Moose on the Loose

MOOSE ON THE LOOSE

BBC Natural History Unit for BBC2’s Natural World strand, 1x 50min

Director / cameraman

Radio Times ‘Pick of the Day’ & ‘Moment of the Week’, nominated for Best of Festival at the Far North Film Festival, Alaska

This is the extraordinary story of the the urban wildlife of Anchorage, Alaksa. A modern American city where 1,000 moose, 200 brown bears, 60 grizzly bears, 5 wolf packs and a whole host of other wildlife lives cheek by jowl with 250,000 human residents. Rick Sinnott and Jessy Coltrane are the Alaska Department of Fish & Game biologists who are in charge of keeping the the potentially chaotic situation under control.

But Rick and Jessy do much more than damage limitation, they are pioneers of a groundbreaking new approach to conservation. Based on the idea that preserving biodiversity on our increasingly urbanised planet depends on our relationship with ‘wildness’, Rick and Jesse believe that, wherever possible, humans and wild animals should live side by side. The wildlife benefits from this approach as it can move into and exploit urban niches as their natural habitat become increasingly pressured. While who would deny that it is good for the human soul to live alongside some of the most charismatic animals in North America?

This approach to conservation requires extremely skillfull management, and during the year it took to make the film Rick & Jessy were tested to the limit.

‘Moose on the Loose’ was Radio Times ‘pick of the day’ and had their ‘moment of the week’ together with an ‘inside story’ feature. It also featured prominently in other national press including a full page spread in the Daily Mail. ‘Moose on the Loose’ achieved an AI of 84. Here is a nice review from The Times on 14th April 2007: