Where have you travelled to for this series? And why?

We went to the North-Eastern side of Greenland, to one of the largest protected areas on Earth, to meet a group of scientists who've been working with muskoxen. They're working in an ecosystem, which is very simple in terms of its herbivores, so essentially they've got Arctic hair, Lemmings and Muskoxen. The simplicity of that system means that each of those animals can have quite a profound effect, both locally and broadly.

What they're interested in, is looking at how the muskox interact with the ecology of that area, and what impact that has on the wider environment. There's a general consensus that as things begin to warm up, animals that need it cold, including muskox, will migrate northwards. They want to know what happens to the environment they leave behind, if one of three herbivores suddenly becomes less abundant, or disappears altogether, because they've migrated northwards.

We went to a Danish research station, where the scientists were the most welcoming and helpful collection of people that you could ever have imagined. It was an absolute joy to be there. We were very fortunate with our filming trip. We had the best of both worlds - on one day, it was clear blue sky and sunny, which was great and then it snowed very heavily. We went from one extreme to the other, so visually, we couldn't have had it better. I have to say it was one of the trips that I've enjoyed the most in quite a long time, it was fantastic.

You’ve returned to the same habitat as last year. What positive changes have occurred since your visit last year?

Last year, we were in Iceland and we were looking at melting ice, and also whales, and the impact that the melting ice potentially opening shipping routes might have on our whale population. Essentially, we were looking at melting. As it turned out, one of the problems that the muskox are facing is not so much melting, but changes in weather patterns, which means that there is more rain or more snow at a time and that may impact negatively on the survival of their young.

One of the things we were doing in Greenland, was fitting very sophisticated collars to the muskoxen, which will not be retrieved until March of next year, by which stage they would have obviously gathered enormous amounts of data. They would also have used some vaginal inserts to map where the muskoxen were giving birth. The muskoxen story, gives us data on the table and stuff for us to learn over time.

Looking at positive changes, I think Environmental Awareness continues to grow. We have campaigning organisations constantly drawing attention to the problems with fossil fuels. There can't be anyone in the UK, certainly anyone in Western Europe, who isn't aware of the negative impacts and potential threats of climate change. I just think that the intangibility of it means that it doesn't get the attention that it really requires. We all have many issues facing us in the UK at the moment - cost of living crisis, energy crisis etc but the climate is affecting us on a daily basis.

However, this is indirect and we're not seeing it, therefore people's reaction to it hasn't risen to the point that we're really demanding the sorts of changes that we need, but people like myself, through the BBC, are doing everything we can to maintain and generate that awareness. That's essentially what these programmes are about. Although educational, the education comes with a thinly veiled warning because we're constantly talking about the potentially negative impacts that are happening as a result of the things that we're filming.

Through this programme, we’re finding a way of telling some very interesting stories, some very good science, but we're not hiding the fact that the reason we're out there looking at these things is because the planet is in crisis, so that's good.

Do you have a particular tie to your territory?

I like simple environments, visually. I find them a lot less challenging than complex environments, like forest or woodland.

I also liked the fact that they are home to highly specialised creatures, like the muskoxen. They're tough and hostile places to be, so although you don't get the great diversity of life in those places, you do get some highly specialised animals.

I rather like the fact that they are intrinsically simpler ecosystems and therefore easier for us to unravel and understand certainly in the short term. Again, I just love hanging out with scientists and learning what they know. They were the most welcoming collection of researchers, so that was fantastic.

What captivated you the most about being involved in this project?

I think the potential for learning. I like new technologies and they were employing new technologies with the collars that they were putting on, so I like the successful implementation of that but with a real reason, which is to generate meaningful data. It was a pleasure to be in their productive company. It was an interesting landscape scene in both extremes, with some snow too.

The animals there also captivated me. I had seen muskoxen before, on a number of occasions, but never close up like this. We were darting the animals, which meant that I was able to help process them and they were obviously taking lots of biometrics once they darted the animal. The scientists were taking samples of just about everything, and fitting the collars and weighing, measuring, so I was able to join in first-hand, which meant I was hands on with a muskox.

So in a sort of childlike way, that was a tremendous thrill because I'd seen them and they have the potential to be dangerous animals, animals you treat with respect because of their size, but being able to get up close and personal and with them was fantastic.

Tell us about the people you met and describe your experience working with scientists and experts in the field?

What's good in those sorts of environments is that although you've got a plan, you're obviously entirely guided by the weather, so we had to be flexible. The other problem we had was the muskoxen because although they were relatively abundant in the valley where the research station was. They move about day to day over quite large distances so you might in the evening see a group within a kilometre of the base, but in the morning, they could be eight kilometres away. So I have to say that it was quite exhausting. I'm a 61 year old man who walks two poodles every day for exercise.

I don't hang out in the gym and I don't have time unfortunately for running about. Most of the scientists were half my age, strapping fit Danish, athletes as well as scientists. So hiking all the gear across very large distances to basically corral these animals onto hills where we could get someone close enough to dart them, was a physically strong, tenuous exercise, and there was a lot of sweating, a lot of puffing, huffing and puffing, occasionally some sitting down. But it was good. I enjoyed all that as well, because I don't mind a bit of a hike as long as there's something at the end of it, and there was there was the muskoxen.

