Europe.
Home to more than 700 million people.
This is a continent that has been transformed by humanity.
It is a crowded world.
But not all of it.
There are still precious areas of wilderness
and, living within them, some very surprising animals.
SQUAWKING
Forest once covered 80% of Europe.
CHIRPING
Now only half of it remains.
GRUNTING
A brown bear.
One of only 1,500 that are left in Finland's forests.
CUBS SQUEAK
Her cubs have recently emerged from their nursery den.
The long summer days means there's plenty of time for play.
With two boisterous cubs...
..it pays to rest, whenever you can.
But their mother must be on her guard.
The cubs have spotted something.
A large male, looking for a mate.
The cubs aren't his.
So he might try to kill them.
Bear cubs are excellent climbers.
And now they're beyond his reach, 15 metres up.
MAKES GUTTURAL, PULSING SOUND
Their mother warns him to keep his distance.
But the cubs are coming down too soon.
MAKES GUTTURAL, PULSING SOUND
She can't take any chances.
GROWLS AGGRESSIVELY
That was a close call.
Finland's forests give us a glimpse of what Europe was once like.
A land of endless wilderness, where large animals roamed far and wide.
In the north, the continent extends beyond the Arctic Circle.
Here, the skies are illuminated by the aurora borealis,
the northern lights.
Trillions of charged particles,
ejected by electric storms on the sun,
react with the Earth's atmosphere
to create this surreal nocturnal spectacle.
But by day, this is a barren land.
The Dovrefjell mountains of Norway.
One of the last refuges for an animal that once lived
all across northern Europe.
GRUNTS
The musk ox.
He protects the herd and fathers all the calves.
BELLOWS
His is a greatly sought-after rank...
BLEATS
..and that means that, in the mating season,
he has to deal with rivals.
And here is one.
Raking the ground is a warning to other males to keep away.
But some ignore it.
He now has no choice but to defend his crown.
GRUNTS
The challenger attacks.
Each male weighs nearly half a tonne.
These clashes are usually short and intense,
but not this time.
As his family looks on, neither gives in.
The bull will need to draw on all his experience.
But he's beginning to lose ground.
Now he's broadsided.
If he's defeated, he will lose all his females.
With one final effort,
the bull pushes the challenger back up the hill.
It's over.
The old bull successfully defended his rights as head of the family.
And the challenger has to return to a lonely life for another year.
One of Europe's last remaining areas of wilderness lies at its heart.
A mountain range spanning 750 miles across eight countries.
The Alps.
Europe's mountain ranges may be inhospitable,
but wildlife has shared this terrain with people for centuries.
BELL CHIMES
It's dusk in the mountain villages of Abruzzo, in central Italy.
And deep in the surrounding woods,
thermal imaging cameras reveal the continent's most elusive predators.
Wolves.
Right on the edge of the village.
HOWLING
It's midwinter, and food is hard to come by.
HOWLING
This pack may not have fed for a week.
They can travel many miles in a night,
searching for prey.
Red deer.
It's pitch-black.
Perfect conditions for an ambush.
But even so...
..the odds are stacked against the wolves.
TWIG SNAPS
One wrong footstep,
and they have lost the advantage of surprise.
The deer scatter right across the mountainside.
And to make matters worse,
the hunt is interrupted.
VEHICLE ZOOMS PAST
The deer are now high up the mountain.
But the wolves use the road to travel faster and in silence.
They manage to get above the herd.
Now they make their move.
RUSTLING
The pack needs to single out one animal.
A wolf is more nimble in thick woodland,
but a deer can run faster on open ground.
Once they're close, the pack drive the deer
straight down the mountain.
And now it's more likely to stumble.
GROWLING
In this case, the icy road proves fatal.
BARKING
But the commotion has attracted sheepdogs from the nearby village.
They have been bred to protect livestock by chasing away wolves.
BARKING CONTINUES
With the kill lost to the sheepdogs,
the wolves will go hungry
for yet another night.
Today, much of Europe's wildlife has to live alongside people.
DISTANT SIRENS
The most adaptable can be found in our towns and cities.
