling". We had no idea how well it would be received and neither did the BBC Executives but we all watched in disbelief as the audience increased each week to a high of 6.3 million.

our son Peter with his first barbel and a proud dad behind the camera

It seemed at the time as if we'd struck a chord with both anglers and non anglers and the BBC showed it five times before asking us to make another series, even to the extent of saying that they would make it more than financially worthwhile if we did. At the time we thought enough was enough and luckily, we were right.

happy days, especially when the big roach are biting

After the years of the hard graft creating the series we felt that we had said what we wanted to say about the magic of angling and now find it increasingly remarkable that the series is still hitting the spot, even though twenty eight years have passed since June 1989 when we made those first tentative casts into the legendary Redmire Pool.

We feel very fortunate that the films are still enjoyed by thousands of folk and grateful that Chris, Bob and I have so many happy memories of going fishing in all those beautiful places. It was a privilege just to be there and sharing it with you all makes it even more rewarding.

Copies of our DVD of the six part series can still be puchased from Sue and I via our website - www.passionforangling.info