Last Chance to See (BBC 2009 - Stephen Fry - Complete)

Last Chance to See is a wildlife documentary first broadcast on BBC Two in the United Kingdom during September and October 2009. The series is a follow-up of the radio series, also called Last Chance to See in which Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine set out to find endangered animals. In this updated television version, produced for the BBC, Stephen Fry and Carwardine revisit the animals originally featured to see how they're getting on almost 20 years later

The series is notable for the scene in which a male kakapo called Sirocco mounts and attempts to mate with Carwardine's head. Sirocco found fame after the video of his antics became an internet hit,[3] and was later anointed as New Zealand's "spokesbird for conservation.

Episodes:

1. "Amazonian manatee"
In the opening programme, Fry and Carwardine travel to Manaus in Brazil in search of the Amazonian manatee, a large aquatic mammal. Illegal hunting has reduced manatee numbers in the wild to just a few thousand individuals. On the Rio Negro, they have a close encounter with a group of endangered botos, which take food from their hands. They fly deeper into the rainforest to rendezvous with a boat, the Cassiquiari, on the Rio Aripuanã. Further upriver, they meet scientist Marc van Roosmalen and his team. Manatees are known to live in the vicinity, but despite searching the river and surrounding lakes, they fail to encounter the species in the wild. Carwardine takes Fry to INPA in Manaus, where captive manatees are kept for research. At Tefé, west of Manaus, they plan to join Miriam Rosenthal and her Mamirauá team on a trip to release an injured one-year-old manatee back into the wild. However, on the morning of their departure, Fry trips and breaks his arm in three places. After Fry is evacuated for medical attention, Carwardine reunites with the Mamirauá project. The manatee is transferred to a purpose-built enclosure in a remote river community before full release. By engaging local people, the team hope to foster an enthusiasm for conserving the species.

2. "Northern white rhino"
The critically endangered northern subspecies of the white rhino is the focus of the second episode. The only surviving wild population is found in the Democratic Republic of Congo's Garamba National Park. Carwardine hopes to return to the Park where he and Adams managed to find and photograph the animals 20 years ago, but with no sightings since 2006 and the eastern DRC gripped by the bloody Kivu conflict, he decides it is too risky to return. In northern Kenya, Fry and Carwardine arrive just as a conservation project to relocate the animals to a protected area is being abandoned. They settle for an encounter with a tame southern white rhino instead. The pair then turn their attention to primates, visiting a chimpanzee rehabilitation centre and tracking mountain gorillas in Uganda's Bwindi Impenetrable Forest. At Queen Elizabeth National Park, close to the border with the DRC, Carwardine is pleased to find that elephant numbers have increased from just a handful of animals to over 1000, showing that anti-poaching patrols are working. Returning to Kenya, the presenters join a team from the Kenya Wildlife Service on a black rhino relocation project. After a fast and bumpy ride, they find and dart three rhinos, and transport them 100 miles to begin a new population in a fenced conservancy

This episode was dedicated to sound recordist Jake Drake-Brockman, who was killed in a motorcycle accident on 1 September 2009.

3. "Aye-aye"
The third programme is set in Madagascar, where Adams and Carwardine conceived the idea for Last Chance to See on their first travels together in 1985. In Nosy Mangabe, they encountered a wild aye-aye, a rare nocturnal lemur. Carwardine brings Fry to the very tree where he saw the creature, but this time they have no luck. The pair embark on a trip through Madagascar to view the island's unique fauna. They encounter brown and ring-tailed lemurs at Berenty Reserve, and the recently discovered Madame Berthe's mouse lemur, the world's smallest primate, in Kirindy Forest. Carwardine is shocked at the disappearance of the island