Living Planet

Tarantulas, scorpions and cockroaches are not appealing — but they are important! Eels in Canada are being chopped up by dams — but they don't get the attention they deserve because they aren't cute like pandas. Poisonous scorpions are more important for our ecosystem than you may have thought. And a taste for tarantula in Cambodia has decimated their numbers.

When it comes to protecting the environment, sometimes the most unusual ideas are the best ones. From using donkey dung to help save an endangered bat to brewing beer out of old bread, we examine some of the strange and innovative ways people are helping save the planet.

Shoot to kill or live and let live? We're not always kind to animals, unless perhaps they're in a zoo. We'll get up close and personal with a zebra finch and find out why Germans really love their bears.

Women in Saudi Arabia made the headlines this week. They are now allowed to drive, thanks not least to the campaigning by some bold women. In this week's episode, we'll meet some other bold women: Abu Dhabi's first female falconer, an Indian activist fighting plastic pollution, an Italian investigative journalist uncovering a mozzarella scandal and a Canadian diver exploring underwater mysteries.

Most people think of insects as pests to get rid of — but our survival may be intimately tied to them. The problem is: Insects are in decline. Find out how the Berlin Philharmonic is drawing attention to the issue, why insects don't live at the seaside, and what makes bugs so important in the first place.

We live on a planet of finite resources but our demand for new consumer products and technologies keeps growing. That's driving a race to extract materials from ever-more remote corners of the Earth – and beyond.

Ever more people in the world are living in urban areas. But how can we make our cities sustainable? From the dangers of air pollution to shrinking natural spaces and our carbon footprint in cities — it's high time for action.

Fertile land in Nigeria is being eaten up drought, fueling conflict between herdsmen who need what's left to graze their animals and farmers who need it for their crops. Meanwhile in East Africa, tensions are rising over who controls the waters of the Nile.

It's time for a bit of spring cleaning, whether it's your summer wardrobe, the local beach – or even the air we breathe! From the heart of Europe to China – we're cleaning up our act.

There’s bat appreciation day, international day for biodiversity and the day of endangered species – we’re great at naming days after our animals, but is it enough? Are we treating our biodiversity wisely, or failing them badly?