Wild Heroes returns to your screens!

Starts Saturday 17 February, 7pm on Three   

Wild Heroes, the cinematically stunning and inspirational wildlife documentary series about Auckland Zoo, returns to Three (7pm) and threenow.co.nz on Saturday 17 February for an exciting second series.

Across 10 action-packed episodes, Wild Heroes follows Auckland Zoo’s highly skilled team of zookeepers and veterinary specialists as they care for animals within the Zoo and undertake conservation mahi with partners out in the wilds of Aotearoa New Zealand – and this season, into the Pacific and jungles of Sumatra!

“Wild Heroes is all about taking viewers behind the scenes to lift the lid on what it means to be a good modern zoo and a scientifically driven wildlife organisation that has conservation at its heart,” says Magnetic Pictures co-founder and Wild Heroes producer Juanita Edwards.

Now in its 101st year, Auckland Zoo is home to more than 3000 animals and 145 different species - advocates for their wild counterparts that connect, educate, and inspire visitors to care for wildlife and the world around them. The intensive wildlife management skills staff continue to grow providing these animals exceptional care and quality of life are increasingly being used to help threatened wildlife in the wild as Wild Heroes viewers will discover.

In the first two episodes, staff join conservation partners on fieldwork in the Southern Alp’s Matukituki Valley (habitat of the world’s only alpine parrot, the kea), release rare hand-reared tara iti (NZ fairy tern) to the wild, and travel to the jungles of Sumatra, a biodiversity hotspot that’s home to endangered tigers, orangutans, and elephants.  Back at the Zoo, the veterinary team pulls out all stops to save an endangered native species that comes in critically ill from the wild, two young Sumatran tigers arrive, and baby orangutan Bahmi bravely ventures onto the high canopy habitat’s aerial pathways!

Further into the series, Wild Heroes travels with staff to a remote island in French Polynesia on a conservation emergency with a long-term partner to help save an endemic species on the brink of extinction. 

On the tropical island of Rarotonga staff lend their skills to important conservation work where a once highly threatened native bird now flourishes. Wild Heroes brings viewers new animal arrivals and follows the reproductive journeys of species such as tiger and giraffe that are part of zoos’ critical international breeding and advocacy programmes.

“This season we’re excited to be bringing viewers a rich diversity of stories -from within the Zoo, including from its world-class veterinary hospital, from across New Zealand (covering Northland to Fiordland and many locations in between!), and from overseas,” says Edwards.

Auckland Zoo director Kevin Buley says: “There is now so much wildlife conservation work that the Zoo is doing, both in New Zealand and around the world, that even I can struggle to stay up to date with it all! This new season of Wild Heroes is going to give us all an opportunity to have a good sit down and bring ourselves up-to-speed with the everything that we have been doing over the last year to care for wildlife here at the Zoo and to help save species from extinction in the wild.

“The unique partnership we have now developed with Magnetic Pictures over the last two seasons of Wild Heroes means that you really do see the inside story when you watch each episode.”