'I'm very spoilt seeing lions and tigers and bears in the wild' says Gordon Buchanan ahead of sharing his adventures via a presentation in Derbyshire

His encounters have inspired his latest live tour Lions and Tigers and Bears which visits Buxton Opera House on February 17, 2026. Gordon took the name of the tour from the iconic movie The Wizard of Oz and the famous line “Lions, and tigers, and bears….Oh my!”

Hailed as Scotland’s own David Attenborough, Gordon Buchanan has most recently been seen tracking lions, leopards and cheetahs in Botswana, for BBC One’s Big Cats 24/7 – with series two due on screens early this year, and filming on series three recently completed.

Gordon said: “I’m very spoilt seeing lions and tigers and bears in the wild – so it’s exciting to have the opportunity to tour the country and share these stories with thousands of people, being able to give them a sense of what it is like to get up close to polars in the Arctic, how fast you need to run to escape a sloth bear and what it’s like to bottle feed grizzlies.”

He has a theory why people continue to be fascinated by big cats and bears. “These iconic creatures are seen as these predators who are out to get us,” Gordon explains. “And with that comes a primal fear which dates back to the caveman – when our biggest fears weren’t job security and mortgage repayments, but actually surviving those big animals with teeth and claws.

“Going back into pre-history, humans lived alongside lions and bears – using knowledge and fear to stay safe.

“But funnily, these animals are also welcomed into our homes. Go into any family home and there will be a number of bears… We still have a big box of teddies from when the kids were small, and there are lions and tigers among them as well.

“Bears have infiltrated our lives – think Paddington, Rupert, Fozzie! Even Gentle Ben way back on TV – not that that featured the job as such, but I remember watching and thinking that’s what I want to be, up close with the bear, and it represented wild parts of the world for me.”

From school days spent ‘disinterested, and daydreaming about the outdoors’ to an award-winning CV, Gordon is now passing on his love for wild creatures to his artist daughter, Lola.

“I took Lola out to Botswana with me for her art, and it was incredibly special to introduce her to that place and the lions I’ve come to know out there,” he said of their recent adventure.

“When you do a job like mine, there’s an assumption you always take your kids and family along, but my wife Wendy has her own business and can’t just up and off. We have always had a very structured home life, alongside my career.

“But this time with Lola has been like a full circle moment; the two passions of my life, my family and my career, coming together for the first time. And it has been wonderful.

“Sitting and watching a lion or baboon with your grown-up child, through their fresh eyes, has been really lovely and makes me realise how fortunate I am to have experienced what I have in my career.”

Gordon’s incredible 30-year career capturing the lives of Mother Nature’s greatest beasts on camera began thanks to a chance meeting in a pub on the Isle of Mull with one of wildlife filmmaking’s greats, acclaimed survival cameraman, Nick Gordon. Nick was looking for an assistant for an expedition to Sierra Leone. Gordon said: “Being a wildlife camera person sounded like the best job in the world, exploring, travelling, going to places few people would go to. Amazing!”

With TV series Big Cat Diary, Lost Land Of The…, the Family & Me series, and Our Changing Planet on his resume, both filmmaking and the planet have changed hand-in-hand under Gordon’s watchful gaze during the past three decades.

“Wildlife documentaries used to be about pointing at a lion, and saying ‘that’s a lion’,” he said. “Now they are about their behaviour; how they live and interact in a modern world, some with humans, some in a fully wild environment.

“Lions and tigers and bears are all very much animals which have been shaped by the landscape and climate of where they are living.

“Polar bears in the Arctic are a real embodiment of that part of the world. They are one of these big key species which are truly part of their environment, and have had the biggest change in their environment with climate change; they are the animal most of us automatically think of when we think of that.

“The single biggest problem facing the planet and all its wild places and species is not actually climate change itself – it’s humans, it’s population growth.

“More and more land is being taken from the wild for food production, more minerals are being mined for things we want, and that takes away from the wild environments in a practical, physical sense, while also contributing to climate change as a side effect.

“In Africa, lion and cheetah numbers have massively declined. During the past 50 years with population growth, their habitats have been land-grabbed to provide homes, farms and food for humans.

“In North America, grizzly bears roamed all over from Alaska to California 1,000 years ago – even 500 years ago – they were part of the USA wherever you were.

“Big animals need big landscapes, and they are disappearing. That is the fear for the future.”

Tickets cost from £35 to hear Gordon Buchanan share his adventures in Lions and Tigers and Bears. Go to www.buxtonoperahouse.org.uk or call 01298 72190.