Shereen Ali

This man has in­ter­rupt­ed the love­mak­ing of crabs at Wa­ter­loo. He's shak­en the beds of sleepy swamp snakes, and braved the fae­cal stench of a bub­bling Beetham sludge la­goon to show us the beau­ty of Black-necked stilts. His name is Robert Clarke, and he's the ad­ven­tur­ous nar­ra­tor/guide per­sona of Bush Di­ary 2.

Bush Di­ary 2 is the re­cent­ly re­leased se­quel wildlife DVD to the pop­u­lar and award-win­ning 2012 Bush Di­ary 1 DVD. While the first col­lec­tion fea­tured four episodes (Ca­roni Swamp, Man­groves, Avian Won­ders and For­est Fires), Bush Di­ary 2 spot­lights three themes: Leatherback Tur­tles, Nar­i­va Swamp and Wildlife Res­cue. At­lantic En­er­gy gen­er­ous­ly spon­sored DVD man­u­fac­tur­ing costs for Bush Di­ary 2.

Each episode por­trays a dif­fer­ent, unique sto­ry about our lo­cal wildlife and the spe­cial places where they live. Cam­era­man Ra­j­nauth Lal and the team cap­ture some beau­ti­ful vi­su­als through­out the DVDs, whether it's clouds drift­ing over a full moon in Matu­ra, a panoram­ic swamp shot, or a dra­mat­ic close­up of a jew­el-like drag­on­fly.

Both Bush Di­ary col­lec­tions are well-pro­duced lo­cal na­ture doc­u­men­taries, split in­to 30-minute episodes, made by the re­source­ful team of Id­iom TV, which is a small lo­cal film pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny led by ed­i­tor-pro­duc­er-writer Pao­lo Ker­na­han.

The episodes are pre­cise­ly the kind of fun, in­tel­li­gent lo­cal shows that we see far too lit­tle of on lo­cal TV: unique in­dige­nous cul­tur­al prod­ucts that ed­u­cate, in­form, and al­so, at their best mo­ments, de­light you with un­ex­pect­ed en­coun­ters.

But the pe­cu­liar na­ture of com­pet­i­tive ad­ver­tis­ing, and lo­cal TV sta­tions ex­pect­ing to be paid to show qual­i­ty pro­grammes (as if all shows were ads), has late­ly turned Id­iom TV away from that route. "It is not prac­ti­cal for any pro­duc­er to pro­duce tele­vi­sion shows, and then pay a TV sta­tion to air it, be­cause that is not sus­tain­able," com­ment­ed Ker­na­han.

Even if a show is ed­u­ca­tion­al, and in the pub­lic in­ter­est, and will at­tract and build fu­ture au­di­ences, "that has ab­solute­ly no bear­ing" when it comes to lo­cal TV screen­ing poli­cies, said the Id­iom team. No mat­ter what the type or qual­i­ty of the show, whether it's an elec­tion broad­cast or a na­ture show, all lo­cal con­tent pro­duc­ers must pay for lo­cal TV screen time, un­like in some oth­er coun­tries with more en­light­ened pub­lic tele­vi­sion poli­cies which have man­dates be­yond the pure­ly mer­can­tile.

Trav­el­ling around Trinidad

De­spite a mod­est bud­get, the Id­iom team in Bush Di­ary suc­ceeds ad­mirably in telling im­por­tant lo­cal en­vi­ron­men­tal sto­ries while al­so be­ing en­ter­tain­ing. They've al­so learned how to trans­form their equip­ment lim­i­ta­tions in­to virtues, by force of ne­ces­si­ty; so that, for in­stance, they've evolved a "stealth mode" of shoot­ing birds to com­pen­sate for not hav­ing a su­per long lens.

We get a chance to see, hear and learn not on­ly about our own trop­i­cal an­i­mals, but al­so vic­ar­i­ous­ly ex­plore beau­ti­ful nooks and cran­nies of Trinidad where we may nev­er have been. And the en­vi­ron­men­tal ed­u­ca­tion hap­pens al­most by ac­ci­dent, thanks to Ker­na­han's skil­ful, un­ob­tru­sive scriptwrit­ing and re­search.

Un­like the fa­mous Aus­tralian TV wildlife per­son­al­i­ty Steve Ir­win, Robert Clarke the Tri­ni nar­ra­tor does not de­lib­er­ate­ly set out to an­tag­o­nise an­i­mals for hu­man en­ter­tain­ment. Rather, it's more a case of wait­ing pa­tient­ly in the bush for the chance to cap­ture just that spe­cial mo­ment when the an­i­mals are go­ing about do­ing their nat­ur­al an­i­mal busi­ness. So just one minute of film can eas­i­ly rep­re­sent many, many hours of pa­tient ef­fort – not on­ly wait­ing for the elu­sive an­i­mals, but al­so bat­tling wind, rain, mos­qui­toes, equip­ment fail­ures and at­tacks from hard­ened bush cock­roach­es!

Tat­tooed and with a clear speak­ing voice, Clarke makes a com­pe­tent nar­ra­tor for the wildlife es­capades. The Guardian in­ter­viewed Clarke and Ker­na­han on June 6 in the T&T Guardian's Ch­agua­nas of­fice to hear more about Bush Di­ary 2, and how the whole se­ries came to be.

How it be­gan

The Bush Di­ary se­ries be­gan as a seed in Ker­na­han's mind from the days when he was a re­porter work­ing on rice farm­ing sto­ries in Nar­i­va, and saw Red Howler mon­keys, and oth­er wildlife, for the first time.

"That was mind-blow­ing for me, be­cause I didn't know that we had all of this here," con­fessed Ker­na­han.

