Gordon John Buchanan is a Scottish wildlife filmmaker and presenter. His work includes the nature documentaries Tribes, Predators & Me, The Polar Bear Family & Me and Life in the Snow.
Buchanan's career in wildlife photography has yielded a number of documentaries, shot variously in Asia, Latin America, Europe and Africa. His career began when survival cameraman Nick Gordon, whose wife owned the restaurant Buchanan was working in, invited Buchanan to become his camera assistant for a project he was completing in Sierra Leone. Buchanan was there for almost a year before the project had to be abandoned due to the danger presented by the civil unrest in the country. He left school to join Nick Gordon on this trip and continued to work with him on his next projects in Venezuela and Brazil. Buchanan began to work independently in 1995, and in time became known for his films of big cats and worked on Big Cat Diary. He also returned to his home on the Isle of Mull to film white tailed eagles. The resulting 2005 Natural World episode, "Eagle Island", received good reviews. He also filmed the Natural World episode "Leopards of Yala". Buchanan has filmed foxes for Springwatch and Autumnwatch in Glasgow, where he currently lives. His coverage of grey seal pups was identified as one of the highlights of the programme. He then returned for Springwatch 2008 completing a series on people with amazing wildlife stories including a one-off Springwatch special. In Autumnwatch 2008 he travelled to the Farne Islands to film grey seal pups again. In early 2009 Buchanan worked with the BBC, filming the Lost Land of the Volcano. Filming took place during the month of February 2009, around Papua New Guinea, and its islands. In December 2010, a documentary called The Bear Family and Me aired on the BBC. It showed the year which Buchanan spent with black bears in the U.S. state of Minnesota. In January 2013, Buchanan presented and partially filmed The Polar Bear Family & Me for the BBC, covering the life of a polar bear and her cubs in the spring, summer and autumn. In 2015, he presented the documentary Leopard in the City on the leopards of Sanjay Gandhi National Park in the Borivli section of northern Mumbai in India, on the "urban leopards" of the area, which prey almost entirely on stray dogs. In 2013 Buchanan became a patron of Trees for Life, a conservation charity working to restore the Caledonian Forest in the Highlands of Scotland. In June 2013 Buchanan was granted an honorary doctorate by the University of Stirling. In December 2014, another '...& Me' 2-part series was broadcast on BBC Two. For this series, The Snow Wolf Family & Me, Buchanan visited Ellesmere Island in Canada in both summer and autumn. This was shortly followed, in February 2015, by Super Cute Animals, a 60-minute documentary. Buchanan was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire in the 2020 New Year Honours for services to conservation and wildlife film-making.
Family
Buchanan frequently mentions missing his family at various points within his shows. The Bear Family & Me includes a segment in which his wife and their two children visit him.
