Amur: Asia's Amazon
This three-part series is an epic journey of discovery of the natural world along the Amur and its tributaries and of the rich wildlife and the native people inhabiting the Earth's greatest remaining wilderness area - a surprising and exotic world shaped and perpetually reshaped by extreme forces of the atmosphere and one of the Earth's most active tectonic zones. The three episodes portray the unique characters of the Amur's lower, middle and upper reaches - separate worlds that could not be more different and diverse.
- 2015-2015
- 1 season
- Nat Geo Wild
- Documentary
This three-part series is an epic journey of discovery of the natural world along the Amur and its tributaries and of the rich wildlife and the native people inhabiting the Earth's greatest remaining wilderness area - a surprising and exotic world shaped and perpetually reshaped by extreme forces of the atmosphere and one of the Earth's most active tectonic zones. The three episodes portray the unique characters of the Amur's lower, middle and upper reaches - separate worlds that could not be more different and diverse.
Season 1 Episode Guide
3 Episodes 2015
Episode 1
The Far East
The Amur's coastal delta is one of the richest ecosystems on earth. Nourished by the mighty river's enormous sediment load, the Sea of Okhotsk is a marine hotspot of biodiversity with arctic and subtropical species living side by side. Likewise, the land of Russia's Far East is a unique meeting place of northern and southern plants and animals, boasting the planet's most diverse woodlands. These wildwoods are still inhabited by Amur tigers, Asian black bears, brown bears, Siberian and Sika deer, sables and otters and countless species of wetland birds. And they are home to traditional forest and river cultures like the Udeghe and Nanai. The Pacific rim is both the end and the beginning of the Amur River system: It's the massive monsoon clouds the Pacific sends inland which keep the thousand tributaries of the Amur flowing.
Episode 2
The Black Dragon
The middle course of the Amur which is called Heilong-jian or Black Dragon River in China, runs through ancient Manchuria and forms a natural border between China and Russia. Until recently, this was a restricted military zone - restricted for humans but a blessing to wildwoods, wetlands, and wildlife. Primeval forests and sprawling wetlands offer habitats to rare species like the Manchurian crane and several of its relatives, white-tailed eagles, soft-shelled Chinese turtles, giant sturgeon and Siberian taimen, Amur leopards and tigers. The border also marks the sharp contrast between Russia's raw wilderness and China's farmland with the continent's biggest and northernmost rice fields.
Episode 3
The Secret Springs
Moving upstream into Mongolia, the itinerary of the series leaves behind the boreal woodland wilderness of China's extreme North and Siberia's South to follow the Amur's two westernmost tributaries across the planet's vastest wild grasslands. These twin rivers are the Amur's headwaters. Although they spring from the same mountain - the birthplace and burial ground of Genghis Khan - and then join to form the Amur River, they are an unequal pair, reacting differently to long-term climatic cycles - the rhythmic expansion and contraction of the Gobi desert. Episode 3 follows the massive herds of Mongolian gazelles on their seasonal migrations and the trails of nomadic herdsmen through wilderness regions that are home to steppe eagles, wolves, black vultures, Asian marmots and black-billed capercaillies. This episode shows how the rhythm of all life inhabiting one of the planet's greatest networks of waterways, lakes and wetlands is driven by climatic cycles. It shows the timeless flow of a mighty river in the sky flowing thousands of kilometres from the Pacific to the harsh, cold desert heart of the continent and of a thousand rivers uniting into a single giant one which drains this immense volume of water back to its true source, the ocean.