THIS ISN'T A SHOW ABOUT ANIMALS, IT'S A MISSION TO SAVE THEM...

says TV explorer and former Royal Marine sniper Aldo Kane, who drew on his elite skills to protect some of the world's most endangered species for his new wildlife documentary series

- By James Rampton

IN MAKING his new series The Wild Ones over the past three years, the adventurer, wildlife expert and former Royal Marines sniper and elite special ops commando Aldo Kane has been globetrotting like it’s going out of fashion. He’s been like a cross between a commercial airline pilot and Forrest Gump.

Aldo, who is married to natural history TV producer Anna Williamson and has two young sons, four-year-old Atlas and Auri, one, has visited no fewer than four continents in that period. Along the way, he has taken in such far-flung places as Malaysia, Mongolia, Indonesia, Gabon, Armenia and Canada’s remotest north Atlantic waters. The hyperactive explorer has gone from crocodile-infested rivers in Java to subzero nights in the Gobi Desert.

Now, in his quest to identify and protect elusive, endangered species, Aldo has been searching for the Malayan tiger, the Gobi bear, the Javan rhino, the Western Lowland gorilla, the Caucasian leopard and the North Atlantic right whale. That dizzying, jet-laginducing amount of travel should earn the presenter a serious number of free flights when he next cashes in his air miles.

But what does Anna think of her husband’s nonstop jet-setting? Speaking exclusively to the Express from his home in Bristol, Aldo admits he is lucky to have such an understanding wife. “She’s a producer, and this is exactly the type of film that she’d be working on, so she gets it,” he says.

Four years ago, Aldo witnessed the birth of Atlas via a video call while he was free-diving with humpback whales off the coast of the Dominican Republic for the series OceanXplorers.

“My wife said, ‘As long as you get back for the next birth, it’s fine.’ She was just happy that I made it back for the birth of our second son,” he chuckles.

“I got back from filming the leopard episode in Armenia, and she gave birth the next day. So I made it this time!”