The Living Planet - Season 1

David Attenborough examines the colossal forces that shape the earth's surface and the ways in which animals and plants adapt to the changing conditions. In this first episode David Attenborough visits thedeepest gorge in the world - the Kali Gandaki in Nepal; a fire fountain from an erupting volcano in Ireland; America's Yellowstone National Park and the depths of the Pacific.

From the mountains of Africa and the Americas to the glaciers of Antarctica and the Arctic, David Attenborough explores the ways animals and plants survive in the realms of ice and snow. On Mount Kenya in Africa, plants have many different ways of coping with extreme conditions. Groundsel and abelias grow to many times their usual size. In Antarctica, which is one of the coldest, driest places on earth, primitive life also persists.

From the Arctic to the southern United States stretches the largest forest in the world. David Attenborough roams from north to south through this spectacular woodland, starting amid conifers high in the Arctic Circle and ending among the giant sequoia trees of the Sierra Nevada. Among the wildlife he encounters are huge great grey owls, sapsucker woodpeckers, hummingbirds, raccoons, chipmunks and burrowing tortoises.

David Attenborough explores the wildlife of tropical rainforests around the equatorial regions of the world. He peels back the layers of mystery that lie behind the magnificent Amazon jungle, starting from the tips of the huge silk cotton tree, working his way down through the tiers of leaves to the dark forest floor, discovering some of the most extraordinary plants and animals on earth.

David Attenborough explores the grasslands of the Americas, Eurasia and Africa, and encounters the rare maned wolf, a giant anteater, bison, prairie chickens, Russian antelopes and more. In the Sudan hewitnesses the Merle tribe hunting amongst the spectacular migration of a million white-eared kob antelope.

David Attenborough visits the hottest and driest places on earth, which are home to some amazing animals, plants and desert-living people. In the Mojave desert he finds a plant that has been growing there formore than 10,000 years. When the rain eventually falls, dead plants move and disperse their seeds, and flowers put on a dazzling display.

High above Earth's surface David Attenborough floats weightless, showing that without gravity the world would be a chaotic place. Seen from space huge cloud patterns sweep across the globe. But some species like spiders, ski-diving frogs, gliding squirrels, birds and bats have overcome the force of gravity to fly through the air.

David Attenborough follows the river Amazon from the Andes to the sea. The life in and around it changes as it flows on its four-thousand mile journey from cold torrents to a vast warm delta. There are similarchanges in other rivers, producing such variety as torrent ducks, mayflies, hairy frogs, piranhas, giant otters, fishing owls and the Marsh Arabs of Iraq.

David Attenborough examines the borders between land and water, and the life that thrives there - from the sticky mud of an English estuary and its bird and insect life to the more numerous life in the tropical mangrove forests.

He looks at the fish that hunt out of water, the world's largest reptile, the turtles that come ashore to breed in Costa Rica and the seven-foot-long leatherback turtle that can be found in Malaysia.

David Attenborough explores the isolated islands which are a haven for ancient species as well as the cradle of new ones.

Stepping into the past he sees the world's largest lizard, the komodo dragon, and in the Indian Ocean he visits an island where 150,000 giant tortoises find survival a pressing problem. In Hawaiian forests live a unique group of birds, the honeycreepers, and living among them, a caterpillar that catches flies.

David Attenborough explores the ocean, which covers 70 per cent of the Earth's surface. It contains extraordinary creatures like the leafy sea dragon, the narwhal, the 'unicorn of the sea', and the whale shark. It has kelp forests, coral reef jungles, the cold black permanent night of the deep sea and affects our oxygen and weather.

David Attenborough looks at the damage we are causing far away from our centres of population - to the oceans, the atmosphere and the tropical rainforests. And he suggests what should be done to safeguard the future of our living planet.