The Living Edens

Towering nearly 4 miles above the Alaskan wilderness, Mt. McKinley is the tallest peak in North America. It is called as "Denali" or "The Great One" by Indians.

Journey to the end of the earth, where the Andes stand like giant skyscrapers above a land of vicious and beautiful extremes. This is a place where strange and awesome creatures like the guanaco, elephant seal, rhea, penguin and armadillo are totally adapted to a kingdom of endless and punishing winds.

The Namib is a two thousand kilometer strip of land on the southwestern coast of Africa where the cold Atlantic sea and searing Namibian desert join. The arid land is obscured and enriched by a mist created by the cold Benguela current. Jackals and hyenas struggle to survive on this sandy desert stage. With few watering holes, animals must roam the beach and seek nourishment from the bountiful marine life.

Along the eastern edge of the Peruvian Andes runs a river called the Manu, the heart of one of the world's largest and most pristine rain forest parks in the world: Manu National Park and Biosphere Reserve. Filmed over several years, "Living Edens Manu" chronicles some of Manu's extraordinary inhabitants-a giant Harpy Eagle family that preys upon monkeys and sloths so that their chick can successfully fledge, jaguars, Giant Otters, 20-foot caimans (relatives of the alligator), tree sloths, anteaters, brilliantly-plumaged macaws, Howler, Squirrel, and Spider Monkeys, and tapir. Narrated by Edward James Olmos and winner of two Emmy Awards.

Southwestern Africa's Etosha is a vast and ancient land of seasonal paradox. During the bloom of the wet season, lions, cheetahs, elephants, jackals, giraffes, springboks and zebras continue the timeless cycle of life in glorious abundance. But at the peak of its scorching dry season, the heart of Etosha is a parched and blistered wasteland where drought and thirst endanger predator and prey alike. For those who survive its harshest interval, Etosha becomes, once again, a Living Eden.

Bhutan, known as the Land of the Thunder Dragon, is the only remaining Buddhist Himalayan kingdom. Shrouded in timeless mystery, Bhutan is one of the few surviving regions whose secrets have passed undisturbed through the millennia. Since 95 percent of the Bhutanese people remain subsistence farmers or pastoralists, they live in harmony with an extraordinary diversity of animals, including the wild buffalo, red panda, Himalayan black bear, takin and blue sheep.

Far to the east of India and Indonesia is a place where the sea hides a treasure of living riches. It sits alone at the edge of the vast Pacific Ocean, sheltered from time and the outside world. It is not one emerald island but an archipelago of more than two hundred, nearly all uninhabited.Along its submerged shoulders flourish some of the richest coral reefs remaining on Earth.This place is call Palau, a Living Eden where all is not what it seems - a home to a world of novelties concocted by nature unconstrained.

In the dawn light, mist caresses the forested mountains of an alien world. A strange shape appears in the trees -- a furry creature looking like something from the pages of a Dr. Suess book. It throws back its head and lets out a deafening wail. Welcome to planet Madagascar - a world unto itself, where evolution has taken the familiar and created the bizarre. Split off from the African mainland since the age of dinosaurs, Madagascar's isolation provided a safe haven for creatures from a forgotten time. Here, they flourished into countless forms that exist nowhere else. This installment of the award winning "Living Edens" series presents an extraordinary cast of characters. Chameleons of every color, shape and size snap up insects with marksman-like accuracy. A panther-like carnivore called a fossa pursues its prey through the tree tops with frightening agility. Brilliantly colored frogs emerge from the ground and compete vigorously for mates. A majestic fish eagle, one of the rarest birds of prey in the world, gracefully plucks its meal from a river. And then there are the charismatic lemurs. Many of these primitive primates look like stuffed toys, and each seems more whimsical than the last. Madagascar is a world of the unfamiliar; where insects masquerade as dead leaves and twigs; where a piece of tree bark transforms into a stalking lizard. It is home to one of the strangest creatures on earth, the aye-aye. Emerging at night with its amber eyes, wiry hair and bat-like ears, the aye-aye is a actually a lemur. It gnaws into a dead tree and fishes out grubs with a skeleton-like finger. The island's habitats are also diverse. They include lush tropical rain forests where ruffed lemurs endure the daily deluge as sopping balls of fur; sun-baked dry forests where dwarf lemurs spend most of the year in hibernation to escape desiccation; a vast realm of towering limestone pinnacles, and a forbidding spiny desert, where ring-tailed lemurs gingerly negotiate the two-inch thorns of a didierae tree to find food. This "Living Edens" portrait is an experiential journey though the natural wonders of this unique island. Gliding over mountain tops, into tree holes and down streams, the camera takes on the perspective of the island's creatures, many of which have never before been filmed. One of these is the bandro, a secretive teddy-bear like lemur that lives amongst the reeds of an ancient marsh. Today, the bandro's world is disappearing. Encroaching humans now set fire to the marsh to improve access to fishing grounds. As a bandro family struggles to escapes the flames, we are reminded that no paradise can be taken for granted. Madagascar's story is a testament to the fragility of all the Earth's living Edens, and of the care that must be taken to see them endure.

In the South Atlantic Ocean amid huge, frozen glaciers and giant ice floes, a range of rough, ice-capped mountains rise up to form Antarctica's liveliest neighborhood: South Georgia Island. At 106 miles in length, this imposing icy island regularly endures storm winds in excess of 120 mph while nearby ocean waves swell to 50-foot heights. Home to bull elephant seals and the wandering albatross, this stark, snowy land boasts the world's largest penguin population. Frigid and windswept, it is an unlikely living Eden. But South Georgia Island is both a haven and a paradise - one of the world's true wonders and the single most important nesting and breeding ground on Earth.

The scenic California coast from the perspective of three remarkable creatures whose invaluable contributions to the local environment make Big Sur one of the most unique places in the United States of America.