From its breathtakingly beautiful scenery, to its distinct and topical messages, Netflix’s eight-part nature documentary, Our Planet, highlights the fragility of life in the hopes of pushing for human action against climate change.
Narrated by the famed nature documentarian, David Attenborough, the series serves as a heartbreaking reminder that human developments like overfishing, deforestation and climate change, play an adverse role in keeping our wildlife out of harm’s way.
Although the exquisite docu-series has received rave reviews, there’s one scene that has viewers divided. At the end of episode two, we are introduced to an enormous gathering of walruses who have no choice but to huddle onto a tiny stretch of dry rock due to the shrinking sea ice in the Arctic. Every square inch of the land is occupied, and when it comes time to feed and rest, many have no choice but to scale rocks. In their desperate attempt to climb to safety, many lose their footing, and plunge to their death.
WATCH THE CONFRONTING SCENE BELOW.
The gruesome scene, which producer Sophie Lanfear said was “the hardest thing I’ve ever had to witness or film in my career” is sobering and equally as confronting as it is devastating.
“What we think is going on is that the ones at the top can probably hear the ones in the water, and they can sense that there is water below. They teeter on the edge, and they just can’t work out how to get down there,” Lanfear told the New York Times. “I was expecting that perhaps the walruses would tumble down, but at the end, they’d be O.K. I really wasn’t prepared for the scale of death. So it’s just tragic. It’s absolutely heartbreaking.”
The unsightly scene has caused quite the stir, with many viewers and animal lovers admitting the footage was far too confronting to watch in its entirety.
Although it’s not the typical scenario you’d expect to see in a feel-good nature documentary, the footage proves that our flippant attitude towards climate change consequently results in marine animals being driven away from their natural habitat.
“We were trying to get to the heart of the issue with each of the great global habitats,” said executive producer Keith Scholey. “And to be very clear about the elements of destruction and the solutions.”
You can stream the series on Netflix now.
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