Natural World (1983)
Natural World is a nature documentary television series broadcast annually on BBC Two and regarded by the BBC as its flagship natural history brand. It is currently the longest-running series in its genre on British television, with more than 400 episodes broadcast since its inception in 1983. Natural World is produced by the BBC Natural History Unit in Bristol, but individual programmes can be in-house productions, collaborative productions with other broadcasters or films made and distributed by independent production companies and purchased by the BBC. Natural World programmes are often broadcast as PBS Nature episodes in the USA. Since 2008, most Natural World programmes have been shot and broadcast in high definition.
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Episode 1 - Plight of the Bumble-Bee
Release Date: 1984-05-06The 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.
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Episode 2 - Salim Ali's India
Release Date: 1984-05-13Documentary which tells the story of some of the discoveries made by Indian ornitholigist Salim Ali
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Episode 3 - The Kiwai - Dugong Hunters of Daru
Release Date: 1984-05-20In 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.
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Episode 4 - Commandos of Conservation
Release Date: 1984-06-03Greenpeace 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.
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Episode 5 - Long Point
Release Date: 1984-06-10Once 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.
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Episode 6 - Beneath The Keel
Release Date: 1984-06-17This film looks at marine life off the Devon coast, as viewed by filmmakers Jeff Goodman & Laurie Emberson, who like to get close to and interact with these creatures. Sparkling jewel anemones, exotic cup corals, massed spider crabs and rare red band fish are just a few of the unusual animals that make their homes beneath the waves of our coastal waters.
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Episode 7 - Treasures of the Gulf
Release Date: 1984-07-01Pearls 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?
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Episode 8 - Fragments of Eden
Release Date: 1984-07-22Islands 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.