Iconic ‘Wild Kingdom’ Stretches Its Wings For An All-New Comeback On NBC

06.10.2023 - 14:43 / forbes.com / Laura Manske

For fans of nostalgia TV as well as avid animal and travel lovers, Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom is back in a big way. Sixty years ago, this beloved show innovated the nature adventure genre, enthralled viewers with its global destinations, won multiple Emmy Awards and galvanized conservation goals and gains. It offered an eagerly anticipated, families-gathered, weekly gaze at creatures in far-flung locales to a television audience that averaged 34-million Americans for much of its initial, astonishingly lengthy 25-year run. Between then and now, weaving through subsequent decades, Wild Kingdom had been transformed again and again, showcased on Animal Planet and as a web series. Now there is a fresh fourth project, the all-new Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom Protecting the Wild, which will premiere October 7 on NBC-TV (as part of its “The More You Know” programming block on Saturday mornings), as well as via NBC.com and NBC VOD. It is co-hosted by wildlife expert Peter Gros (who joined the original series in 1985) and wildlife ecologist Rae Wynn-Grant, Ph.D., a National Geographic Society research fellow and host of the PBS podcast Going Wild. Currently primed for 26 episodes set in North America, Wild Kingdom Protecting the Wild kicks off with journeys to California’s super-parched Mojave Desert for desert-dwelling tortoises, the Maine Coast for Atlantic puffins (nicknamed “parrots of the sea” because of their colorful triangular beaks), the Florida Coast for aqua-agile manatees and Austin, Texas, for high-soaring-quick-swooping Mexican free-tailed bats. I reached out to Gros and Wynn-Grant to share their behind-the-scenes insights and inspirations, as they forge modern Wild Kingdom paths, while still applauding the footsteps of legendary zoologists Marlin Perkins and Jim Fowler, who, as co-hosts of the documentary show’s dawn in 1963, put this legacy wildlife wonderland on the map.

Laura Manske: At the heart of Wild Kingdom Protecting the Wild are animals, yet the destinations themselves are intrinsic to each episode’s story, which is a pleasurable plus, rousing viewers’ travel wanderlust. This season spans such diverse areas as Death Valley National Park in California and Nevada, Florida’s Wildlife Corridor (which encompasses nearly 18-million acres that are essential to the survival of the state’s 131 threatened animal species), St. Louis, Missouri, and Seattle, Washington. Which places, so far, have been extra compelling to you?

Peter Gros: One of our most beautiful locations was Maine to film the puffin. I remember a Wild Kingdom episode in the ‘70s that promoted the [then] radical idea of re-introducing puffins [who faced formidable challenges] from Canada to a barren rocky island off the coast