Michael Schlamberger
There are few places on earth that have such a diverse variety of terrain and range of climates concentrated in a relatively small area - temperate coastline, scorching arid deserts and tundra, tropical rainforests and frozen snowcapped mountains. And there are few places that are as heavily exploited by humans, yet remain a wilderness.
This film, three years in the making, The remote forests of Kalkalpen National Park in Austria, the largest area of wilderness in the European Alps, have been left untouched by humans for nearly a quarter of a century in order to return to their natural, primeval state. The landscape regenerates itself in dramatic cycles of growth and decay, and this bold hands-off method of conservation yields salient results: the lynx, absent from the area for 115 years, has returned.
Wolves hunt their prey in the valleys between high-ranging dunes, bears and lynxes wander through dense primeval forest, and the big lakes are a magnet for hundreds of bird species. That is the so-called «Balkan». Today the «Balkans» stand for a Europe that hardly exists elsewhere. The mountains of Montenegro harbour one of Europe's last primeval forests with trees over 400 years of age. In the difficultly accessible hinterland we find the Tara National Park with the deepest gorge in the Karst Mountains - the 1.300 meters deep Tara gorge. Nearby Lake Skadar is home for 270 species of birds; no other lake in Europe can claim such diversity. Europe's last coastal forest area can be found in Albania and in Bulgaria and Romania huge bat colonies live in the cave-dotted mountains. In Serbia one can cross the «European Sahara», a desert covering a surface of 30.000 hectares.
Natural World is a nature documentary television series broadcast annually on BBC Two and regarded by the BBC as its flagship natural history brand. It is currently the longest-running series in its genre on British television, with more than 400 episodes broadcast since its inception in 1983. Natural World is produced by the BBC Natural History Unit in Bristol, but individual programmes can be in-house productions, collaborative productions with other broadcasters or films made and distributed by independent production companies and purchased by the BBC. Natural World programmes are often broadcast as PBS Nature episodes in the USA. Since 2008, most Natural World programmes have been shot and broadcast in high definition.
The Tale of 1001 waterfalls takes place day and night right in the heart of Croatia. For here lying hidden among rough karst mountains is a “Natural Wonder World” – the Plitvice Lakes, one of the oldest Nationalparks in Europe. The Plitvice Lakes are embedded in a grandiose karst region. The film follows the course of the water taking it’s wondrous paths through the limestone. Rain and snow seep through the porous layers, cavities and caves to disappear from the surface but once in the depths these small water veins collect to mighty torrents.
