The Adélie penguin sails out of the water in a high arc on the ice. How long can he do that in the Antarctic? The humpback whales migrate majestically through the deep blue sea. Is her stomach full of plastic too? A lowland gorilla peeks into the dense green of the Congolese jungle. How close are the forest workers cutting down the rainforest trees with chainsaws?
The pictures showing "Our Planet" are idyllically beautiful. At first glance, there is no sign of the dangers threatening animals and their ecosystem due to climate change and environmental destruction. And this is also the concept of images in the book that accompanies an eight-part Netflix series.
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Netflix series and book "Our Planet": The Ecosystems of the World"Before people can worry about something, they have to learn to love it first," says David Attenborough, the legendary British, now 92-year-old animal filmmaker and spokesman for the Netflix series in the original, in the SPIEGEL interview. "Most people today have no attachment to nature, so many of my programs show how wonderful, extraordinary and exciting it is." And this is also shown by the one-hour Netflix films.
Of course, text and film are all about how the world has already changed. But also "stories from every corner of the world, which testify to the resilience, so the resilience of nature - and show how it can be renewed," announces the Dumont-Verlag.
One of the creators of the book and series is the British director and producer Alastair Fothergill, who was also responsible for the great BBC documentaries "Our Blue Planet" and "Planet Earth" as well as the movie "Our Earth". For four years, shooting took place in 50 countries around the world, with 600 crewmembers.
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The project, in cooperation with the WWF, leads through ecosystems such as "Eiswelten", "Wüste", "Jungle" or "Hochsee". There are behind-the-scenes scenes like those in the Gulf of California, where drone technology has been used to capture unique shots of a blue whale, but also hurt a member of the film crew. The photos in the book come from well-known wildlife photographers like Art Wolfe, Paul Nicklen, George Steinmetz, Anup Shah, Ingo Arndt or Frans Lanting,
David Attenborough's conclusion from this project - and he agrees not only with the student demonstrators of "Fridays for Future": "Whether we acknowledge it or not, we are completely dependent on nature, it provides us with every bite food and every breath, it is the most precious thing we have and we must protect it, our future depends on our ability to act now. "