Episode 2 Expedition Borneo

Deep in the heart of the island of Borneo

is a lost world of forests, mountains and ravines.

It hides an abundance of wildlife.

And it's disappearing fast.

Now the BBC has assembled a team of scientists, mountaineers

-and filmmakers to explore this great unknown wilderness...

-Ah, got it!

..before it's too late.

BBC camp, this is Steve on the Kuli team are you there, over?

Last night on a remote peak, three climbers lost radio contact with the base camp.

Without this we have no link whatsoever to base.

If anything goes wrong we're really up the creek without a paddle.

The jungle is a tough place for human beings.

Parasites, injuries and humidity

are all taking their toll on those at base camp.

For environmental scientist Dr Tara Shine, it's all part of expedition life.

The river's in floods and has been for four days,

which means that getting anywhere is really difficult.

And everything is damp so we all have this...

we all are starting to smell the same.

I think we're all eating the same stuff so our sweat is kind of smelling the same.

And then all of our clothes smell like the same mixture of sweat,

damp and river water.

But worst of all, for the people who are unwell

we have run completely out of toilet roll. It's quite nice(!)

The team is exploring an isolated canyon called Imbak.

Like much of the rainforest, it's under threat from logging.

They're working with local conservationists to find and record the animals that live here.

Their aim, to help preserve this extraordinary habitat forever.

The special thing about Imbak is that it is a remnant

of this pristine forest that there's hardly any of left

and that fact that there is so much wildlife still here

and it's all in such good condition that it really is worth them looking after into the future.

In just a week they've had remarkable success.

First they had an unexpected sighting of a tarsier.

Then they discovered a healthy population of gibbons in the canyon,

and an unhealthy population of scorpions in the base camp.

Now part of the team is setting off on a new mission.

It's wildlife cameraman Gordon Buchanan's biggest challenge yet.

Tara and I are heading off in search of some elephants.

So I think it's gonna be quite interesting

cos they range far and wide so we're gonna have to be pretty mobile.

Borneo is home to extremely rare jungle elephants,

found nowhere else in the world.

Once numerous, they're now under threat of extinction.

These elephants roam huge distances

and have the ability to melt into the jungle.

The team wants to track them down and film them,

but it won't be easy.

Come on Gordon, get it together.

As Tara and Gordon get started, five miles away on Mount Kuli

another part of the team is struggling to reach the summit.

Mount Kuli group, Kuli group. This is BBC base radio check.

A radio failure means the climbers have lost contact with the base

but they've decided to press on regardless.

Mount Kuli group, Kuli group. This is BBC base radio check.

Take it easy up there.

The climbers are vulnerable, if they have an accident, Base Camp will have no way of knowing.

Steve Backshall's aim as a climber is to reach the top,

but more importantly for the expedition

his goal as a biologist will be to find what lives at the summit.

The rock itself is not very solid.

Grim, you don't want to be stepping on that stuff.

But we're the first people ever to have touched this rock, ever to have gone further than here.

Every step is a mystery.

He's climbed some of the world's highest mountains

but these jungle cliffs are rain-soaked, slippery and treacherous.

Steve's leading the climb.

A risky but necessary job to secure a rope for his fellow climber, Tim Fogg.

Oh, yuck!

You've gone quiet, Steve.

How's it going?

Everything's revoltingly loose.

THUNDER RUMBLES

Oh, great(!)

Thunder again.

-That's not really what I want to be hearing.

-No.

Stuck up there covered in metal gear.

Back in the base camp, a leading scientist more used to a laboratory

is acclimatizing to jungle life.

Dr George McGavin is from Oxford University and is a world expert on insects.

There's a process by which the jungle migrates

into wherever you live.

The wet, the mud, steam.

Love it.

Fortunately for George,

well over 75% of all animals in the jungle are insects.

I sort of want to hold her still because she has got the most immense jaws on her, these huge big jaws.

Oooh! Ow!

Where's she gone now?

I love my job.

Rainforests are also home to an extraordinary variety of frogs, lizards and snakes.

It's a passion for these creatures that has lured Professor Tyrone Hayes

away from the University of California.

Hello, Tyrone!

Tyrone has arrived. After two days of I presume awkward journey.

I lost my bet, I said he'd be here at ten.

I lose my extra square of toilet paper!

You made it.

Good to see you.

Wow! Arghh!

George, are you OK? Are you ok?

I think I've fractured my pelvis.

It was a bit of an impact that.

That was a real thump.

Tyrone is from the States and I'm from Oxford so it's a sort of East meets West.

Handshake across the pond.

He's into frogs and toads and snakes which are fine, you know,

but they have too few legs for me.

I like things with six or more legs.

Anything with less than six legs I find inherently dull.

Everything's new. Everything I see will be for the first time.

I'll do anything. I don't know if I'm ready for it, we'll find out.

Steve's finding that Mount Kuli is a series of demanding cliff faces and gruelling scrambles.

This mossy forest is one of the most mystical environments on the planet.

And everything hung

in this green carpet. It's beautiful.

There's none of the huge trees

we had lower down.

Instead they're all very spindly and small

and just fighting to get some purchase on the steep ground.

The going has been so tough that Steve and Tim have averaged just half a mile a day.

Now they can now look back on their progress.

-First proper view.

-Yeah.

-Excellent.

Lovely.

Far off in the valley below Tara's picking up unmistakable signs of elephants.

One way that you can tell how old an elephant dung is is by the flies.

So this is super fresh warm dung

and these flies which are slightly bigger, indicate that this is less than one hour old.

And then by the end of four hours there's no flies which is quite a clever system.

LOW RUMBLING

You feel your stomach, it's as if you're kind of feeling nauseous

and it's just these really low bassy, bassy noises.

(So far all you can see are moving leaves,

(you know leaves that are getting eaten.)

To get close to the elephants without being trampled,

they must rely on a local tracker.

Bert works for the WWF and understands elephants better than anyone in Borneo.

ELEPHANT TRUMPETS IN DISTANCE

The team must speak in whispers.

These dangerous elephants are easily spooked.

Despite weighing over a ton,

the elephants disappear quietly into the dense foliage.

They travel along familiar routes between feeding grounds,

so as a first step to saving their habitat,

the team must keep up with them and find out exactly where they are going.

The climbers have forced their way up 1,200 arduous metres

and believe they're just a day away from the top.

Brrr! Cold though!

We've hit rock

for the second time.

But this time it's a far more serious proposition.

This is right below

the top of the ridge.

Very, very steep, covered in all kinds of rubbish and really serious looking.

Check it first but that hold up high left looks great.

This isn't climbing this is gardening!

That sounded just a little bit loose, did it?

-Yep.

-Yeah.

The loose rock is a real worry.

That's a real problem, you know, because you can't trust anything.

-Can you get anything in there?

-In there, yeah.

-Good stuff.

He's got to get in as much gear as possible

because the consequences of any sort of significant fall on this just....

don't go there that's not on.

Any news on what you can see?

Clouds are rolling in.

It's beautiful over the forest.

Excellent. Jolly good.

And none of it has ever seen a human footprint.

Except down there, which is where our base camp is.

These are insects, that's for sure.

Way down under the canopy, the two scientists are getting down to business.

Snake hunting.

We'll soon know if he finds one.

There'll be a shriek.

In the damp of the jungle a fallen tree soon begins to decay.

Insects feed on the wood and predators move in to eat them.

-That's a big tree.

-Look inside, it's hollow all the way through.

Oh, my goodness.

That might be worth a little investigation.

What was that about not going down dark holes?

Oh, yeah, it's hollow way to the end.

-It's amazing.

-I'll go partly in and just see how humid it is.

-Oh no, you should go in first.

-I'm not going in! I've got a wife and two kids at home.

I have a wife and child.

If there is a snake in there that would be a bad thing.

Oh, my goodness!

It is absolutely vast!

My goodness, this is spectacular.

The roof is just covered in little tiny flying insects,

and little tiny flies.

It's just shaking, shaking and shaking.

Presumably it's aware that I'm here and it's shaking to try and avoid being eaten.

-I'm snake hunting for you, Tyrone.

-Hope you don't find a cobra in there George!

It's late in the afternoon and the mountaineers reach a plateau.

The climb is taking its toll,

not least on the third member of the team, the man behind the camera, Johnny Rogers.

What about you buddy? How you doing?

Safe to say I'm absolutely exhausted.

Trying to get this camera up

is hell.

It's a nightmare.

When you're scared and you're exhausted and torn to shreds like we are.

Everything starts going wrong,

every piece of kit catches on all the stuff you are going past...

And it's just feeling like a horror story at the moment.

But hey, we're getting there and we're closer to the top.

Just strolling around to try and get a decent look at the peak. We came across this little fella.

He's a rhino beetle, this is the male.

You can see this enlarged spike or horn on its head

that the males use for combat.

Very impressive little fella. Look at that.

LAUGHTER

We've got basically everything in here.

We've got herbivores, scavengers, we've got carnivores eating them.

It's a whole little ecosystem.

George has crawled 20 metres into the rotting tree.

It's a natural sauna where humidity is 100%

and the temperature is over 40 degrees.

Wouldn't surprise me at all if there was, you know,

not one new species in here but several just...

Oh, look at that quick. Quick, quick, quick on the wall!

Cave cricket, look at the size of it.

Oh, wow!

Tyrone, I've found a gecko. This is what you call a result.

I really hope this is something good for you.

Anything's good. Wow! Look at that.

Anything I catch I'll take it back to make sure we have a positive ID.

One of the goals is to identify and find as many species,

get an idea of the biodiversity in the area.

We're releasing everything.

It'll come back home exactly where we caught it.

The elephants' trail has led Tara and Gordon to the very edge of the jungle,

and to clear signs that humans are nearby.

They're still hunting here.

This is an illegal device.

ELEPHANT TRUMPETS LOUDLY

That made me jump out of my skin!

< LOW GROWLING

There's something wrong.

TRUMPETING

The young male before them appears agitated and could charge.

Bert edges forward alone and stands his ground.

They're very big, scary animals.

