The girl who talks to animals

The temptation is to regard Charlotte Uhlenbroek as the beauty among the beasts. Or call her, as others have already, the Charlie Dimmock of wildlife or the new David Attenborough. The combination of looks and learning has earned the wildlife presenter many names - some condescending, a few sexist, most flattering.

Only the Attenborough description interests her. "It's almost inevitable if someone's such an icon that, when someone else in that area comes along, they'll be compared," she says.

"It's a huge compliment. I don't feel for a moment I will take on his mantle because he's still very much there on our screens. He's completely unique. I would rather be myself than emulate him."

The same happened during the five years she spent studying chimps in Gombe in Africa with renowned expert Jane Goodall. "Film crews would say, 'are you the new Jane Goodall?'," she recalls.

She may be the new face of the BBC Natural History Unit but emphasises that wildlife programmes are a team effort that require months of preparation and planning by everyone concerned.

Uhlenbroek, 35, is a creature who looks just at home sitting in the bar of a hotel in York as she does in what viewers consider her natural habitat, many of the world's more inhospitable places where she films.

Her presence in Yorkshire comes at the end of a three-week tour promoting her latest TV programme, Talking With Animals, and the accompanying book. It becomes apparent that what she shares with Attenborough is an enthusiasm for her work, and that's communicated to viewers. "If you're going to be very involved in a subject all your life, you've got to have a real passion," she says.

Her own enthusiasm for animals was apparent from an early age. In a way, it was forced on her. London-born, she spent from five to her teens living in Kathmandu in Nepal where she acquired her own menagerie of rescued animals.

She was a pupil at a girls' boarding school near Harrogate, studied zoology and psychology at Bristol, then a PhD in zoology by living in the Gombe forests studying chimpanzee communication.

'I had a passion for animals from early in my life. But there wasn't a moment when bells came on and I thought, 'that's what I'm going to do with my life'," she says. "We had pets at home and I loved being in the Himalayas, so it was just automatic that I would be heading towards biological sciences.

"At my secondary school, I had a fantastic biology teacher, which made a great difference at that creative age of 15 or 16. I've always had a passion for the subject, but that's what made it gel."

She first presented on TV in 1996 with Chimps Diary. It seemed a natural progression from studying chimps in Gombe, where she'd aided film crews making documentaries on Goodall. While she'd had no particular intention of moving into TV, it was a world with which she had a degree of familiarity.

"When I presented Chimps Diary, I was back in the forest I knew and loved, hanging out with chimps I'd known as individuals. So it felt a natural extension and a very gentle way into television," she says.

Talking With Animals has taken up the best part of two years of her life, as she travelled the world with the film crew. Pre-planning was essential to ensure they were in the right place at the right time to film the animals doing the things they wanted to illustrate methods of communication.

"Two years was very quick in natural history terms. If you are looking for a particular piece of behaviour, you usually build in an extra year so if you miss it one year you can return the next. We didn't have that luxury. If we missed it, we missed it," she says.

"We were lucky that everywhere we went. We got what we wanted, and sometimes more."

Uhlenbroek seems very animal-friendly. Yes, she says, it's tempting to think that they like you. She reminds herself that some animals can be very unpredictable.

"I've always got along with animals. But they do pick up signs about how much you like them and how confident you are. I've never had any concerns about walking up to other people's dogs and greeting them."

The Talking With Animals book was written "on the go" whenever she had a spare moment, such as in airport lounges between flights. On her return to England, it was "nose to the grindstone" time. She enjoyed the writing as it allowed her to expand on topics, sometimes denied by picture-driven TV programmes.

All of which plays havoc with your social life - although no more, you suspect, that going off to live in Africa with the chimps for four years as she did from university.

"There are very hectic periods where normal life has to go on hold," she admits. "Having said that, you do have to find balance. You can work hard for a long period, but if you just saw that stretching out before you, you'd go bananas and, worse still, stop appreciating the work. I would hate to get to the point where I was too exhausted.

"It's important wherever I am or however busy our schedule that I take time out in the forest or wherever to go and be by myself, to stop a moment and listen, to just allow myself to be there."

After a holiday in mainland Alaska, she'll return to planning her next TV series about rainforests, how the eco-system works and the relationship of animals to one another within that system. That will take her to the Amazon for the first time, with Borneo and the Congo among other ports of call.

She carry with her, as she always does, a Tupperware box filled with "a lot of interesting bits and pieces" including gaffer tape, candles, nails, small ball of string - things that might come in handy on trips to far-flung locations.

By and large, she says, she doesn't miss anything while she's away from home apart, perhaps, from a cold beer and a good meal. But she counts the crew as good friends. "We make sure we get our bottle of wine at duty free and there are times we have fun. It should be work and play," she says.

The final part of Talking With Animals is on BBC1 tomorrow at 8pm. The book is published by Hodder and Stoughton, £18.99.