Following the acclaimed first series of Wilderness, Simon Reeve returns with four extraordinary new expeditions into some of the most remote, spectacular and awe-inspiring wild places left on Earth.
Bigger, wilder and more ambitious than before, the journeys at the heart of Simon Reeve’s Wilderness are huge in scale. In Papua New Guinea, Simon treks for days into the jungle-clad Torricelli Mountains, climbing ever higher through steep, soaking, near-impenetrable rainforest into a landscape so remote and little explored it feels like a lost world.
In Mexico, he voyages through the dazzling Sea of Cortez and dives with sharks. He travels by canoe and on foot through the immense forests, mountains and river valleys of Canada’s Yukon, before crossing almost 3,000 miles of Mongolia by 4WD, horse and foot, from the great Gobi Desert to the frozen peaks of the Altai.
Speaking about what drew him back to Wilderness for a second series, Simon Reeve said, “This time we wanted the journeys to feel even bigger, and to have more of a quest about them. So I’m visiting another four beautiful places, but we’ve also mounted proper expeditions into remote landscapes with a genuine objective and no guarantee of success.
In Papua New Guinea, we trekked deep into a little-known rainforest, home to around 4% of the planet’s biodiversity, hoping to capture the first professional footage of a wild tenkile, a type of tree kangaroo. In Mongolia, we searched for a snow leopard in mountains where many people said we had almost no chance of seeing one. Across the series, we travelled further from roads, settlements and help, looking for extraordinary wildlife and meeting the people whose knowledge and determination are keeping these places alive.
So yes, this series is four more amazing Wilderness areas. But it’s more than that. We pushed a bit deeper into the unknown than before, and I’d like to think we’re exploring a really critical question with the series: what will it take to ensure these astonishing landscapes – and the communities and creatures that depend on them – still exist in the future?
The first series reminded me just how powerful wild places are – not just visually, but emotionally and physically. We live on an increasingly crowded planet, and many of us spend most of our lives in towns and cities, so it’s easy to forget that enormous areas still exist where nature sets the terms. I wanted to go back because those places are glorious, vital and full of mystery, but also because they are changing incredibly quickly.
After travelling to more than 130 countries, I still feel I have barely scratched the surface of the planet. This series took us into places I knew very little about: the Torricelli Mountains of Papua New Guinea, the far west of Mongolia, the deeper blue of the Sea of Cortez and the remote north of the Yukon. They are not empty landscapes. They are homes, larders, workplaces and sacred places. The people living there often understand the natural world in ways the rest of us have lost. I wanted to experience that, learn from it and show viewers that these wild areas still exist – and are worth caring about and protecting.”
©️ BBC/The Garden/Jonathan Young
The journeys are demanding, unpredictable and sometimes brutal – but the rewards are astonishing. In Papua New Guinea, Simon and the team achieve something remarkable: becoming the first TV crew ever to film the critically endangered tenkile tree kangaroo in the wild. In the Sea of Cortez, he comes face-to-face with powerful bull sharks and descends into the open ocean to find himself surrounded by scores of critically endangered hammerheads. In Northern Canada, he ventures into the realm of wolves and mighty grizzly bears. And high in the mountains of Mongolia, after being warned they might never see one, Simon and the team finally encounter the legendary “Ghost of the Mountains” – the elusive snow leopard.
But the greatest Wildernesses are not empty. They are home to remarkable people whose lives, skills and traditions are intimately connected to the natural world: jungle conservationists and village trackers, shark fishermen and marine biologists, First Nations communities, nomadic camel herders and Kazakh eagle hunters. Along the way Simon discovers extraordinary examples of people protecting wildlife, restoring damaged ecosystems and keeping ancient ways of life alive. The result is a series filled with adventure, beauty, jeopardy, unforgettable characters and some truly astonishing encounters with the wild.
When reflecting on the communities he met on his journey, Simon added, “These communities taught me that successful conservation is rarely about putting a fence around nature and excluding people. Wilderness areas are often home to communities who depend on them for food, income, identity and spiritual wellbeing. If conservation ignores those realities, it is unlikely to last. If local people have ownership, dignity and a genuine stake in protecting an area, they can become its most powerful defenders.
The people of Mupun village are protecting the tenkile because it’s part of their land and their children’s future. The families of Cabo Pulmo gave up fishing on their reef and built new livelihoods around conservation and tourism. First Nations people in the Yukon showed me a form of harvesting that is about food, sharing and respectfully using an entire animal, not taking a trophy. Mongolian herders are trying to preserve pasture, livestock, predators and traditions in a rapidly changing climate. None of these stories is simple, but they all show that human beings do not have to be the enemy of the wild. We can be part of the answer”.
Watch Wilderness on BBC Two and BBC iPlayer from September 20.
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