Bertie Gregory has been traveling all around the world to give viewers an intimate look at wildlife including traveling to the Antarctic to capture the largest gathering of fin whales ever filmed and Zambia to film buffalo-hunting lions. The British wildlife explorer has a new Disney+ series this month with a very fitting title, Animals Up Close with Bertie Gregory, and he and his team travel to Antarctica, Africa, South America and Asia to track down remarkable animals using everything at their disposal including drones, state-of-the-art cameras, and underwater tech. There will be obstacles ahead including climbing snow-capped mountains and swimming in subzero seas.

During this year’s San Diego Comic-Con, Nerd Reactor had the chance to chat with the wildlife filmmaker about how he got into wildlife filming, his upcoming show, the length of planning the shoots, the different challenges, helping bring awareness to endangered species, and more.

“My family – we’re all obsessed with water sports,” Gregory tells Nerd Reactor about his fascination with adventure. “At a really early age. I’ve got three brothers, and Mom and Dad and all were really into surfing, sailing, and water sports. For a really early age. I was always thrown into the sea. I think when you spend time, just kind of in the ocean in nature, you gain an appreciation of it by osmosis.”

Gregory found out in his teenage years that if he wanted others to get excited about the animals he’s obsessed with, he would have to go out there and take pictures of them. That was the catalyst for his life as a wildlife filmmaker that led him to win many wildlife photography competitions and catch the eye of the National Geographic magazine photographers.

“I called Steve Winter,” Gregory said. “He’s one of the all-time greats, and he was looking for a new assistant.
He offered me a job, you know, right place, right time. 10 years ago today, I started working for him, and that was my gateway to National Geographic.”

Creating a show like this takes a long time to prepare. Some footage would take months until they could finally go out there to capture footage.

“For the new show, Animals Up Close, which comes out in September, we did another episode to Antarctica. This time we were looking for killer whales, and that was 18 months of planning. Putting the right team together, and just logistically, it was so challenging. The episode from Epic Adventures with the fin whales, that’s Astralis. We use the same boat for the killer whale mission, the same team – Antarctic sailors – they’re just the best of the best. Sure getting to hang out with animals is the best bit. The second best bit is going to work with really interesting, talented people.”

It would take Gregory and his team to plan a year and a half for the Antarctica mission, and the actual shoot took 40 days. However, the longest shoot for Animals Up Close was filming pumas at Torres del Paine National Park in Chile.

“We spent 51 days on that shoot,” the wildlife host said. “It was a fun story. So this here on the right is the mother Petaca [he points to an image poster of a family of pumas from the series]. These are her two cubs. Petaca I first met when she was a cub four years ago. I have a bunch of tracker friends who have been following her. I spent a month with her and her mother when she was a cub – smaller than these cubs. She was this lovely fluffy ball of magic. Totally useless and entirely reliant on Mom. So we wanted to go back to see how she was doing. The chances of a puma surviving to adulthood are not very high. Not only did she survive, but she also now has her own cubs and it’s just amazing.”

With some animals being highly prized and few in numbers, they are on the verge of extinction. Gregory talks about how he worked with a team to help stop poachers.

“We did an elephant episode in the Central African Republic,” Gregory explained. “So it’s part of the Congo Basin, and we were filming forest elephants. They live in the jungle, really thick in the jungle unlike other savanna elephants, which is probably the elephant you’re more familiar with amongst lions in the big open plains. So they live in the jungle and they have much denser tusks than a savanna elephant. So their ivory is much more highly prized. It’s really sad that they’re being hunted to extinction. And we worked with the anti-poaching team who took me to their hangar where they stole confiscated guns and tusks. So the tusk I’m actually holding there was from an elephant that was killed that year. Really recent. It was probably 50 to 60-plus years old. Their numbers are nose-diving, and I think it’s really important to include that in the series.

“We don’t live in this Garden of Eden anymore,” he continued. “We’re doing horrible things to the environment. But the thing I’m most proud of about the project is not only that we show the doom and gloom, but we celebrate the conservation success stories, like the fin whale episode of Epic Adventures. There are wins to celebrate. The news cycle is so depressing. We need to celebrate the wins. That’s what we’re doing.”

National Geographic’s Animals Up Close with Bertie Gregory premieres on Disney+ on September 13, 2023.