Gibraltar, right on the southern tip of the continent.
Home to Europe's only monkeys.
Barbary macaques.
Four family troops live here.
SCREECHES
In macaque society,
there is a strict hierarchy,
and status within it is inherited.
This female has just given birth to her first baby.
She is at the bottom of the pecking order.
So her son is, too.
SHIP HORN BLARES
They're bullied constantly...
..and forced to live on the fringes of the troop.
As outcasts, their only comfort is each other.
SCREECHES
He's been snatched,
stolen by a higher-ranking female.
She is childless, and she wants a baby of her own.
SCREECHES
He's only a few metres away...
..but if his mother approaches,
the rest of the troop could well attack her.
The kidnapper has never raised a baby before,
so this one is in danger.
They're headed towards a cable car tower.
The young mother can't let them out of her sight.
They're 30 metres up.
If she tries to grab her baby and fails,
he could fall to his death.
CLICKS TONGUE
The kidnapper refuses to surrender him.
There's one last thing a mother can try,
and to do it
she needs to recruit another macaque.
Now the mother begins to groom her companion
in full view of the kidnapper.
All monkeys love to be groomed,
even by a low-ranking female.
It's the basis for peace in macaque society.
CLICKS TONGUE
Eventually, the urge to join in is just too strong.
TONGUE CLICKING
The kidnap is over.
And the youngster can climb back into his mother's arms.
There are pockets of wilderness even in Europe's cities.
BELLS CHIME
Green oases among the urban sprawl.
Vienna, in Austria, has over 2,000 parks, gardens and cemeteries.
And down in the undergrowth, a rather unusual resident.
A European hamster.
Wild hamsters are found in grasslands throughout central Europe.
Here, in the city, they're doing extremely well.
This male is on a mission to find food,
and he's set his sights on one thing in particular.
Fresh flowers.
To survive the winter, hamsters must fatten up.
So there's no time to waste.
The only problem - these flowers are in someone else's patch.
SQUEAKING
Graveside bouquets are worth fighting for.
The winner gets to keep the territory and all the food within it.
The loser has to beat a hasty retreat.
Plan B.
Stealth mode.
The coast looks clear.
But best not take any chances.
The trick is to get in and out before you're caught.
And now...dessert.
Candle wax - it's full of oil and high in calories.
A hamster's cheeks can hold a quarter of its body weight.
Just one more mouthful.
SQUEAKING
Oh, dear.
Big cheeks and narrow bottlenecks -
how very embarrassing.
Mission accomplished.
Europe's landscape has changed dramatically,
but its temperate climate is still good for wildlife.
The continent has warm summers...
..and mild winters.
These conditions are a consequence of its position on the globe...
..and the influence of the Gulf Stream.
This current of warm water in the Atlantic Ocean heats the air
that then flows over the land.
And every year, Europe's unique climate
helps trigger an extraordinary natural event.
The Tisza River, in Hungary.
For a few days in June,
when day length and water temperature are just right...
..the largest of all mayflies emerge.
After three years of feeding and growing on the riverbed,
the males appear first.
With new wings, they can fly to the river bank
and there undergo a final moult.
BIRDSONG
Now sexually mature,
they have just one purpose in life -
to find a female.
Each male has only three hours to live.
And now the females begin to emerge on the surface of the river.
The males scour the water surface, searching for them...
..each desperate to be the one that fertilises her eggs.
Every female is pounced on as soon as she appears.
With only minutes left for each male to live,
the competition becomes increasingly urgent.
And all too soon, the males' time is up.
All of them die.
But the females' journey has only just begun.
Now that they've mated,
they start to fly upstream
and continue for as much as three miles.
At the height of the hatch,
there may be as many as ten million insects on the wing.
Exhausted,
the females now collapse and rain down onto the water's surface.
And as they hit it, each releases thousands of eggs.
As the eggs slowly sink,
they drift downstream,
so that by the time each reaches the riverbed,
it will be in exactly the same spot that its parents emerged.
Just hours after the first mayflies appeared,
this great eruption of life is over.