"Ever since then, I'd al­ways want­ed to do an ac­tion-ori­ent­ed na­ture pro­gramme, be­cause peo­ple need to know much more about wildlife and the en­vi­ron­ment. For in­stance, the silky anteater or 'poor-me one' (in Bush Di­ary 1) was a rev­e­la­tion, not on­ly to many view­ers, but al­so to us, when we went out in­to the Ca­roni Swamp. So Bush Di­ary came from this in­ter­est in ed­u­cat­ing the pub­lic, and my­self along the way, about all the tremen­dous wildlife and bio­di­ver­si­ty here."

Ker­na­han thought Clarke would make a good, ad­ven­tur­ous show host, and along­side fel­low me­dia work­ers Nar­risa Man­dol and Ra­j­nauth Lal, the core Id­iom team formed in 2009, and pro­duc­tion took off.

"As we went along, we re­alised more and more that the show was al­so about con­ser­va­tion," said Bush Di­ary host Clarke, adding:

"In my own back­ground, I was al­ways that way in­clined. I couldn't bear to see an­i­mals hurt. I don't like to see habi­tat de­stroyed. As we filmed, we re­alised how frag­ile these ecosys­tems are. And how much they need to be pro­tect­ed."

Film­ing the show dra­mat­i­cal­ly raised the Id­iom crew's aware­ness of di­verse threats. A big one is en­croach­ing hu­man habi­ta­tion, which is wip­ing out wild spaces, they re­alised. We hu­mans are the biggest threats to our own very spe­cial, unique, bio­di­verse nat­ur­al her­itage–but it doesn't have to be that way.

"If we don't pay at­ten­tion to what we are do­ing, we could very well lose it. As David At­ten­bor­ough said, peo­ple can­not be ex­pect­ed to cher­ish some­thing that they know noth­ing about. So that is a very im­por­tant mis­sion of Bush Di­ary," said Clarke.

"We didn't want to ham­mer peo­ple over the head with the con­ser­va­tion­ist eth­ic. In­stead, we want­ed to show peo­ple: look, this is yours, this be­longs to you. So you need to play a greater role to en­sure this re­mains with us for fu­ture gen­er­a­tions."

In­spir­ing sto­ries

The team found in­spir­ing ex­am­ples of how just one in­di­vid­ual, or a few peo­ple, have made a great dif­fer­ence to the sur­vival of dif­fer­ent wildlife in their ar­eas. The Tur­tle Vil­lage Trust at Matu­ra, for in­stance, emerged from the vi­sion of just a few peo­ple who saw that tur­tles were worth far more alive than dead. (At­lantic En­er­gy spon­sors the Tur­tle Vil­lage Trust.) Mean­while at Grand Riv­iere, a whole de­struc­tive vil­lage cul­ture of butcher­ing nest­ing tur­tles and eat­ing them at beach­side smoke­outs be­came trans­formed and re­versed years ago, once vil­lagers be­came ed­u­cat­ed and saw the longer-last­ing eco­tourism ben­e­fits of pre­serv­ing their unique lo­cal wildlife. Lo­cal fish­er­man Len Pe­ters in Grand Riv­iere has now be­come an ex­pert on tur­tles, with "en­cy­clopaedic knowl­edge," said Clarke: "His knowl­edge of tur­tles is as good as, or per­haps bet­ter than, any sci­en­tist."

"We want peo­ple to val­ue these an­i­mals as eco­nom­ic as­sets. That means you need to know the wildlife you are talk­ing about. It is ab­solute­ly un­ac­cept­able that if we bring tourists here and they ask us about an an­i­mal, we can­not an­swer. So Bush Di­ary is try­ing to make ex­perts of each and every one of us. It's more than a case of be­ing proud of what's here; that knowl­edge will al­so help us sell this coun­try as an eco­tourism des­ti­na­tion," said Clarke, adding:

"We should nev­er give up fight­ing for wildlife, be­cause we have, in our own life­times, some fan­tas­tic ex­am­ples of peo­ple who have raised their voic­es against oth­ers, to en­sure that these an­i­mals have a fu­ture."

MORE IN­FO

Bush Di­ary DVD 2 Trail­er: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kjc9mBfJg­pU

To or­der DVDs, email: id­iomtv@gmail.com. The team will per­son­al­ly de­liv­er it. Al­so on sale at Pa­per Based Book­shop at Ho­tel Nor­mandie in St Ann's; Rainy Days at Eller­slie Plaza, Mar­aval; and Sig­na­ture Sta­tion­ary in Val­park Plaza.

Side­bars (if space al­lows):

Who is Pao­lo Ker­na­han?

Pao­lo Ker­na­han is a writer and video pro­duc­er for both the tra­di­tion­al and dig­i­tal me­dia. He pro­duces con­tent that tells T&T sto­ries. His works in­clude the video se­ries Bush Di­ary with Robert Clarke, The Road Less Trav­elled, Bat­tle of the Bel­ly, Din­ner in A Snap, and A Very Tri­ni Christ­mas. Ker­na­han has been a talk show host at CNC3, Head of News at Gayelle and a tele­vi­sion pro­duc­er at TV6 and TTT. He cur­rent­ly writes a week­ly col­umn for the Guardian.

Who is Robert Clarke?

Robert Clarke is a free­lance jour­nal­ist and writer who al­so works in tele­vi­sion pro­duc­tion. He is the au­thor of Sid­ney Knox, A Bi­og­ra­phy and has ghost-writ­ten sev­er­al bi­ogra­phies for Trinida­di­ans who made their names in var­i­ous en­deav­ours. Clarke, who has his Mas­ter's of Jour­nal­ism from Car­leton Uni­ver­si­ty, Ot­tawa, worked as a broad­cast jour­nal­ist at Gayelle and was Guardian's re­porter of the year in 2003.