Tue, Jun 20, 1961
Survival's first film shot in Africa and the show that did much to establish the series' credentials. S.O.S. Rhino was one of television's first major conservation films, depicting the hazardous capture by lasso of a dozen white rhino threatened by poachers in Uganda and their 200-mile relocation to a national park.[35] The safer method of drugging large animals with darts had yet to be perfected when the operation took place. Uganda National Parks defrayed some of its costs by selling the exclusive film rights to Anglia for £1500.[36] Colin Willock supervised the filming with John Buxton, a cousin of Aubrey, and Chiels Margach, a Ugandan settler of Scottish origin, as cameramen. A tense score from John Dankworth emphasised the dramatic footage, the production having, in Willock's words, "the roar, dust and danger of the chase in every frame", including a sequence where the truck he occupied came under sustained attack from an angry rhino.
Mon, Dec 4, 1967
Alan and Joan Root went to the Galapagos Islands to make a film that retraced the voyage of Charles Darwin, whose observations of the islands' unique wildlife famously helped formulate his theories on evolution. Aubrey Buxton, in his role as an equerry to Prince Philip, had accompanied the Prince on a visit to the islands in 1964 and both were struck by the urgent need for scientific research and preservation. As the then chairman of the British Appeal of the WWF, Prince Philip agreed to present and narrate Survival's one-hour documentary as a means of drawing attention to the importance of protecting the islands' ecology. The programme was subsequently bought by NBC for $430,000[38] and became the first ever natural history film to be networked on American television.