Europe's extensive waterways are a haven for wildlife.
One of the richest of its wetlands
lies on the edge of the Black Sea, in Romania.
The delta of the Danube River.
Migrating birds are drawn here from as far away as central Africa
and Asia.
Great white pelicans.
Every summer, three quarters of the world's population
flock to the delta.
They've flown thousands of miles to get here,
and they will spend the summer feasting on the delta's riches.
To find the best fishing,
they take to the air.
From half a mile up,
they search the entire delta,
200 miles across.
They can't see individual fish from this height,
so instead they look for others below that have already done so.
Cormorants.
They are diving deep to reach the biggest shoals,
flushing them to the surface.
A couple of pelicans land...
..and others soon home in on them.
The pelicans don't join the feast directly.
They mug the diners.
This brutal tactic enables each pelican to catch many more fish,
more quickly than it would do if it worked by itself.
Once the shoals of fish have been plundered and dispersed,
the cormorants make their escape.
And the pelican pirates fly off in search of their next meal.
Water has shaped Europe's landscape in another way.
There is a vast wilderness lying within the rocks of the continent.
Caves.
Over 12,000 have been discovered in Slovenia's Karst region alone.
Each has been eroded by water over millions of years...
..and shaped drip...by drip.
The largest cavern is over 15 miles long,
and there are certainly many more still to be discovered.
Down here live some of the most specialised animals on the planet.
New species of them are discovered in Europe's caves every year.
This is a world that still holds many secrets.
In the deepest pools
lurk animals that were once believed to be baby dragons.
They have feathery gills which enable them to breathe underwater,
as well as on land.
They are olms.
They're completely blind,
but sensory pits around the mouth enable them to detect
the faint electrical currents emitted by their prey.
Food of any kind down here is hard to come by.
But an olm can go without a meal for a decade...
..and live for a century.
The olms' world has remained virtually unchanged for millennia.
Above, however, Europe has altered beyond recognition.
Its landscape has been transformed by humans.
Protected wilderness now covers less than 4% of its surface.
The disappearance of wilderness has had catastrophic consequences
for wildlife.
One fifth of Europe's animals are now under threat.
Some teeter right on the brink of extinction.
The Iberian lynx.
One of the world's most endangered cats.
In less than two decades,
the lynx population decreased by nearly 90%.
At one point,
there were fewer than 100 individuals.
Today, their last stronghold
is in the mountains of the Sierra de Andujar, in southern Spain.
Here, a natural park was created to help protect the lynx.
Only 25 miles across, it is small.
But for this male, it's just enough.
He's lived here all his life.
At ten years old, he's reached a remarkable age for a wild lynx.
Once persecuted, he's now protected.
For this old male, and Europe's entire lynx population,
this could be the beginning of a new chapter.
In this year alone,
nearly 200 kittens have been born,
and the population has risen to over 700.
But the fate of the Iberian lynx,
and indeed of all Europe's wildlife,
is far from certain.
The continent has now been so changed by humanity
that many of its animal species are under threat.
Only by protecting the few wildernesses that remain
and creating new wild spaces
can we ensure a future for Europe's precious wildlife.
DAVID ATTENBOROUGH: Europe's predators are rare and elusive...
..and none more so than the Iberian lynx...
..and the grey wolf.
HOWLING
Just finding them can be difficult...
It's completely pitch-black now.
..let alone filming them.
We are packing up the kit...again, cos it's raining...again.
Two crews set off to different countries...
..armed with different technology,
but united by a single mission.
One team travelled to the heart of the Apennine Mountains in Italy,
where wolf sightings had been reported.
Using the latest thermal camera,
the team will be able to film the wolves in the darkness,
when they're most active.
This is quite a beast of a camera,
but it can see way into the distance.
So if anything warm-blooded appears on the landscape, I'll see it for sure.
We just need that little stroke of luck now.
But luck is not on their side.
Whoo!
Hold on to your horses,
it's blowing an absolute hoolie out there.
I think this hide is just going to literally blow off the mountain.
In Spain, the lynx team are taking a different approach.
