INTERVIEW: Naturalist Liz Bonnin
The ‘Planet Earth II Live in Concert’ arena tour will be hosted by science and natural history TV presenter Liz Bonnin. With a masters in wild animal biology, Liz has presented over 40 primetime programmes including ‘Blue Planet Live’, ‘Super Smart Animals’, ‘Galapagos’ and ‘Horizon’.
With her recent landmark BBC One documentary ‘Drowning in Plastic’, Liz investigated the ocean plastic crisis, with her hard-hitting environmental reporting raising the level of public debate on this important topic. Here Sally Thomson was able to discuss with Liz her passion for our planet prior to the start of the tour.
Sally: When did your love of the world and all it’s creatures begin?
Liz: Well it definitely started when I was a kid. I grew up in the south of France in the hills above Nice and we had a little wood beside the house. Myself and my sister used to play outdoors all of the time. There were snakes and hedgehogs and spiders and birds…and we had a ball! I knew that, without thinking about it then, that that’s what set me off with this passion for wildlife. I used to stare at the birds for hours, wondering how their eyes moved in their sockets and I really wanted to just understand how it all worked, down to the chemical equations that make up all of these reactions.
So that was a natural progress for you then, to go into biochemistry?
Exactly! It all started in the woods in the south of France! That’s why when I give talks in schools, I make sure to tell that story because it doesn’t take a lot to remember our connection to nature and what’s important, you just have to be in amongst nature to be inspired and to reignite your natural curiosity that we’re all born with, and with that comes an inherent want to protect our natural world. It reminds you that we’re all connected to it. What you are doing is highlighting the dangers that the world’s creatures are facing, particularly when you went on to do ‘Drowning in Plastic’.
I know when I watched it my heart bled, but being so close to it when you made to programme, you must have found it difficult?
I wish that as a communicator of the natural world, I could just be celebrating it and continuing to inspire people about all of these incredible creatures that we share the planet with, but unfortunately I am living through a time where we are experiencing the greatest existential threat to our future, and it is very clear that the way we live on this planet is not sustainable and is damaging not only the health of the wildlife we share the planet with, but is ultimately damaging our health and threatening our future.
I feel a responsibility to communicate those things. As we set off making the plastics film, I knew what we were going to be filming, but it really did hit me like a ton of bricks to see it with my own eyes. It’s hard to describe. It’s been really moving and difficult, but also I feel like I have a very well-stoked fire in my belly now that feels like it won’t be extinguished. It is my responsibility to engage with the public in order for us all to become part of the solution.
I recently watched the trailer for Planet Earth II Live in concert. Isn’t that going to be fantastic on the big screen?!
It’s going to be magnificent; I can’t wait! Obviously it’s an extension and adaptation of the iconic series, but I think bringing it to a ginormous screen like that and then having a 74 piece orchestra playing the music of Hans Zimmer, it’s going to be a very emotive and very powerful experience.
I think we are desperately in need of those types of experiences to help remind us of the beauty of the natural world, and the beauty of humanity as well.
Our ability to write music and to be capable of making those types of programmes, and for us to be all together in these huge arenas having that connection is a much-needed experience, and I for one am very much looking forward to it.
I think we are desperately in need of those types of experiences to help remind us of the beauty of the natural world, and the beauty of humanity as well.
Some of the things we see in these programmes can be shocking, such as the killer whales going after the seals. But we of course have to remember that they have to survive too!
You see for me I don’t find any of it shocking, isn’t that strange? And it’s really weird but I’m always rooting for the predator! Obviously there’s tension and it’s quite a powerful experience to watch, but I’m always rooting for the predator because from my studies I’ve seen just how difficult it is for a tiger to get its prey. It’s something like 1 in 100 attempts are successful. So I celebrate that, that’s part of nature and I think it’s a beautiful thing. There is an iconic moment in Planet Earth II with the iguana and the snakes… Ah that one! Okay, I have watched that sequence four times, and every time I find my screaming ‘COME ON’ at the camera. Funnily enough with that one I really want the iguana to escape! That’s so funny, with me saying I root for the predators.
That is one of the most magnificent scenes I have ever seen, not least because of this almost inconceivable situation, with all these snakes coming out of the crevasses of the volcanic rocks, but how it was shot! You can not underestimate how difficult it is to make that sequence work. The smoothness of how the camera works was absolute perfection. So not only is it a celebration of the magnificent wildlife we share the planet with, it’s a celebration of these incredibly talented filmmakers, who sit there for days and days to get the magical shots that will affect us to our very core. It’s just wonderful.
