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Searching for unusual wildlife Saba explores the least known parts of her home continent in a new series "Unknown Africa" on BBC 2. Starting with a jurassic haven of pterodactyl-like bats and giant fossil fish in the coup-stricken Comoros archipelago, her next stop is amongst the bubble-blowing forest elephants and lowland gorillas of the humid Central African Republic. In the final episode, returning from a remote island 10km offshore, Saba and crew find themselves cast adrift off the desert coast of war-shattered Angola.
Showing on BBC2 this week and next!
Monday 10th March at 8 p.m. - Comoros
Monday 17th March at 8 p.m. - Central African Republic
Friday 21st March at 8 p.m. - Angola
For sneak previews see:
Stranded off the Angolan coast
Angolan arsenal
Forest elephant chase
Bat cave
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Solitary, pugnacious and aggressive, the black rhino has little in its favour, and if your father has been squashed by one, there’s even less incentive to get close. But when Saba recalls a mysterious secret passed on to her by her late mentor, it sets her on a quest to find a hidden world in the heart of a desert - a Shangri-La of rhino - that might change our perception of the solitary black rhino forever.
Interview with Saba on the Animal Planet website |
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HEART of a LIONESS
showing now on Animal Planet
A young lioness hits the headlines and turns Nature on its head when she adopts an oryx antelope calf that’s under a month old. Baffling scientists, she mothers the calf for 16 days, until Nature strikes back to revert itself. |
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BIG CAT DIARY
BBC
Saba, Jonathan Scott and Simon King follow the daily trials of three big cat families in Kenya’s Maasai Mara Reserve. In it’s 11th year, the Big Cat series continues to thrill with unbeatable action from Africa’s largest predators. |
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ELEPHANTS of SAMBURU
Over 1000 elephants gather in north Kenya to socialise after the rains, and they revel in the abundance of food. Monitored daily by local researchers, every single individual is known. Saba joins the Save the Elephants team as bull elephants fight over mates, babies are born, an orphan needs to be rescued, and the flooding Ewaso river separates a newly bereaved family. |
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SEARCH for TIGERS
Ranthambhore National Park in India, home to the tigress Machli and her latest litter of cubs. Crowded in on all sides by human encroachment Machli is in danger both from poachers and a rival tigress. Saba invokes the elephant god Ganesh to help find Machli and joins tiger guru Valmik Thapar to document the latest drama in the life of Rajastan’s most famous tigress. |
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GOING APE
Teaming up with Alastair Fothergill (BBC producer of Planet Earth and Blue Planet), Saba follows an habituated group of chimpanzees in the Tai forest of the Ivory Coast, West Africa, and for two weeks tries to live cheek by jowl with them. Against all advice of an SAS officer, who’d leave his knife and water purification tablets over his dead body, the dynamic duo bring nothing for the experiment but hammocks to sleep in and the clothes on their backs. |
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BIG BEAR WEEK
Wager Bay lies 60 miles south of the Arctic circle in the Inuit province of Nunavut, Canada. Home to the southernmost population of polar bears it’s an untouched haven. But the bears are suffering. Early melting of sea-ice in the summer means that bears go hungry for longer. Joining co-presenters Jonathan Scott with grizzlies in Alaska, and Jeff Turner with black bears in Whistler, Saba waits patiently with the polar bears for the sea to re-freeze. |
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PREHISTORIC PARK
Using a high-tech “time portal” to travel back 10,000 years, Saba brings her big cat expertise to prehistoric Brazil where she joins Nigel Marvin in his quest to rescue the last few saber-tooth tigers. |
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MY LIFE WITH ANIMALS
Saba recounts how a passion for animals, and her work as a BBC natural history presenter, has flung her far afield in to the wilderness she loves. But how long will it last and how best protect it? |
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RUNNING with REINDEER
The Sami reindeer herders of the Arctic are some of the toughest people on earth, and their winter reindeer round-up is the most exciting event in the Sami year. Saba joins ace reindeer herder Isak Mattis to lend a helping hand, and learns along the way how the Sami people, the last of Europe’s nomadic pastoralists, have adapted to life in the modern world yet retain their traditions. |
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SEARCH for POLAR BEARS
It’s March and the sun is rising for the first time in the High Arctic, signaling the end of four months of darkness, time for the polar bears of Svalbard to prepare themselves for the biggest feast of the year, the ringed seal pupping season. At 80°N Saba searches for two female bears, stars of “Life in the Freezer”, and witnesses first hand how climate change is altering the polar bear’s habitat. |
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RACING with CAMELS
In return for being allowed to live with Bedouin nomads in the Sinai desert, Saba has to prove her worth and enter a camel race, Bedouin style. |
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AFRICA BUSH RESCUE
Game capture veterans JJ van Altena and ex-Kruger Park vet Douw Grobler, teach Saba the ropes as they rescue badly hurt or endangered wildlife. |
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NAMIBIA’S
DESERT GIANTS
Saba tracks down desert-adapted lion, rhino and elephant in one of the most extreme places on earth. |
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THE ELEPHANT TRILOGY
Three of Saba’s earliest films make up this powerful trilogy, an ode of love to her elephants. The first, Living with Elephants, is the story of a Samburu woman who tries to right a mythological wrong by making a ritual apology to elephants. Search for Virgo, follows Saba as she returns to Tanzania to find a very special elephant that she knew as a child, and finally in Escape The Elephant, Saba puts some highly trained pachyderms to the test to find out how well they can follow a scent trail, supposedly sniffing out poachers
BBC HOLIDAY
Antarctica, Papua New Guinea, Uganda, Ethiopia and Brunei are unusual choices for a holiday, but not if you’re in search of indigenous wildlife. Just make sure you offset the carbon of your flights, see:
www.icount.org.uk
www.climatecare.org
www.carbontrust.com
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