TV animal enthusiast Gordon Buchanan talks ahead of Shrewsbury show

The acclaimed TV wildlife cameraman is on the road with an evening that promises to entertain. Gordon will share personal recollections and answer questions about his globetrotting travels, delving into his world of weird, wild and wonderful wildlife.

The show will be illustrated with his own film footage and photography and reaches Shrewsbury’s Theatre Severn on October 9 and Warwick Arts Centre on October 11.

Gordon grew up in Mull, which offered freedom and a sense of wilderness.

He was passionate about wildlife as he grew up. “As a kid I was wildly passionate about spending time outdoors, it was the only thing that mattered to me. Thinking back I was always very bored indoors. There was nothing inside that compared to the adventures and excitement to be had out in the rain, wind, snow and occasional sunshine. Wildlife was part of that experience and I loved it but it wasn’t a junior naturalist. I didn’t have a binoculars, camera and almanac, just a pair of wellies.”

He started to make a film about leopards in Sri Lanka – and that’s what got him discovered.

“They are notoriously elusive cats and sightings were so few and far between that the film was going to fall flat on its face as a straight natural history documentary. My boss at the time, the producer Mike Birkhead realised that the film would have to be not a film about Leopards but a film about trying to make a film about Leopards. There was only me in the field so I filmed myself without the pressure of a whole crew looking and listening. Everything since stemmed from that.”

Gordon dominated our TV screens on the BBC over the festive period featuring a range of new series such as Elephant Family and Me (BBC Two), Life in the Snow (BBC One), Life in Polar Bear Land (BBC Two ) as well as an appearance presenting on the popular show Planet Earth with Sir David Attenborough. He is set to be a regular face on television in 2017 with two new BBC commissions to be announced for this autumn including a second series of Tribes, Predators and Me on BBC Two.

The star is well known for his long running Animal Family and Me television series. They feature jaw-dropping programmes that have seen him get up close and personal with some extraordinary creatures, as seen on Gorilla Family and Me, Snow Wolf Family and Me, Polar Bear Family and Me and the award winning Bear Family and Me.

“With the polar bear show, we were right on the spearhead of technology as far as being able to find a polar bear in the wilds of the Arctic and follow it. We had satellite collars and before those were around it simply would not have been possible to follow an animal in that way.

“It was incredible really to be there in spring and go back a couple of months later and find that same animal. You learn more about it. With the collar, we saw where she had been. We had a best guess of where she lost a cub. It opened up their life in the way we didn’t know before. We were following her intimately.”

He enjoys focusing on an individual animal, rather than a vast group. Somehow, that humanises the animal he is following and makes us, as viewers, relate more closely to it.

“I’m looking at animals in a different way, not just as species but as individuals with their own stories. If you follow a mother or a family with their offspring then you are witnessing them at their most vulnerable stage of life. It’s quite a revelation when you start looking at animals in that way. Every elephant or gorilla has a different experience from the next. So those projects have been some of the most rewarding I’ve done. I used to be a critic of that type of personification of wild animals, but that’s what we do. We’re human beings and we can’t look at any other species on the planet in any other way other than from our own perspective. It doesn’t matter what species, they are all subtly different, as humans are. You get a much bigger appreciation for any animal when you understand what it has gone through.”

Unsurprisingly, Gordon is passionate that we do more to protect our wild Earth. He is alarmed by the damage we cause to the environment and the effect that has on animals.

“The one thing is for sure that we need to care more about the wild environment and the animals that live there. We’ve got no right to sort of render the planet inhospitable or uninhabitable for any other creature. We’ve all been playing the same game of evolution over millions of years. It’s a not a bunny-huggy thing to say we all have equal rights – the animals and us. We’re one of the species that against all the odds has survived. It’s up to us to help others too.”