Nurturing Nature

human beings as part of natural history

When the average,city-bred person hears of an

Amazon tribe where women breastfeed monkeys,the reaction often borders on horror. It is to dispel such prejudices and forge a greater understanding of the diversity of lifestyles adopted by human beings,that Andrew Jackson and his team at the BBC Natural History Unit decided to film Human Planet. This and other documentaries,such as Planet Earth and Wild China will be part of the programming for BBC Earth,which is bringing the best of BBC’s natural history programming to India.

“It was a gamble for us,really,” says Jackson,head of the Unit which has produced television classics such as Blue Planet and Life,“There was,honestly,no telling how people would react to the show.” After all,this was the first time that human beings were taken from behind the camera in a natural history documentary and were put in front of it — to be observed,just like the lions and wildbeests. It wasn’t just the viewers’ reactions that worried Jackson.

“We had to travel around the world and film people in their homes and their lives. We weren’t sure whether they would co-operate,so it felt wonderful when they opened up their lives and their homes to us,” he says. Human Planet,which covered stories of human survival in some of the harshest environments in the world,went on to become a global phenomenon. One episode featured the Khasi Hills in Northeast India where locals showed how they combat the monsoons,by training the roots of rubber trees to form bridges.

As someone who has been in the business of filming natural history documentaries for almost 25 years,Jackson says that only constant innovation in ideas and technology can keep stories fresh and relevant. “Most stories have been done and we’re constantly looking for new approaches. There were many brilliant documentaries shot in the 1970s,but they would seem dated now. The evolution of technology has obviously helped a lot. Something like the ‘cineflex’ — an aerial camera technology which was originally developed for military purposes — has enabled us to shoot from from helicopters. We’re so far away from the animals that they don’t even realise we’re there,so the cameras enable us to capture their natural behaviour.”