Bill Bailey helps save the jaguar

Bill Bailey has spent two weeks with the ‘jaguar people’ of Brazil for a new Sky One documentary.

The 41-year-old comic even turned into an unlikely action hero as he tried to save the endangered big cat in the new series of Final Chance To Save.

He started his journey in a shady Amazonian border town where he is offered illegal jaguar skins by poachers, then mets the Matis Indians, who revere the jaguar.

Bill then flew south to Pantanal, the world’s biggest swamp, where jaguars are viewed as pests because they eat herdsmen’s cattle – and so are hunted like vermin.

And as part of the trip he joined the Jaguar Conservation Fund in a dramatic chase to catch and collar a wild jaguar as part of a scientific study.

Bailey said: ‘My two weeks in Brazil gave me one of the greatest experiences of my life, the chance to see a wild jaguar.

‘Getting up close to this perfectly evolved and beautiful creature was a rare privilege. Hopefully this will shed some light on the secret lives of these majestic animals and maybe even help to save all the jaguars.’

The series of personal documentaries, to air on Sky One in July, will also feature Miranda Richardson who travelled to Madagascar to see the endangered Aye-Aye lemur, Touching The Void actor Joe Simpson working with gorillas and Kumars star Sanjeev Bhaskar, who highlights the plight of tigers in India.

Published: 9 Mar 2006