Wild Journeys is part of Wild Ireland – a strand of five series/documentaries commissioned by RTÉ Television, produced by Irish film-makers, exploring and revealing different facets of Ireland’s and the world’s rich wildlife. The documentaries will be broadcast on RTÉ One across 2010.
This brand new series features Ireland’s most heroic wildlife travellers and the incredible journeys they carry out every single year. From the 20,000km flown annually by the Manx Shearwaters to the transatlantic voyages of our eels and salmon, Wild Journeys follows these voyagers to the ends of the earth, showing the extraordinary challenges they meet and revealing the magnificent landscapes they visit en-route.
The series publicises the vital work of Irish scientists as they tag and track the animals across the globe and reveals the amazing network of wildlife that links all life across the continents; how global warming directly affects our Barnacle Geese as they struggle to cope with a rapidly changing Arctic and the extraordinary distances covered by our marine animals.
As these remarkable creatures prepare to leave either from or to Ireland, Wild Journeys is there to show us their Irish lives and chart each step of their epic journey. Never again will viewers take for granted an exhausted salmon leaping at a weir or the ragged formations of geese heading into the Atlantic.
Filmed over two years this series engages some Ireland’s most passionate naturalists who have daily contact with Ireland’s natural world, from wildlife rangers and researchers to farmers, fishermen and wildlife enthusiasts. With a world-class wildlife production team and filmed in High Definition, Wild Journeys will delight, entertain and inform at every turn.
Episode Three
Programme Three will follow Simon Berrow on the trail of the Basking Shark off the west coast of Ireland. With numbers rising in Irish waters each year, we still know very little about these creatures – where do they disappear to in winter? Are they here to breed, feed or just passing through? We travel all the way to South Africa on the tail of the humble Barn Swallow and make the annual journey of the Painted Lady Butterfly from the dry deserts of Morocco to the flower filled meadows of Ireland.