Judi Dench’s Wild Borneo Adventure

In this spectacular 2 part series, we follow Dame Judi Dench as she delves deep into one of the few untouched rainforests remaining in South East Asia with some of the most diverse wildlife on the planet. Passionate about trees and orangutans, she embarks on a wild adventure to Borneo, the world’s third-largest island with experts as her guides.

Each day offers another amazing interaction with the animals. There are close up encounters with orangutans, sun bears, elephants, crocodiles and hornbills. Borneo also boasts the tallest tropical trees in the world – the tallest was recently discovered here at over 100 metres tall and Judi even gets to climb one.

She glimpses amazing flying creatures like the weird gliding mammal, the Kubong, that can fly for over 100 metres. Then there are more than a million bats, a dung beetle called Bob and a snake she names James Bond. As the jungle comes alive at night she learns that the insects here are perhaps the most varied on earth – there could be as many as 80 000 species – nearly one-tenth of the number on the planet.

Travelling down one of Borneo’s mightiest rivers, the Kinabatangan, she goes on an extraordinary crocodile search where young crocodiles are plucked from the river by hand and adult crocodiles wrestled and tagged- all in the name of science. Finally, she explores the wonderful marine life – the forests of coral that fringe the shores of this wonderful tropical island.

It’s a magical wildlife adventure but one that also explores Judi’s passion for conservation she shares with her ‘chap’, naturalist David Mills. Together they learn how the loss of rainforest for timber and for palm oil is having a devastating impact on the planet by destroying the lungs of the world. But she also learns that there is hope, discovering an area three times the size of London is going to be reclaimed as a protected forest.

They learn how important the rainforest is as the lungs of the world and how the animals are actually helping us by maintaining the health of this unique environment and helping save the planet.