A BBC crew has broken the golden rule of wildlife film-makers to 'never intervene' after saving wildlife from plastic litter and fishing nets while filming for the Planet Earth III documentary.
The new series, which is the third installment of the beloved franchise with narration from Sir David Attenborough, will air next Sunday and will feature scenes where camera crews help rescue animals from dangerous situations.
Among them, viewers will see wildlife being untangled from plastic litter, sealions being rescued from fishing nets and tired turtles being helped into the sea.
The new attitudes towards helping wildlife mirror one of the season's key themes which will focus on how animals are coping with changes to their environment caused by global warming.
The series, which will span eight episodes, has been nearly five years in the making after it was commissioned in 2019 and then delayed by the pandemic.
A BBC crew has broken the golden rule of wildlife film-makers to 'never intervene' after saving wildlife from plastic litter and fishing nets while filming for Sir David Attenborough's (pictured) Planet Earth III documentary
The new series will feature scenes where camera crews help rescue animals from dangerous situations
Among them, viewers will see wildlife being untangled from plastic litter, sealions being rescued from fishing nets and tired turtles being helped into the sea (pictured)
Planet Earth III's producer Matt Brandon told The Times: 'I think the rules are changing. What we're seeing now is that many of the things that our crews are witnessing around the world are no longer natural.'[url=https://ufa771.com/
Nick Easton, who produced and directed two of the eight episodes, added: 'Not intervening in a hunt or saving an animal that might become food for another animal — that still applies as far as I'm concerned.
'And often that is what we're filming: it's a dog-eat-dog world out there. But so often now we're coming across animals that are suffering as a result of unnatural factors.'
In one scene from the documentary, camera crews decide to help local rangers on Raine Island, a remote island 75 miles off the Australian coast, to carry some turtles to the sea after becoming exhausted in the hot weather.
But this is not the first time a BBC crew will have intervened in rescuing the animals they were tasked with filming.
In 2016, a crew saved a group of penguins and their babies on an Antarctic shoot for David Attenborough's show Dynasties.
In one episode following the story of emperor penguins living in bitter -76F (-60C) conditions the programme's director Will Lawson and cameramen Lindsay McCare and Stefan Christmann came across an unexpected challenge.
They were devastated when they found a group of birds had fallen over the edge of a chasm after a white-out and were trapped with their young.
The crew took a 'unanimous' decision to dig an escape ramp in deadly cold temperatures to save them from almost certain death.
Director Lawson said at the time: 'We opted to intervene passively. Once we'd dug that little ramp, which took very little time, we left it to the birds. We were elated when they decided to use it.
'There's no rule book in those situations. You can only respond to the facts that are right there in front of you.
'As you can imagine, we only show a fraction of the real trauma and difficulty that the animals go through – it was a very hard thing to see.'
Sir David Attenborough, 97, will also be returning to our screens to narrate parts of the new documentary for a third time running.
The executive producer Mike Gunton of the show previosuly told The Mirror that this series of Planet Earth wouldn't have been the same without David and expressed his gratitude towards him.
He said: 'Planet Earth wouldn't be Planet Earth without David, so I'm delighted he is presenting the third series.
'The opening of the series with David was filmed in the beautiful British countryside in exactly the location where Charles Darwin used to walk whilst thinking over his Earth-shaking ideas about evolution.
'It seemed the perfect place for David to introduce Planet Earth III and remind us of both the wonders and the fragility of our planet.'
In 2016, Planet Earth II won a Bafta for the scenes showing snakes chasing a young iguana, filmed in the Galapagos islands.
In the new series, fans can expect seven episodes of behind the scenes footage of animals around the world.
MailOnline has contacted the BBC for comment.