Am I right in hearing that you went a kilometre underwater in the Galapagos?
Yes! We were on this research vessel for two weeks, joining all these scientists at the tops of their fields who were investigating different aspects of these islands and how to better protect them. At one point we got into this submersible and went down to a thousand meters, to a part of the Galapagos that nobody had ever been to before, so I truly felt like an astronaut of Earth’s inner space, rather than its outer. Everything I pointed to the scientists would say ‘Yep. New species…Yep, don’t what that is, never seen one of those before’. So we were discovering new life at those depths. It was the most incredible experience.
It must be dark down there?
It’s pitch black, so you have these types of sharks down there called Chimaera, who do have these big, bulbous eyes. There’s no iris, it’s just this big, white circle of an eye, which is supposed to help it absorb any smidgen of light that there might be down there, and it’s just a surprisingly colourful place in the crevasses of all the rocks. Galapagos are all volcanic islands, so what we were doing is following the flanks of the volcano all the way down to the depths. We were down there for seven hours and it passed by like we were down there for an hour, time sort of stands still down there. It was a thrilling experience.
I was watching you recently talking about the African jungle, and you spoke about chimpanzees, and how much they fight. You showed how much the alpha male will fight to protect what is his, and it is a bit sinister!
They’re not the only species that have to fiercely protect their place in the hierarchy. The males often are exhausted having to protect their females from usurpers to the throne as such, but chimpanzees in particular can be very violent and because we are so closely related to them I suppose it shouldn’t be a surprise that they all have different personalities, and sometimes you just get a really nasty character. At the end of the day you can argue that the nastier the male, the more successful he will be because it all boils down to him and his offspring and protecting his gene pool. I suppose it’s like when male lions get rid of any cubs that aren’t their own There is infanticide in many species. It’s all about making sure you have as many offspring as possible, so if you kill a female’s offspring then you can mate with her straight away.
Are there parts of the world or creatures that you would like to visit/see for the first time?
Yes. Snow leopards. I need to see a snow leopard. And part of it is because it is so difficult to see them now. They are extremely elusive and live in an extremely inhospitable part of the planet. They’re probably the most elusive cat, so that’s the dream. I will fall crying if I ever see one in the wild. They are the most glorious animals. Actually, it was on Planet Earth II, and again it is a scene that I’ve watched about three times and it always brings me to tears; the first time I heard the vocalisation of a snow leopard. I had never heard that before. And the fact that because our technology is improving, Planet Earth II was able to capture this glorious snow leopard at the top of this mountain that was vocalising. It brings me to tears every time I hear it, it’s the most glorious sound in the world.
In terms of the natural world, I think it is all magnificent. I really do. Even with something that might look to us to be violent, or a little bit uncomfortable to watch, I think that the more we understand how animals live and all of their adaptations that have allowed them to find solutions to all of their problems in order to survive – the more I understand it, the more I am in awe of it
Are they as endangered as other leopards and big cats?
Yes. I mean, the Amur leopard is the most endangered cat, but all big cats are facing extinction. They are all incredibly threatened and their populations are dwindling.
We’ve spoken about the man-made situation with plastic. But is there anything else in the natural world that you have seen that has shocked you?
In terms of the natural world, I think it is all magnificent. I really do. Even with something that might look to us to be violent, or a little bit uncomfortable to watch, I think that the more we understand how animals live and all of their adaptations that have allowed them to find solutions to all of their problems in order to survive – the more I understand it, the more I am in awe of it and the more it makes me humble and very small in comparison. So I find it all too wondrous to ever think that something is too much or too shocking.
The dates for Planet Earth II Live in Concert are as follows:
- Thursday 6 March Motorpoint Arena, Cardiff
- Friday 27 March Manchester Arena, Manchester
- Saturday 28 March First Direct Arena, Leeds
- Sunday 29 March O2 Arena (matinee), London
- Sunday 29 March O2 Arena (evening), London
- Wednesday 1 April 3Arena, Dublin
- Friday 3 April Resort World Arena Birmingham
- Saturday 4 April SSE Hydro Arena, Glasgow
Tickets are available from www.planetearth2live.uk.
