Episode 3 Expedition Borneo

Borneo. In its heart is a lost world of jungles, mountains and ravines.

It hides a bewildering variety of wildlife,

but its forests are disappearing...fast.

A team of jungle specialists have been exploring and filming this great unknown wilderness.

Got it!

They've climbed a mountain to discover a world of bizarre, carnivorous plants...

Stunning!

..and tracked down a herd of rare jungle elephants.

I can't believe how closely we saw them.

But the really hard part hasn't even started yet.

The rainforests of Borneo are home to a million species...

..from the great to the small,

the weird to the wonderful,

and from the peaceful

to the deadly.

Now, scientists are proposing a giant network of protected areas,

what they're calling the Heart of Borneo

and a key part of the jigsaw is this remote canyon called Imbak,

a giant corridor connecting other nature reserves.

Here, the expedition has built its base camp.

Their aim, to track down and identify the animals

as a first step to conserving it for ever.

How much is out here that no human eye has ever seen?

Thousands of species!

They're reaching the end of the first phase.

Soon they'll be exploring other endangered regions.

So, now the pressure is on to find as many species as possible

in the short time that's left.

And Steve Backshall doesn't have far to go for his first catch.

Look at that little beauty.

One of the most extraordinary things about the Borneo rainforest -

they have flying lemurs, flying squirrels,

flying lizards, flying frogs

and flying geckos, and this is one of those.

Right, let's put him back where he belongs.

Go on, fella.

-He's going.

-Wey!

Wildlife cameraman Gordon Buchanan

is preparing to enter one of the most bizarre of all jungle habitats.

My wife told me not to do things like this

when I told her what I was doing,

but, hopefully, nothing'll go wrong.

Is everybody away from the bottom of the tree? Over.

This tree may look normal, but it's completely hollow.

It will be a 30-metre descent into the pitch black.

The things I'm most concerned about - bees would be a bit. I wouldn't like to find bees in there.

Snakes. There's definitely some bats in there, and quite often,

where you find bats, you find snakes that prey on bats.

Ready to go.

The massive tree was hollowed out by these tiny creatures -

termites,

the world's most voracious consumers of wood.

Individually, they can carry just 1,000th of a gram.

Together, they can fell forest giants.

Start lowering.

One big awkward bit here I need to get past.

Inch by inch, he drops into the crumbling tree trunk.

Oh, stop, stop, stop.

This tree's definitely on its way out.

A good storm could easily take this down,

but it's incredible cos at this stage it does give a home for all sorts of different creatures living in it.

Got a gecko here.

Back at base camp, there's a medical emergency.

..Left alone for a bite, may have very serious consequences.

A snake has bitten expedition naturalist Cede Prudente.

-How serious is that?

-I don't know.

-It's an elapid.

-How long do they live?

Which means it's in the same family as the cobra.

It's a banded coral snake,

the smallest of the cobras, but with a huge venom gland.

It can kill in just one hour.

What isn't sure is whether the bite has pierced the skin and the venom entered the bloodstream.

And I tried to press and get the blood out, but there was no blood.

The venom they have is neurotoxic.

It's vital the ex-army medics keep him as calm as possible.

-There's no need to be worried yet...

-No.

-..at all.

-Yeah.

-There is lots of different factors.

-Yeah.

The medics have to make the decision whether to scramble the emergency helicopter and evacuate him.

OK, there's a nice craggy bit behind me.

That's where I'd expect to see a snake.

There's an old woodpecker's hole here.

Seeing it from the woodpecker's perspective.

Lots of termites.

These termites have probably been eating this tree for 400 years,

and these bats,

they've probably spent their whole life living in here

cos it's a nice, warm, safe environment for them...

until some Scotsman starts climbing down the middle.

60 minutes has gone by and Cede has had extensive tests,

but it's becoming apparent the fangs didn't penetrate his skin.

Touch my finger and your nose. And touch my finger. Fantastic.

I don't think that you've been venomated.

I don't think that has actually managed to hit you properly.

That's a juvenile, is it? You probably know a lot more about these than I do.

-Very young.

-Yeah.

You're actually getting better, mate.

The venom hasn't entered Cede's bloodstream.

