Nature's Epic Journeys: Caribou

Series 1

Review

by David Butcher

Who’d be a caribou? As Liz Bonnin’s migration-watching series moves to Canada and Alaska we follow the ruminants’ gruelling spring migration to the coastal plains, where 70,000 pregnant females give birth within a few days of each other.

And at that point, having braved wolves and bears and crossed torrential rivers, they’re in clover. Or rather, in cotton grass – the nutritious pasture they’ve come 500 miles for, as it sprouts in the June sunshine. Time to take it easy? No, because then billions of mosquitos arrive to make life hell: a caribou can lose half a pint of blood in a day to them. So, not an easy life but a heck of a spectacle. The sequence of the wolf clinging on by his teeth as a desperate caribou tries to shake him off is extraordinary.

Summary

Documentary following 100,000 caribou as they face bears, wolves, frozen rivers and rugged mountains to undertake the world's longest land migration. Liz Bonnin and a team of scientists track the herd as they travel 5,000km through the Arctic wilderness of Canada and Alaska, revealing insights into the lives of individual animals as they attempt the epic journey. Cameras capture the caribou as they fight to reach their calving grounds before they give birth - failure would spell disaster.