The scientists had to literally go out and form a circle around the animals to very gently coax them over a period of hours into moving to a place where they could be darted, which required a lot of strategizing and a lot of patience. Then it all needs to happen very quickly once you've darted the animal because obviously you want to get it back on its feet as quickly as possible. They were tremendously responsible and diligent. There was obviously never a point where any of the animals or people were at risk at all. They were brilliantly organised. It was really top rate stuff.

What was your most standout moment from working with the scientists/ experts you met on this journey?

There were quite a few. Obviously touching and meeting the muskox personally was fantastic. Being able to be part of such a slick team with such clear defined ambitions is always good. We all felt really confident that we were in the right place with the right people. The landscape is absolutely beautiful, so seeing some of the pastel muted colours before it snowed were very beautiful and then afterwards, in the snow, everything simplified, so that was striking, there's no doubt about that.

Ultimately at the end of the day, kneeling alongside of muskox, helping to take blood samples, cutting some of its hair off, screwing on the collar, was an absolute treat and dream come true.

Were there any other stand out memorable sequences or experiences during the filming of this new series that you can share with us?

I didn't see too much other wildlife. Obviously polar bears are potential occurrences there, so we had to be constantly polar bear vigilant. We didn't see any polar bears, though, which is probably a good thing because it would have interrupted our work because of safety concerns. So not seeing a polar bear actually helped, given we didn't have much time on the ground. Had there been a bear hanging around the camp, it would have been much more difficult to work.

Bird wise, not a lot really. That's what you expect in those environments. Going into winter, anything with any sense is knuckled down or has got out of there. It wasn't tremendously rich in terms of the wildlife but we weren't there for that, we were there for the muskox and it was great.

Did you learn anything new about the ecological issues you explored?

I learned a tremendous amount and that's the highlight of my job, to be honest. The work that I do in my life has become a lifelong learning experience and I can't think of anything more fantastic. When you learn it first-hand, from the people in the field, obviously if you read their scientific papers, you've read what they've proven at that point but when you're with them, you can talk about all of the conjecture and the ideas they have, when they're formulating their conclusions for the next point. Being in a live environment, rather than a written or online environment is far more exciting, you can have discussions about what they think, rather than what they know and that's really interesting.

I learned a lot from everything, I've obviously learned a lot about muskox as an animal. Although I'd seen them and photographed them before, I wasn't with anyone that knew them, in terms of their physiology and biology so that was good. I learned a lot more about muskox. I also learned a lot of things about the way that those Arctic ecosystems play out. We've done everything we can to squeeze as much of that into the film. We could have made a programme, half an hour/ an hour long, just about the muskox but we have to squeeze the highlights in, but the highlights were good.

What do you hope is the key take home message from watching Our Changing Planet and your episode, in particular?

For many people, North-Eastern Greenland and the muskox are very much out of sight and probably when I say out of mind, probably never in mind and yet these animals are key indicators as to the health of our entire planet, which is slightly abstract, isn't it? When you think that you've got these, large, fluffy herbivores in a part of the world, which has one of the lowest densities of people anywhere on Earth, certainly in the winter, only a handful of people stay there for the winter.

It's hard for many people to think, what can that desolate part of the world tell us about our health? Well, it's telling us a lot and that speaks to the imagination, the creativity, and the intelligence of the scientists that have found the ways to extrapolate those stories. I hope that the film highlights that in any corner of our planet, at any point, we can now very sadly, find connections to changes in our environment, climate, and biodiversity.

I could go out of the unit where I am now and find things flowering that wouldn't have been flowering at this time when I was a child, so I can see climate change out the window of my industrial unit in Taunton. Anyone can see it anywhere, if they look. I guess that that's another one of our messages. We're saying that this simple system in Greenland can tell us a lot but you don't need to go that far, you can look out the window.

What do you hope and/or expect to see when you return to this habitat?

I'd love to go back when they drop the collars off because that will be the combination of the data analysis. When they do drop the collars, it doesn’t have to be sent off to be crunched by a computer, quite a lot of the meat of the data can be analysed on site at the time. I'm particularly keen to go back there having put the collars on the animals.

I think they managed to get the rest of them on when we left, so that will be tremendously exciting. It will tell us about the movement of these animals, the way that they're interacting, the way that the flora is changing, and it will tell us about the population because recruitment into that population through successful rearing of their young is something we have real concerns about. The initial signs are that there is a higher mortality and less females giving birth, because of these snow, and what controls whether they give birth and how healthy the young is, is the previous season.

Seasonally, it's all or nothing there and if they can't access grass because of snow in the previous season, then the following year, they don't go on to produce young, they're not as fit as they ought to be and if they do produce young, that can compromise the lifespan of the females if they're exhausted by the process. These are the sort of things that they were interested in getting definitive data about, so I'd love to go back.