Documentary AreaSimply the best Documentaries

Anthropologist Wade Davis and river advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr journey down the Colorado River on a two-week expedition to highlight water conservation issues. Traveling by rafts, kayaks and wooden dories, they are accompanied by their daughters and guided by Shana Watahomigie, a Native American National Park ranger. Filmed with a 350-pound 3D camera, it involved the cooperation of three Indian nations, the National Park Service, film sponsor Teva’s team of kayakers and more than a dozen experienced river guides. The film explores America's drought and freshwater shortages, the impact on the river of damming, and human water supply needs. Grand Canyon Adventure: River at Risk was directed by Greg MacGillivray and narrated by Robert Redford.

A visit to the Amazon jungle - the world's largest rainforest and home to the widest variety of plants and animals on Earth. he diversity of life in the jungle is so great that in just two square miles scientists have counted 3,000 varieties of ants, 530 types of birds and 11 species of monkey. But despite the huge range of life that flourishes here, survival is never easy.

The very heart of Africa is covered in dense tropical rainforest. The animals that live here find the most ingenious ways to carve out their space in a claustrophobic landscape. Danger lurks in every shadow, but some animals thrive here, from honey-stealing chimps to birds with a lineage as old as the dinosaurs, thundering elephants and kick-boxing frogs. Here in the Congo, no matter how tough the competition, you must stand up and fight for yourself and your patch.

David Attenborough comes face-to-face with a baby rhino and asks what the future holds for this little one. He meets the local people who are standing side-by-side with the wildlife at this pivotal moment in their history. We discover what it takes to save a species, hold back a desert and even resurrect an entire wilderness - revealing what the world was like before modern man.

In this second episode we travel from January to the March equinox. Kate Humble gets closer to the Sun than she has ever been before, whilst Helen Czerski visits a place that gets some of the biggest and fastest snowstorms on Earth.

Fifty years ago there were close to half-a-million lions in Africa. Today there are around 20,000. To make matters worse, lions, unlike elephants, which are far more numerous, have virtually no protection under government mandate or through international accords. This is the jumping-off point for a disturbing, well-researched and beautifully made cri de coeur from husband and wife team Dereck and Beverly Joubert, award-winning filmmakers from Botswana who have been Explorers-in-Residence at National Geographic for more than four years. Pointing to poaching as a primary threat while noting the lion's pride of place on the list for eco-tourists-an industry that brings in 200 billion dollars per year worldwide-the Jouberts build a solid case for both the moral duty we have to protect lions (as well as other threatened "big cats," tigers among them) and the economic sense such protection would make. And when one takes into account the fact that big cats are at the very top of the food chain-and that their elimination would wreak havoc on all species below them, causing a complete ecosystem collapse-the need takes on a supreme urgency.