And their noises just really go right through your body.

And you're very aware that in here a lot of the trees are very small

and what you're supposed to do when an elephant comes is hide behind a tree.

If I hide behind that tree it's not going to make any impression!

If you run away, run away, run away.

They are still afraid.

After a hard day's climb, the mountaineers rehydrate their rations

and drink out of makeshift cups.

We're giving it a good boil, because it's river water and there's all kinds of nasties in there.

Kill them off good and proper.

It's not meant to be cold in the rain forest

but we got cold today.

I tell you what though I seriously believe

that tomorrow we're gonna be standing on the summit.

I think that we've done all the hard work, we've done all the real nasty thrashing.

I reckon we're gonna get up top and it's gonna be plain sailing.

Tara and Gordon's search has brought them to a major river.

This group crossing to that side.

Markings on the bank show that a herd of elephants has swum all the way across to the other side.

This ecosystem along the sides of the river is quite special.

It's got a really high biodiversity so even just in terms of monkeys

there's any number that you can see.

Different types of leaf monkeys, macaques, proboscis monkeys...

Highly endangered, proboscis monkeys live only in Borneo

and congregate at rivers to feed on the mangrove.

Only the males have these bizarre noses,

it's thought that the females find them attractive.

Here the government has recognised

that this ecosystem needs attention to looking after it.

This narrow river corridor may be protected

but it's far too small for the elephants who roam over huge areas foraging for food.

Most of this whole area was logged in the past and the big problem now

is that instead of an elephant meandering through a lowland forest to get to where he wants to go,

he has to plough through somebody's plantation.

Probably gobbles plants on the way causing quite a lot of destruction

and so there's growing problems of conflict between people and the elephants.

Bert finds the spot where the herd has clambered up the bank.

The footprints and damage to crops show how recently the elephants passed through.

Yeah, really dry and breakable.

Here, they've barged their way into a banana crop.

They did quite a lot of damage, didn't they?

They really rip off big bits.

And all the nice green shoots as well.

The real indication of their strength is they can just pick this up

as if it was like a stick in the ground.

If you try and pull one of these out the ground you'd be there for about half an hour.

There's just immense strength in their trunk.

You see the footprint here.

-Yeah.

-It's the nail.

-Ah, it's the toes.

-Yeah.

-15 plus, yeah.

-You think?

And that, that again you tell by how much destruction, the size of the path they leave behind them?

A decade ago this farmland was jungle

but the elephants are creatures of habit and still try to travel along familiar routes,

destroying crops in their path.

In an attempt to stop them, some farmers take extreme measures.

So they put big, something in this end, light it down there.

Just to scare the elephant.

They do three key things. One is they've dug this trench.

The second is they have this electric fence.

And the third thing is that at night when they hear the elephants they come out

and light fires and set off these cannon to make noise and flames to keep the elephants away.

On Mount Kuli one final cliff stands between the team and the summit.

With only enough room for one man at a time,

Steve will film himself as he climbs.

Two cameras in the helmet.

One looking forward to see what I see.

One looking backwards at my face.

Probably seeing looks of abject terror

while I'm climbing.

All covered with grime, overgrown

and very, very slippery.

As lead, climber Steve has to forge a way ahead

without dislodging rocks that could kill his team-mates below.

Need to keep checking all the time that the rocks are solid.

Loose rock, look at that.

Need to be careful that I don't send that down to the guys' heads.

It's been a hard slog but at last the climb is almost over.

Ah, that's it! Pretty much as far as I can go.

I guess I'm going to have to hack my way through

this vegetation here.

But for the moment

I think I'll try and set up a spot to bring the boys up.

Sit back and enjoy the view.

Stunning.

All you can hear is the birds

and cicadas.

At the summit the climbers find an extraordinary habitat.

This is a super spot, isn't it?

It's all clear like a little sort of fairy garden.

It's wonderful. Wonderful!

That was a fantastic lead. That was absolutely fantastic!

-Well done!

-Magic, cheers.

They are surrounded by strange carnivorous plants

unlike anything seen lower down in the jungle.

Up here there are pitcher plants absolutely everywhere

and they're like little works of art.

All this is really is a modified leaf

which fills up with water and insects come along,

stumble round this rim and fall in and can't get back out again

and eventually they decompose inside and the plant uses their nutrients to grow.

So around here there are absolutely hundreds of them. Look at them. Everywhere.

From tiny itty bitty little ones like this

to huge ones that can hold over two-and-a-half litres

and have been known to catch rats.

Back down in the lowlands, the tables have turned.

< ELEPHANT TRUMPETS

INDISTINCT WHISPERING

LOW RUMBLING

The elephants may be the strongest of Borneo's animals

but their grip on survival is weak.

Understanding how they live could not only save them but also their jungle home.

There's still much more to be explored by the team

and every species the expedition finds and records

helps to save these remote rainforests.

Tomorrow, as the expedition reaches the halfway mark,

the team push even further into the heart of Borneo

in search of the secrets of the jungle.

Hammerhead flat worm. Bizarre!

But not all of the animals they discover are friendly.

HISSES