Polar bears precipitated Netflix walrus deaths, new Attenborough TV particular reveals

Reposted from Polar Bear Science

Posted on November four, 2019 | Feedback Off on Polar bears precipitated Netflix walrus deaths, new Attenborough TV particular reveals

Considerations I raised earlier this yr – see right here and right here – concerning the Sir David Attenborough’s Netflix walrus tragedy porn episode have been vindicated by a brand new Attenborough BBC TV particular known as Seven Worlds, One Planet (Asia). It reveals movie footage of polar bears – taken by drones – driving walrus off the identical Siberian cliff that was proven within the Netflix documentary movie launched in April.

Few of the reporters who coated this story bothered to analyze additional regardless of the proof offered on my own and others that polar bears and drones had been the possible triggers for these deaths: they merely took Attenborough and the movie crew at their phrase.

Netflix director Sophie Lanfear and cameraman Jamie McPherson insisted there have been no polar bears within the neighborhood on the time they shot their movie footage however this was clearly not the case. They knew that bears had been concerned as a result of they filmed them menacing the walrus!

It’s now evident that McPherson filmed the 20 or so polar bears stalking walrus on the high of the Ryrkaypiy cliff and driving them over the sting for the BBC episode only some days previous to filming a couple of walrus falling with no bears current on the cliff high for the Netflix movie in September 2017. The bears had been shut sufficient when the Netflix sequence was filmed to converge instantly on the rookery to feed on carcasses as soon as the walrus herd left the seashore.

Fats, wholesome polar bears (not desperately hungry ones) had been certainly concerned in these walrus deaths and so had been drones. Lack of sea ice was not a big issue.

Press launch from the International Warming Coverage Basis: Falling Walruses: Attenborough Tacitly Admits Netflix Deception (four November 2019).

London, four November: Sir David Attenborough finds himself on the centre of one other scandal over misleading filmmaking.

Again within the spring, he was accused of deceiving viewers when he claimed, in his Netflix present Our Planet, that walruses had been falling off Siberian clifftops on account of local weather change.

This was proven to be unfaithful by Canadian biologist and mammal professional Dr Susan Crockford, who described the ample scientific literature, relationship again many many years, displaying that walruses have all the time taken to the land, and even fallen from clifftops. She additionally identified that the footage Attenborough used to make his case appeared to have come from a well-documented incident when walruses had been pushed over cliffs by polar bears.

Yesterday, in his new BBC documentary Seven Worlds, One Planet, Attenborough once more confirmed falling walruses, however this time making it fairly clear that polar bears had been driving them off the cliff. Remarkably, nevertheless, the footage he used seems to be from the identical incident and shot by the identical cameraman as proven in his Netflix documentary, regardless of the producers’ claims on the time that no bears had been within the neighborhood.

Attenborough due to this fact appears to be tacitly admitting that the claims he made within the Netflix movie, and the denials issued by the present’s digital camera workforce and producers, had been unfaithful.

GWPF director Dr Benny Peiser welcomed Attenborough’s climb-down.

“We are able to solely be happy that Sir David has stepped again from the misleading claims he made in his Netflix present. He and the producers ought to apologise for the trick they pulled and withdraw the Netflix movie that has badly misled and unnecessarily traumatised hundreds of thousands of individuals and information media all over the world”.

Of us within the UK can see the walrus sequence of the Seven Worlds, One Planet Asia episode right here whereas these exterior the UK can discover the essence of it right here (with a lot of photographs).

“100,000 of them, nearly all the world’s inhabitants are right here”

[well no, actually: the US Fish and Wildlife Service estimates that up to 283,213 Pacific walrus exist, see USFW Federal Register pg. 46643, 1st paragraph]

Walrus falling off cliffs are pure occasions: they don’t seem to be brought on by latest declines in summer time sea ice.

Earlier movies:

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