He's lucky to be alive.

Somewhere in the middle of this tree,

Gordon is struggling in 40 degrees centigrade and 100% humidity.

But down here, these buttress roots go all the way in.

That's kind of a great place for things.

There's a snake! There's a snake in there!

It's OK. It's just a python.

He's probably more surprised to see me

than I am to see him.

He could spend all his time in here.

Lots of rodents come and go - he'll eat them. The bats - he could easily

scale the walls of this tree on the inside and pick off the bats.

This is well worth all the effort of going up and then coming back down.

The markings are just beautiful.

If you really want to understand the rainforest, you have to go high.

For three weeks, camerawoman Justine Evans has spent every day

on her precarious perch, searching for the animals of the canopy.

It's amazing, absolutely amazing being up here.

I've been up here since six, just as it got light.

And you can hear a group of gibbons calling in the background.

They've been going on singing for about 20 minutes. It's really long.

Singing their little hearts out. It's just beautiful.

She's gained the confidence of this family of gibbons who are now coming very close.

I've seen one individual, a youngster, a juvenile,

and he looks like he's got this white cap, so he's quite distinct,

or she, and also the female, I think,

is quite dark, and doesn't seem to have much of a white crown, which they usually have.

There could be a fifth one. Not sure.

It's difficult when you're trying to film

and count because you can't keep your eye out on the bigger picture,

but it looks like we can work this area and just really get to grips with what this group are doing.

Wow! So good to hear them calling.

Gibbons feed on the fruits of the rainforest trees and need an unspoilt habitat to survive.

But now, their home is under threat.

Each year in Borneo, a million trees are felled and the tropical hardwoods sold around the world.

The scarred land is then bulldozed to create plantations.

Oil palm now spreads out as far as the eye can see.

Without protection, this could be the future of the rainforests of Borneo.

Steve and environmental scientist Dr Tara Shine are going to explore this most modern of habitats.

It's just acre upon acre upon acre of them.

You also have to be a realist about these things.

Countries have to earn money and people have to have money

so their kids can go to school

and governments must provide health care services, so the question for me

is about making the hard decisions on what areas you look after and what areas you use.

The palm oil brings in vital foreign exchange,

but with seven million hectares of rainforest lost already, there's a high price to be paid.

I'm right in the middle of a palm-oil plantation.

So, these trees, over a 25-year period,

produce every few months these nuts, and from these,

you process them and you produce vegetable oil,

which is in an awful lot of the food that we eat on a daily basis.

Any kind of processed foods - cakes, biscuits - probably has a lot of this in it.

The big difference about being in a palm-oil plantation

compared to rainforest is that it's so quiet in here.

When we're in the rainforest, it's really noisy.

The cicadas are singing, there's birds in the trees. It's that deafening sound of the jungle.

In here, it's almost eerily quiet.

Few animals live in these monocultures

and those that do are unwelcome.

The fallen nuts bring rats and the rats bring snakes.

A python has been eating the chickens in this small settlement of oil-palm workers.

They've seen a big, big snake.

OK, so it was at a place called Elephant Hill and it was a big snake, apparently.

OK.

Under the bridge?

Help! Help!

I just told them that I'll go and check it out myself,

and if they hear me screaming "help", then come running.

Oh, well, this isn't good.

The hole is just ahead of me, and it's evidently very, very deep,

running right underneath the pilings of the bridge.

No way we can dig it out, no way we can get into it.

Oh, no! Here it is.

It's here.

It's actually got itself sat right underneath the wooden pilings of the bridge.

And this one here is probably the one that's been taking chickens out the coop from the workers' quarters.

So, it's going to have to move away, otherwise pretty soon it's going to be for the chop.

Villagers will kill a snake if they find one.

A small python will eat their chickens. A large one could eat their children.

For the sake of the snake, and the villagers, Steve has to try and move it away to a safe place.

SNAKE HISSES Whoa!

OK.

The python's very at home in the water, so, really, this is...

his environment.

Once you've got the head,

you have control of the snake.

Cor, she's a big 'un!

Healthy as well.

Quite thick in the body.

Agh!

And very, very strong.

So, it's just as well she's no longer than three metres.

