Rita Schlamberger

Natural World is a nature documentary television series broadcast annually on BBC Two and regarded by the BBC as its flagship natural history brand. It is currently the longest-running series in its genre on British television, with more than 400 episodes broadcast since its inception in 1983. Natural World is produced by the BBC Natural History Unit in Bristol, but individual programmes can be in-house productions, collaborative productions with other broadcasters or films made and distributed by independent production companies and purchased by the BBC. Natural World programmes are often broadcast as PBS Nature episodes in the USA. Since 2008, most Natural World programmes have been shot and broadcast in high definition.

This comprehensive cinematic portrait of Europe's second-longest river presents scenes of breathtaking beauty along the banks of the Danube and investigates the tension between humans and nature, civilization and wilderness. Dams and power stations alternate with sections of natural wilderness along this mighty river, which flows through great cities such as Vienna and Budapest.

This film, three years in the making, The remote forests of Kalkalpen National Park in Austria, the largest area of wilderness in the European Alps, have been left untouched by humans for nearly a quarter of a century in order to return to their natural, primeval state. The landscape regenerates itself in dramatic cycles of growth and decay, and this bold hands-off method of conservation yields salient results: the lynx, absent from the area for 115 years, has returned.

There are few places on earth that have such a diverse variety of terrain and range of climates concentrated in a relatively small area - temperate coastline, scorching arid deserts and tundra, tropical rainforests and frozen snowcapped mountains. And there are few places that are as heavily exploited by humans, yet remain a wilderness.

The River Danube is home to a fish that grows larger than the Great White Shark. Although it leads a secretive life, the Beluga Sturgeon – the King of the Danube – produces the most prized food in the whole world. For over 200 million years, the 8-metre long fish had no enemies, and yet today it is on the verge of extinction. Evolution did not prepare the fish for pollution, river regulation and overfishing. Beluga caviar is traded for up to 20,000 dollars per kilogramme. Ironically, the high price of this precious product could save the animals from a premature disappearance from planet earth.