Netflix’s acclaimed Our Planet series has come under fire for “tragedy porn” over images of walruses falling to their deaths from cliff tops, allegedly because of climate change.
The Our Planet footage, narrated by David Attenborough, showed dozens of the animals climbing up 80-meter-high outcrops in northeast Russia because of a lack of sea ice.
They were shown plunging onto the rocks below, with hundreds of dead animals piled on the shoreline. A voice-over by Attenborough claimed their poor eyesight made it hard for them to return safely to the ocean.
But a Canadian zoologist has dismissed the claims as “contrived nonsense” and said the walruses were most likely driven over the cliffs by polar bears.
Susan Crockford, of the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada, told The Telegraph UK: “This powerful story is fiction and emotional manipulation at its worst.”
The polar bear expert said that at the time the footage was shot in 2017 at Kozhevnikova Cape, Ryrkaypiy, in eastern Russia, the town was being besieged by polar bears.
According to The Siberian Times, 20 bears had surrounded the town, attracted by 5,000 walruses that had appeared at a local protection zone.
SEE ALSO: Netflix’s ‘Our Planet’ Hides Real Cause Of Walrus Deaths
Head of WWF Project Polar Bear Patrol, Viktor Nikiforov, told The Siberian Times: “Many (walruses) crashed, falling from a height. Their rookery had attracted polar bears.
“The walruses were obviously frightened by the predators, panicked and fell from the top to their deaths.”
In 2015, the WWF reported that walruses had been coming ashore at Cape Kozhenikov every year since 2007 but had started arriving earlier in the season because of the retreat of ice “far to the north.”
Dr. Crockford told The Telegraph: “We know that walruses reach the top of cliffs in some locations and might fall if startled by polar bears, people or aircraft overhead, not because they are confused by shrinking sea ice cover”.
SEE ALSO: Netflix’s ‘Our Planet’ Blames Climate Change For Walrus Cliff Deaths
In the documentary about the making of Our Planet, director Sophie Lanfear described the scenes of falling walruses as “heartbreaking.”
“They would be on the ice now if they could be but there is no option but to come to land. It’s really hard to watch and witness this.
“It’s not like a quick death, they just like tumble and then get internal injuries and just lie there.”
Asked about Dr. Crockford’s claims, Ms. Lanfear said the crew had seen no polar bears near where they were filming.
“They were not being driven off the cliffs by the polar bears and we know this because we had two team members watching the cliffs from afar who could see the polar bears and were in radio communications with us to warn us about any bears approaching the crew closer to the walrus and the cliffs,” she told The Telegraph.
“Fundamentally, the reason walrus used this haul-out location is because of a lack of sea ice in the region, meaning they are coming ashore more frequently than they did in the past.”
[CCD Note: As noted in Dr. Crockford’s original post, see this 8 April 2019 piece from The Atlantic that confirms the ‘Our Planet’ footage was filmed in 2017, and that “the sequence includes footage from two separate beaches—one with the 100,000-strong congregation and one with the falls.”]
Attenborough’s Planet series has attracted controversy in the past.
In 2011 the makers of the BBC’s Frozen Planet admitting faking the birth of a polar bear in the wild after filming it in a German zoo and two years ago Blue Planet II was accused of misleading viewers by placing hundreds of plastic ducks in the sea to highlight the crisis of plastic in the oceans.
Read more at The Australian
You don’t hear the polar bears complaining . Maybe it was the smell of fake news that made them jump .
If you are a truly unhappy walrus how the heck else do you end things quickly ?
This is the problem, after you have conned the public numerous times they just
ignore your campaign .
RIP to walrus .
Most all Liberal made Documentries are faked or edited like Katie Kouric’s UNDER the GUN and many inacurate information and lies like both of Al Gores and Leonardo DiCaprio’s phonie films
way back in the 1970’s they presented this special SAY GOODBYE it featured the shooting of Mother Polar Bear with two cubs it was later found out that the film that shown by CBS and sponsored by Quaker Oats was totaly faked the Polar Bear science was edited then lets not forget GUNS OF AUTUM heavly anti-hunting also from CBS both ended up in Lawsuits then NBC and their program DATELINE NBC which involved a GM truck which NBC had rigged and AUTHUR GODFRES ELECTRICAL MEDICHINE SHOW a piece of mindless Eco-Crap with putrid songs and crappy stupid skits
Reality show. How can you tell anymore? Honestly, this polar bear – walrus death match would have been reality TV, without the narrative . Those polar bears did exactly what North American Indians did to buffalo.
Nature can be cruel on its own. Leave my conscience out of it. I wasn’t there and it wasn’t me.
… and it wasn’t humans OR climate change… it was too many polar bears… you know… the ones that would all be extinct, per Al Gore by… 2005?
Oh, wait…
Netflix obviously has a perspective and a strategy here, and it’s wonderful, to me, that they’ve been outed for their unfair bias and “reporting.”
I like their movies, but if I want lies and bias, CNN is my go-to supplier.
When I was young, there was a program “Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom” . The narrator, Marlin Perkins, was a big game hunter/photographer. I hated it.
I’ve had the opportunity to watch this walrus disaster, but I won’t.
I don’t have the need.