If she was bigger, I wouldn't be able to handle her on my own. Look at that!

Soon, she'll realise she's not going anywhere and she'll quieten down.

But for the moment, she's trying to constrict my legs. Look at that.

There's an amazing amount of power being generated into my thigh at the moment.

It's not surprising that people are worried. She's not big enough to take a kid,

but even so, that wouldn't stop them taking a machete to her.

So, I think we have to relocate her.

We have take her somewhere where she's going to be an awful lot safer, the people as well.

Ooh! Yuck.

All right, this is the perfect spot and there's loads and loads

of potential prey around here. Think you could be pretty happy.

At base camp it's been raining nonstop.

Is there any rhyme or reason for any of this?

It's a setback, there's only three days left before

they're leaving camp to explore even deeper into the mountains of Borneo.

It's quite refreshing. Cos it's in flood at the moment it's quite cold.

So it's a little bit "ahh"

-when you get in.

-Next morning, a break in the weather allows time

for a quick clean up before the team gets back to searching for animals.

Ah! Got it!

They've already tracked down over 100 species but there's more waiting to be discovered.

All ammunition in the fight to get Imbak canyon protected for ever.

It's the Rajah Brooke's birdwing. It has the most impressive wingspan.

These are incredibly rare here, the simple fact that

they're so beautiful collectors will pay immense prices for them.

Apparently if you can get a live specimen to Japan it'd be worth about as much as 1000 each.

They're far better out here on the wing.

The steep canyon sides are home to some very specialised creatures.

This frog has evolved to live on slippery waterfall rocks and is an expert at avoiding capture.

Ah! Ha ha!

Professor Tyrone Hayes has been chasing frogs since he was a child.

You go down the bottom I'll cut across the top.

He's gonna go straight into the waterfall, I bet.

Ha ha ha!

What it does is it leaps into the waterfall to escape predators,

or scientists that want to collect it and that's exactly what he did.

Rather than jump back, he went straight over the boulder.

Hammerhead flatworm.

Bizarre!

With time running out, Gordon is using technology to help the search for species.

It's a video camera trap that captures animals 24 hours a day -

if it's put in the right spot.

It's running. Knowledge of the animals is much more important

than the knowledge of equipment, because you've got a manual

that you can open up and, if you've got half a brain in your head,

you can work out what equipment does.

But with making wildlife films, you've got

to have an understanding of the animals. Good luck.

The camera trap is on a natural hilltop trail he believes animals regularly use.

With two days to go, a mysterious sound has been heard, far away down the valley.

The haunting call of the orang-utan.

Now, with forest destruction, truly wild orang-utans are very rare and notoriously shy of humans.

These orangs were filmed in a well-established nature reserve

where they're used to the presence of humans.

To find a population in Imbak would be a major breakthrough.

This call is the first evidence that orangs live in the canyon.

Justine is off in pursuit.

She follows the river all the way down to the edge of the canyon.

We didn't think there were orangs around here at all.

We haven't found any around our camp.

No signs, no nests nothing, so this is a bit further afield. We've followed the Imbak down and

there's definitely orang around here so that's great. Maybe there's more than one, who knows?

But she's probably on some sort of circuit and she'll come back.

This has got fruit on it.

The remains of the orangs' favourite food, figs, lie all around.

Quite a perfumed smell.

Very soft.

Justine decides to use the highest tree in the area as a look-out post.

I can hear them.

They're proving elusive so far.

Fingers crossed today will be the day,

or there'll just be stingless bees to annoy me and that's it.

To hear a call is one thing, to actually see it and film it is another matter entirely.

There's a chance I'll get a few shots.

Just a glimpse, that'll do.

Back at the waterfall, the resident frogs are still giving Steve the slip.

You little... Arrgh!

As a kid I spent many summers making plans for how I was gonna catch this animal, that animal...

and I get to do the same thing now.

These little frogs are pretty quick, so I'm going to construct a net,

see if that'll help us out.

Ha ha ha!

Frog master!

See. What we should have done was brought a proper net.

But that's kinda the easy way out.

