As I previously reported, the new Netflix nature special “Our Planet” put a heavy focus on how man-made climate change was damaging nature, and showed one shocking scene where walruses were being pushed off a cliff to gruesome deaths caught on camera.
The documentary then insists this was happening because there wasn’t a lot of ice due to global warming, forcing walruses to clump together in what spaces they could manage, only to eventually be pushed off a cliff due to lack of space.
This was challenged by zoologists and experts who noted that walruses clump together even when there is space in general, and as some have deduced, the event where walruses perished on a cliffside coincided with an event that involved polar bears hunting and spooking the walruses over the cliff.
The “Our Planet” team failed to mention the polar bears in the main episode, only showing them later on in the bonus footage.
However, some experts also wonder if the reason the walruses fell off the cliff is due to the fact that they had nowhere to go when spooked as the “Our Planet” crew could have been blocking their exit, and on top of that, that the crew’s drones and cameras could have played a part in spooking the walruses as well.
According to The Australian, a US Fisheries spokesman said that walruses will often flee en masse at “the sight, sound and especially odours from humans and machines.”
However, “Our Planet” producer Sophie Lanfear denied that the crew acted in any way that would have put the walruses in a state of panic.
“When approaching the walruses, we made sure we were downwind of them and that we could not be seen,” she said.
“We only stood up when it was safe to do so and when we weren’t at risk of scaring any walruses,” she added.
Lanfear had previously denied the fact that polar bears were to blame for spooking the walruses as well.
It should be made clear, however, that these are merely allegations, but as I previously reported, the World Wildlife Foundation that funded the “Our Planet” docu-series has been using the walrus footage as a way to promote environmentalist politics based off of what is already questionable video.
Since it seems that the “Our Planet” crew was already seemingly lying about why the walruses were being pushed off a cliff, it would likely merit further investigation as to what really happened. If the crew’s negligence or incompetence had anything to do with the grisly deaths of the walruses, then it needs to be brought to light.
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