Sir David Attenborough’s Dynasties shows master’s touch still apparent

David Attenborough has a potent message for humans in Dynasties, his latest animal kingdom project | WATCH TRAILER

Sir David Attenborough in his Blue Planet II series.

Sir David Attenborough bounds on to a London stage, a giant spring in his step that belies his 92 years, decades of filming and stature as a national living treasure. The naturalist has fronted the latest BBC Earth documentary series Dynasties and his soothing drawl once again brings the animal kingdom into sharp focus.

“Is that me, 92?” he chuckles to The Australian after the series launch.

“It is just the same as it ­always was, I have had enormous good fortune … and I am very grateful that I am still involved. I am not in the shots: my expertise is now with the words. I fiddle with them and speak. To be still involved and in the business, and to see the new things happening, is a great privilege.’’

This time, after the hugely successful Blue Planet and Planet Earth, Attenborough turns to animal societies and the interaction of individuals within a particular group. And, like humans, there are matriarchs and patriarchs, feuds, war, famine and dealing with ­extremes of harsh weather

Dynasties took four years of intense filming among chimpanzees, emperor penguins, painted wolves, lions and tigers; Attenborough spent a week filming the opening and closing sequences in Africa to give the series his heavyweight imprimatur.

Attenborough is still so full of vigour that he delivered a key lecture at the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, where he was interviewed by Prince ­William.

Prince William, left, interviews Sir David Attenborough at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last month. Picture: AP

The message from his latest ­series is to bring about a renewed awareness of the need to give the animals space to survive and for humans “not to screw it up’’.

The opening episode focuses on a chimpanzee group on the edge of the Sahara in Senegal, and the dominance of its alpha male, David, who has no obvious allies amid an increasingly agitated group of younger males fighting for survival in a fire-ravaged dry season.

At the end of the episode Attenborough stresses that the country’s chimpanzees are in peril because of goldmining and that 80 per cent of chimps have disappeared over the past 20 years.

Painted wolves, also known as the African hunting dog, feature in Dynasties. Here, Blacktip’s ‘army’ goes into full stalking mode. Third from the front is Hornet, Blacktip’s alpha male.

“When you look at the range of locations in Dynasties — going from the South Pole to West Africa — the common worry is allowing animals their space. In every case, except the Antarctic, we show the encroachment of the human population,” he says.

“These animals are under great pressure, but how do you solve this? It’s a huge problem not just for animal behaviour specialists but also for politicians. It’s about raising people’s awareness and recognising animals’ right to space.”

A baby chimp bonds with another chimpanzee during filming of Dynasties in Senegal, in western Africa. Goldmining and human encroachment is destroying their habitat.

But the series, superbly filmed in inhospitable locations, has raised some ethical dilemmas. In the chimpanzee episode — and here is a spoiler alert — one chimp is left for dead. The camera team, which had become quite fond of this chimp, had to stand back.

“All you can do there is watch tragedy,” Attenborough says. “But tragedy is part of life and you have to show it.

“To have done anything else would only have made matters worse and distorted the truth.”

He tells The Australian about the time when he was filming many years ago for a week in the same area of Senegal.

A tiger nicknamed Raj Bhera bursts out of the long grass where she ambushed a male peacock in full courtship display during the filming of Dynasties.

“These chimps are habituated to seeing rather large, naked, white-faced versions of themselves,” he says. “You never initiate things, you are passive, and so they think you are just another strange thing wandering about. They took no notice of me at all.

“At one stage they had a ­mutual grooming session and they formed a chain of about three or four, and sitting on the end — just as far away as you to me — was a junior male.

“I thought, foolishly, maybe I should be in this. I cautiously put a finger out and this thing let out a scream and a huge show of teeth and aggression.

“I had stepped over the line. You don’t become an operative — you are a spectator only, and if you forget that you are in trouble.’’

In one Dynasties episode, though, the filmmakers did intervene, attracting both acclamation and criticism.

Hundreds of emperor penguins were sheltering from a huge storm near Atka Bay and had tumbled into a gully. The adults had to make the dreadful decision of leaving their chicks to try to climb the steep ice walls.

After several days of watching the helpless situation, the film crew of three dug a set of small steps in the ice so some of the penguins could try to escape.

In this scene captured in Dynasties the adult lionesses Charm, left, and Sienna groom Charm’s two youngest cubs.

Executive producer Mike Gunton defends the film crew’s actions. He tells the BBC that Attenborough told him he would have done the same.

“There were no animals going to suffer by intervening,” Gunton says.

“It wasn’t dangerous. You weren’t touching the animals and it was just felt by doing this … they had the opportunity to not have to keep slipping down the slope.

“We talked to a scientist there and said if we can just reduce that slipperiness of the slope, we’re not going to touch any of them.

“That might mean they can find their way out.

“And that will mean a significant number of these precious creatures will survive.”

Gunton believes that there would have been even more criticism if people had known the film crew had the chance to save so many of the penguins but had stood by mutely.

As penguin chicks approach a month old, they become too big to be carried on their parents’ feet. The filmmakers intervened when chicks were stranded in a gully, unable to climb the steep ice walls after being abandoned by the adults during a storm.

He says the series was made in the knowledge that Attenborough — with whom he has worked for more than three decades — would be scripting it.

He turns to Attenborough and says: “Your influence permeates the whole program. This is David’s voice telling the stories and his approach we are still thinking about, even in the field.”

Attenborough says that during his long career, the behaviour of animals hasn’t changed, unlike our understanding of it and the ability to bring it to the screen.

“I’ve seen lowlight filming and now the latest thing is the drone. The drone has transformed filmmaking,’’ he says.

“It is perhaps a sobering thought that almost all the very big technical advances in my time have come from the defence industry: to see in the dark, how to see from above, to track things, to put electronic tags on things — all this has come from the complicated defence industry.’’

And there’s the irony — that the biggest and most aggressive human industry has helped bring the vulnerability of animals to the screen, and Attenborough’s point is not lost on anyone.

Dynasties will be broadcast on the Nine Network from February 16.