Animal oasis

A man-made waterhole rigged with cameras captures spectacular footage of African wildlife

- HANNAH DAVIES, IAN MACEWAN

Waterhole: Africa’s Animal Oasis

Friday, BBC2 HD, 9pm

As places where all the continent’s animals gather, Africa’s waterholes hold a great attraction for wildlife film-makers.

So when the BBC heard that a nature reserve in Tanzania in East Africa was constructing a brandnew, man-made waterhole from scratch, it seized the opportunity to rig up the oasis with lots of remote-controlled cameras, to capture all the action during three critical times of the year.

After more than 100 tonnes of soil had been removed, and 4km of fibre-optic cables were laid to connect up the weatherproof cameras, the two pools were filled with 60,000ltr of water.