Violence, lies and videotape: wildlife filmmaking takes a few liberties with the truth

E: The Environmental Magazine, May-June, 1997 by Lily Whiteman

World-famous wildlife filmmaker Marty Stouffer, accused of secretly staging nature scenes, depicting unrealistic situations and treating animals cruelly, stands at the center of a controversy over how very popular nature documentaries are made, and what they should portray. But, if he's guilty, Stouffer is hardly alone in stretching the truth for the cameras.

Stouffer's troubles began in 1993, when he pleaded guilty to building what the U.S. Forest Service called a "hunting camp" near an elk migration path located within a Colorado national forest. He also admitted that he had illegally hunted elk in the area. Then, in December 1995, Stouffer, the creator and narrator of the Public Broadcasting Service's (PBS) Wild America series, was fined $300,000 in civil penalties for bisecting the property of the Aspen Center for Environmental Studies with a trail leading to the camp.

Publicity over the fine brought forward several alumnae of Wild America, including film crew members and three animal suppliers, who told stories about the filmmaker's behind-the-scenes methods. These former associates provided eyewitness accounts of how the blond, bearded, binocular-toting naturalist allegedly staged sensational kill scenes, including the attack of a tethered rabbit by a raccoon, and a fatal fight between a mountain lion and a lynx - animals that would rarely even cross paths in the wild.

Stouffer denies the charges. "I am not ashamed of anything I have done;' he said, adding, "My conscience is clear. I love animals." The filmmaker did, however, admit to The Denver Post that "sometimes we will take a tame animal out for a walk, and if a chase develops, we will film it" - what he calls a "factual recreation." PBS dropped Wild America at the end of 1996, after Stouffer failed to secure funding for a new season. PBS' internal investigation found fault with 15 of the 110 shows in the Wild America archive.

Also arousing controversy is the filmmaker's Dangerous Encounters home video, which features film of a mountain lion charging and tackling an apparently unsuspecting cross-country skier. As this footage plays, Stouffer's narration warns of recent increases in lion attacks, but fails to expose the scene for what it really is: playful roughhousing between a tame lion and its veterinarian owner.

Which is not to deny tame animals a place in some nature documentaries, Filmmakers Carol and Richard Foster recently cast a captive as the star of their well-received Jaguar: Year of the Cat documentary. "Jaguars are so elusive that only a handful of wild ones have ever been photographed," says Carol Foster. "So there was simply no other way to profile this animal." The Fosters' film also explicitly acknowledges its subject's status.

Reputable wildlife filmmakers unanimously and vigorously deny any animal mistreatment. "It really hurts to see animals quivering in fear for their lives because of a predator," says wildlife filmmaker Michael deGruy. "Creating situations that would not otherwise occur is wrong because you are lying to the audience."

"If proven true, cruelty charges would ruin the career of a wildlife filmmaker," says Kent Noble, executive director of the Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festival. Indeed, the career-busting potential of animal mistreatment charges was borne out several years ago, when a cameraman for PBS's Nature series tied down a fawn in order to film a bear gorging on the bait. Nature producer and narrator George Page now describes it as a "terrible incident."

Such recent transgressions recall the dirty tricks-of-the-trade pioneered by Walt Disney and Marlin Perkins, who Emmy Award-winning filmmaker Wolfgang Bayer rates as "the worst offenders ever."

Even Ray Disney acknowledged in a Canadian Broadcast Corporation television program that his famous uncle stooped to dropping captured lemmings into a river to film their supposed "mass suicide." The same Canadian broadcast also exposed how Perkins, for his Wild Kingdom series, deposited a tame bear in a Florida swamp. He then engineered a heroic rescue of the struggling animal, complete with a helicopter, boat and lassos.

But even while cinematic entrapment remains strictly forbidden for reputable filmmakers today, Page admits that some staging occurs: "You simply can't film some scenes without setting up." For example, burrowing animals or hiving insects are still commonly filmed in man-made sets equipped with a glass panel for the camera.

Few viewers are naive enough to think that filmmakers just happened upon every scene in their documentaries, but a code of ethics should prevent what nearly everyone agrees are blatant abuses. CONTACTS: Nature, WNET-TV, 356 West 58th Street, New York, NY 10019/(212)560-2000; Wild America, Marty Stouffer Productions, 300 South Spring Street, Aspen, CO 81611/(970)925-5536