If you look close, you see the expanded toes, so they have

the ability to stick to the rock like a tree frog. Then, finally, what they do after bing, bing, bing,

they escape by jumping into the rushing water in the waterfall and that's how this little frog

makes its living.

Justine's staking out a tree full of ripe figs.

It should be a magnet for orang-utans.

But for some reason they're staying well away.

I thought I was gonna see an orang straight away, which I know is completely unrealistic,

but I thought seeing as it's got so many fruits on this tree, I'm bound to see loads of stuff.

This is my view out from the platform.

And as you can see... it's a very long way down.

The rainforest birds are drawn to the ripe fruit.

Including the spectacular rhinoceros hornbill.

That's brilliant.

Their huge beaks can pluck the figs from the tree with enormous precision,

but Justine has noticed these birds on the canyon edge are acting strangely.

The hornbills have been so surprisingly nervous.

Even though I've got all this hide stuff up, they've noticed something strange and then carried on,

but one or two that landed took straight off again.

Justine treks further out of the canyon to find a better place to film

and there she makes a grim discovery.

This is a trap or a snare for an animal that hunters are setting.

There's a little gate here almost, little passageway. Then, they fence

the area so there's an obvious route through. As the animal comes through there's a noose here.

There's a diminishing area,

so if you do want to hunt there's quite small patches really left to hunt in cos the rest of it

has been turned to oil palm plantations, which have nothing but rats and snakes in them.

The hunters have penetrated further than anyone thought.

It's scuppered the chances of Justine filming these nervous orang-utans.

In the dead of night, Steve is making one final search for nocturnal animals.

Oh, look, what's going on there?

I think that's a she.

She's laying eggs.

Absolutely extraordinary, three-dimensional web

designed to catch creatures coming in from all different angles.

Amazing thing is that the spider that seems to have created this is absolutely weeny.

It's the diddy little thing in there.

It's their last day looking for animals in the canyon.

Gordon goes to check his camera traps.

Exciting.

A rat.

Very nice but we don't want that.

Another rat.

He scrolls further and further through the tape

and it reveals...

absolutely nothing.

Please, please, please, please, please,

please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please!

Something's triggered the camera.

-But there's nothing on film.

-Running and running and running...

with nothing.

Before they leave base camp, Tara is doing a count up of all the animals they've found.

So I'll go write them up, and you guys yell them out.

Binturong, how do you spell that one, how do you spell that.

-Silver leaf monkey.

-Gibbon.

-Gibbon, what about...

-King cobra!

Keel back, King cobra.

-Let's have the Rajah Brooke's birdwing, which is very nice.

-Bent toed forest gecko.

Gecko, yeah, yeah.

Add a rat to the list!

-So no clouded leopard yet.

-Not yet.

This list is the first step to making the official expedition report.

They've recorded over 120 species of mammals, reptiles and birds.

A cause for celebration.

The only disappointment for Gordon is that his camera traps haven't found any animals.

Or so he thinks.

As the team relaxes at their last night party, in the forest Gordon's traps click into action.

At first, just another forest rat.

But then a bearded pig snouting for roots and worms.

And at midnight ,the camera captures one of the strangest animals in Borneo.

The tangalung.

Neither a cat nor a dog but a unique type of carnivore that lives only in the jungle.

It's an impressive last-minute addition to the list of animals that live in the Imbak Canyon.

The team are now in no doubt that there's a huge variety of wildlife here,

and with protection, it could be a permanent home for elephants,

clouded leopards, gibbons and even the orang-utan.

See you soon, OK.

But for the team it's now the end of their time in Imbak Canyon.

They're setting out on phase two, exploring other endangered regions even deeper in the heart of Borneo.

Bye!

Tara and her team are heading south, taking canoes up the Bungulung river

in search of the lost caves of Sangkulirang, home to an ancient culture.

This one's a tricky rapid, cos the water is coming at us from the side and from in front.

Steve is heading west to explore the biggest hole in Borneo.

Oh, wow!

That is unbelievable!

If you could just get a line down into it...

And in tomorrow's programme, the team go deep

inside a remote rainforest cave to find traces of a lost civilisation.

Everything down there is totally uncharted and we'd certainly be the first people to go down there.

But there's trouble ahead for the climbers as they drop into the void!