Steve Backshall

Stephen James Backshall (born 21 April 1973) is a British naturalist, explorer, presenter and writer, best known for BBC TV's Deadly 60.

His other BBC work includes being part of the expedition teams in Lost Land of the Tiger, Lost Land of the Volcano, Deadly Dinosaurs and Lost Land of the Jaguar, as well as Expedition with Steve Backshall for the TV channel Dave.

He has worked for the National Geographic Channel and the Discovery Channel.

He has published a series of four novels for children called The Falcon Chronicles, three adult non-fiction works and numerous other children's non-fiction books.

Backshall's parents worked for British Airways, and he was brought up in a smallholding in Bagshot surrounded by rescue animals.

Backshall attended Collingwood College in Camberley and Brooklands College, Surrey in the sixth form.

He backpacked solo around Asia, India and Africa.

After this he studied English and theatre studies at the University of Exeter.

In 1997, Backshall attempted to walk solo across the western half of New Guinea, then known as Irian Jaya; he was in the rainforest for three months, but was ultimately unsuccessful.

He then had an idea for a series, bought a video camera, and went to the jungles of Colombia, where he made a pilot which he sold to the National Geographic Channel, which employed him in 1998 as its 'Adventurer in Residence' and he spent five years as a producer and presenter.

For National Geographic International, Backshall presented the expedition series Game For It and the environmental series EarthPulse.

On A Walk in The Desert he walked across Israel's Negev Desert.

For Bootcamp, he completed the Israeli special forces selection course, running 60 miles overnight to gain their red beret.

Cracking the Canyon was nominated for Best Adventure Film at the Banff Mountain Film Festival.

In 2003, he moved to BBC's The Really Wild Show.

In his first series, he travelled up Australia's east coast from Tasmania to Cape Tribulation.

In Expedition Borneo, BBC 2005, the team went in search of new species.

With other cavers he made the first exploration of the passages below the mighty 'Solo' sinkhole in the Mulu mountains of Borneo, and also made the first ascent of the north side of Mount Kuli.

In the next series, he travelled around Central America, the Galapagos, and then Southern Africa for the final series in 2006.

He competed with fellow naturalist Nick Baker in a series of wildlife challenges.

After four years, The Really Wild Show was axed so he joined the BBC Natural History Unit's expedition team.

He co-presented Springwatch Trackers (BBC Two) with Kirsten O'Brien which was broadcast live from the Springwatch farm in Devon between 28 May and 15 June 2007.

Teams of boys and girls were set a series of tracker challenges.

In 2008, his Deadly 60 was commissioned, followed by the Live n Deadly offshoot, the aim of which was to inspire children to get outside and interested in wildlife and adventure; his live wildlife question and answer appearances attracted up to 14,000 people per event.

In the "Deadly" programmes he searched for predators that were "Not just deadly to me, but deadly in their own world".

He dived outside of the cage with great white, bull, great hammerhead, mako and tiger sharks, caught king cobras, black mambas and lanceheads, had a redback spider crawl across his hand and was bitten on the leg by a caiman while searching for anaconda in an Argentinian swamp.

The programmes were transmitted on Nat Geo Wild, Animal Planet and BBC to 157 countries worldwide.

In Lost Land of the Jaguar, BBC One 2008, he led the first expedition to successfully climb Mount Upuigma.

On the summit, they discovered an endemic species of frog and mouse, and also footprints of an unidentified mammal.

Lead climber John Arran named the route "Spiders in the Mist" and gave it a British grade of E7.

He filmed Ultimate Caving, BBC One 2008, with Kate Humble, Secret Wilderness Japan, BBC Two 2008, and also presented Nature Reports for the BBC's The One Show.

In Lost Land of the Volcano, BBC One 2009, he led the first western expedition into the crater of the extinct volcano, Mount Bosavi, in Papua New Guinea, where they discovered, among other things, one of the largest species of rats known anywhere in the world, provisionally called the Bosavi woolly rat while its scientific name is determined.

They also uncovered miles of undiscovered passages in the Mageni cave system in New Britain.

In Lost Land of the Tiger, BBC One 2010, the expedition team travelled to Bhutan and filmed, via remote cameras, the Bengal tigers above the tree-line in the Himalayas, categorically higher than had ever been filmed before.

The fourth season of the series, Deadly Pole to Pole was filmed in 2013–2014 from the Arctic circle to Antarctica, journeying south through the Americas.

The scenarios included being hunted by a polar bear whilst kayaking in Svalbard, filming feeding sharks and eagles (using timeslice technology), exploring flooded caves and the insides of a glacier, and catching dozens of species of snake and crocodile.

He was bitten by a shark but was saved by a chain-mail shark suit.

The finale was diving underneath Antarctic icebergs alongside predatory leopard seal.

In 2020, he received his MSc in bioscience from Canterbury Christ Church University.

Backshall's first job after returning from Japan was as an author in the Rough Guides to Indonesia and South East Asia.