BBC Wildlife - UK (2019-12)

BBC Wildlife December 2019 Seven Worlds, One Planet

W LRUSES

13

SOUTH AMERICA

FIELD NOTES

C

An Andean bear, South

America’s only native

bear species, rests

in the cloud forests

of Ecuador. Skilled

climbers, they can

be found up to 30m

above the ground.

Bear: BBC NHU; cameraman: Lucas Salter Patterson/BBC Studios

“These days,” says John Shier,

“a lot of filming can be done

from vehicles, either for

convenience or because the

local wildlife might eat you. But

not in Patagonia. You drive to

where you think the cats might

be and then start hiking, with

30kg of camera and tripod on

your shoulder. I love it, but

sometimes I hate it; like when

you’ve already hiked 10km up

and over a mountain, only to

see the puma stalk a guanaco

up and over the next steep

hillside. The

legs and lungs

burn, your back aches, your

body screams ‘stop’, but your

mind screams even louder that

if you quit now, the cat is going

to make a kill and you’ll miss it.

So, you pick up pace and get

up one more hill, usually to find

you haven’t missed anything at

all. At that point, you catch your

breath, stretch your back and

then keep going, because

sooner or later there will be a

hunt and you have to do

whatever it takes to be there.

By the end of filming, I’d

walked about 250km and worn

holes in the soles of my boots.

But in an era when most

ground- breaking wildlife

sequences depend on the

newest cameras and

stabilisation systems, there’s

something really rewarding

about working on a shoot like

this, one that’s old school, that

relies on field craft and grit.”

CameramanJohnShieron

howheworeholesinhis

boots tracking down a puma.

overing about 12

per cent of the world’s land surface,

South America is the fourth largest

continent, and it is packed with

geographical superlatives. The

Amazon is arguably the world’s

greatest river, with an average

discharge five times greater than the

Congo, which takes second place.

The highest uninterrupted waterfall

is Angel Falls, which drops from the

ancient Auyán-tepuí in Venezuela, and

the spectacular falls at Iguaçu on the

Brazil–Argentina border make up the

largest waterfall system in the world.

The Andes form the longest mountain

chain on land, in which Lake Titicaca

is the world’s highest navigable lake

and Salar de Uyuni is the largest salt

flat. The Atacama Desert is the driest

non-polar place on the planet.

Ice field big cats

In the south, the continent

pushes farther south than any

other, apart from Antarctica,

so upland areas have their

own ice fields – the Northern and

Southern Patagonian ice fields,

shared by Chile and Argentina.

It was in southern Chilean

Patagonia’s Torres del Paine National

Park that the South America filming

team was able to capture remarkable

pictures of an animal so elusive that

it has rarely been filmed hunting in

the wild. It is the puma or mountain

lion. The species is relatively

common, with sightings from Alaska

to Tierra del Fuego, but it has the

unfortunate habit, at least for film-

makers, of disappearing into the

landscape. Executive producer Jonny

Keeling knows this only too well.

“I’ve been to Patagonia three or

four times hoping to film pumas

hunting guanaco – not in a macabre

way, but just to see how they went

about it. We had many near misses,

but that was all, so the crew went

Cameraman John Shier carries

over 30kg of camera gear as

he looks for pumas in Torres

del Paine National Park.