Camera traps, and lots of them.
So we've got one camera here,
one camera hidden in the olive groves here
and one camera, which you might just be able to see,
hidden in the olive groves there.
The crew rigs remote cameras wherever the lynx are known to roam...
..including some surprisingly busy locations.
We've been told that they use these underpasses
to get underneath this massive motorway,
so we're going to work out where to put our cameras
and hopefully capture them moving around this urban environment.
To record enough footage,
the cameras will need to be left in the field for six months.
With the last one set, the long wait begins.
In the mountains of Italy,
the weather has improved,
but that is all.
So we're about halfway through the shoot now,
and we don't know where the wolves are.
I'm pretty gutted.
Going to have to just stay here through the night, scanning
with the thermal camera
and hoping that some wolves appear on the landscape.
It's really difficult when nothing's happening.
But finally, a promising lead in an unexpected location.
We got a report last night that there was a wolf kill on the road,
so, you know, we've been going into the wilderness
to try and find wolves,
when actually they've just been on our doorstep in the village.
The wolf must have chased the deer from there, and it tried to jump.
But it...it got stuck here because of all the...all the fur.
You see, also there is some...
..also some...some wolf fur here.
KIRI: I mean, it's the best signs
of wolf activity we've seen since we've been here.
I just wouldn't have thought it would have been in the village
when there's so many miles of wilderness, the mountains.
Yeah, we're changing strategy.
Um, I've moved the camera teams
to a car park above the village where we're staying,
which... I can't even quite believe I'm saying that, but, uh,
hopefully it will pay off.
Time to move the operation to the edge of the village.
We're just a stone's throw from that village full of people.
I can...I can hear a wolf howling just over there,
so I'm hurrying to set the camera up,
cos I'm pretty sure we're going to see some wolves quite soon.
HOWLING
We have got nine European wild wolves
howling down there in the valley.
Unbelievable.
Who'd have thought that you'd have that many wolves so close to the road?
There's cars passing just beneath me.
It's just beautiful.
THUNDER RUMBLES
For the lynx team in Spain,
things are taking a turn for the worse.
We've just come down to discover our camera traps are not weatherproof.
All the electronics and the circuit boards are starting to act up,
so we're having to rip everything out
and we'll have to see what's going on.
The weather's been so bad,
there's so much rain coming down from the mountain.
The only option is to bring all the cameras back to base.
I'm hooking it up, drying it out,
finding out where water's getting in and sealing it.
With ten camera traps to fix, the crew work around the clock
until the last one is ready.
It looks like we're good to go.
But the team can't re-rig the cameras while it's still raining.
And the weather shows no sign of improving.
We really want to find these lynx, but without...
..without a couple of dry days to set the kit up,
we're...we're up against it now.
All we can do is wait, I guess.
Eventually, the rains pass and the crew set up the camera traps.
This is the last one.
I'm going to close it up, and then we're going to leave it for a month.
It feels really fitting to be ending on a really lovely sunny day
with everything working perfectly.
So I'm feeling quite confident and positive.
Hopefully, this will get us some lynx shots.
In Italy, the thermal camera is allowing the team
to reveal, for the first time, the secret lives of Europe's wolves.
And it appears that they live much closer to home than anyone thought.
They're just so close to the road.
You've got the village up in the background,
and I can see the houses.
There's people sleeping all around, and yet they're so confident,
so confident, they're undisturbed by, uh, all the humanity that's around them.
It's just amazing to me that they know how to stay out of sight
but be so close to humanity.
They just have this night shift.
and then they just meld away into the shadows.
And it's not just the wolf team making surprising discoveries.
Camera trap footage reveals how confident the Iberian lynx is,
living alongside people.
And towards the end of the trip, the team have a memorable encounter.
We've just woken up from staying in the house,
and we've had a visitor overnight.
To see a wild lynx up this close is, yeah, completely amazing.
It was a surprising revelation for both teams
to find the continent's most elusive predators
living right alongside us.
Next time...
..a land of constant change...
..where pioneering animals make the most of every opportunity.
North America.