A heartbroken Planet Earth III producer has confirmed that a mother maned wolf and her puppies were found drowned in a drainage ditch after the documentary filming ended.
Viewers of the David Attenborough documentary saw a world first on Sunday night (November 5) after the filmmakers managed to film inside a den of the shy maned wolf family. The animal is a fruit-eating wolf that is found in the grassland of Brazil's Cerrado.
Sadly, they are facing threat from local farmers who use fire to clear out the grassland to grow their crops. The red-coloured wolves have already lost 50% of their habitat.
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After the filming crew left, after a three-year project with local scientists, the mother wolf, Nhorinha, and her two pups were found drowned in a drainage ditch on farmland close by. And sadly, it wasn't an isolated incident.
Producer and Director Kiri Cashell said: “The death of our maned wolf, Nhorinha, and her puppies is truly heart-breaking. We spent three years working with scientists to better understand this species, and the footage we were able to capture from inside the den provides such an intimate look into the first few weeks of these puppies’ lives.
“Sadly since filming ended, we have discovered that the mother and two of her puppies fell into drainage ditches which are used to feed the crops of neighbouring farmland. Unable to escape, the wolves drowned.” Kiri went on: "It’s a really sad representation of what’s going on, and a reflection of the big problem facing the whole species."
A number of other wolves who had been fitted with electronic tracking collars had already been found dead. Kiri said: "More and more, farmland is encroaching onto the Cerrado. This is a vitally important grassland and some predict it could disappear completely in the next thirty years. The death of these maned wolves is an upsetting and poignant reminder of what could be lost.”
But it's even bigger than just the death of some wolves. If the species is wiped out, it could cause an entire ecosystem to collapse, Sir David Attenborough explained in the documentary.
Researcher Barbara Do Conto Peret Dias is hopeful about the future, though. She said: "I feel quite worried but not hopeless. I grew up here, it's my home, I have to protect it."
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