Adam Henson

While filming for Countryfile in the Isle of Mull in Scotland looking for Basking sharks a Minke Whale surfaced about 15 meters from the boat and blew. It traveled alongside for about five minutes. As a man of the land this was incredibly exciting and my heart pounded. The sea was like a mill pond and later we saw Dolphins, Porpoises and more Minke.

Chris Packham

Sitting beside a Wandering Albatross on Prion Island, South Georgia. A massive, long winged, long-lived old sage, probably hatched before I was born and yet plummeting to extinction at the wrong end of the planet. So sadly out of sight and therefore out of so many minds, this was an audience in the inner sanctum of global ornithology. We both shivered and felt very vulnerable.

Edith Bowman

My most memorable wildlife encounter with a threatened animal was in Cambodia, where I spent a week in camp with fauna and flora international helping with their research with the endangered crocodiles. It was a wonderful and eye opening experience on many levels. Learning about the local tribe culture, erasing preconceived ideas about crocodiles and challenging myself personally was all a great deal to take in, but one I relished in it.

Jackson Looseyia

I was looking after my family sheep when a pack of wild dogs appeared to catch one of them for food. Now this animal is known to be born a killer as well the most threatened species in the Mara. What do I do? Throw my spear at it and kill one to save my sheep or let them have one for the day and face my old man? However the rocks worked and they left me alone with our poor sheep.

Joanna Lumley

...being led by the hand into the jungle by an orangutan mother who was looking in the trees for her wayward teenage son.

Liz Bonin

I will never, ever forget my first encounter with a wild tiger. I glimpsed a mass of dark orange moving through dark green. As if to help me out she suddenly appeared into a clearing of tall grasses before us - a huge adult female, the most beautiful creature I have ever seen, and the whole world stopped for a moment.

Mark Carwardine

I'll never forget coming face-to-face with a great white shark off the coast of Guadalupe Island, in the North Pacific. Despite its high profile media reputation as little more than a killing machine, the great white is one of the most extraordinary animals on the planet and is in desperate need of help.

Martin Hughes-Games

Trunk to face, bit muddy, overwhelmingly emotional meeting with "Emily" a huge, gentle African elephant. Part of an orphan elephant project in Kenya.

The whole object was to try to get orphaned baby elephants back to the wild.

'They said it could never be done,' but Emily had not only returned to the wild, she'd mated with a fully wild bull and lurking in the background was her tiny, fully wild baby, being looked after by two aunties. The culmination of 13 years unbelievably dedicated work by teams of inspirational people who are in the process of returning over 100 elephants to the wild. Emily proves it can be done.

Nick Knowles

Memorable for all the wrong reasons was the encounter with an orang utan that they were trying to rescue from the edge of the destroyed rain forest in Borneo. She died on the way back to the sanctuary which highlighted the short sighted disregard for the damage that we're causing to our specialist environments in both the short and long term.

Saba Douglas-Hamilton

The first time I met a polar bear in the high Arctic, at the most northern point of Svalbard, was one of the most exciting moments of my life.

We were in the back of beyond and had stopped our skidoos behind an iceberg frozen into the sea-ice to watch a male bear approach from a long way off, picking his way from ice-ridge to ice-ridge as he searched for seal pups hidden in lairs below the ice. It was late at night and the midnight sun hung low on the horizon washing the landscape in pink light. The temperature was a chilling minus 35 C, and the bear's breath, backlit by the glowing sun, puffed out in wispy clouds.

He zigzagged closer and closer to us, closing the gap, until he was a mere stone's throw away. Unsure of exactly what we were he rose up on his back feet and towered threateningly to get a better look. We held our ground with thumping hearts, ready to switch on the skidoo engines if he charged. Instead he swayed menacingly, then changed his mind, and sloped off to investigate a more tantalizing prospect. Elated, we let out our breath to find ourselves frozen solid. When we tried to start our engines, they shuddered piteously then died - the batteries had gone flat in the cold! Little use in the event of an attack.

Steve Leonard

Rescuing wild orangutans in Borneo was a hair-raising ride. Darting a fully grown hooting orangutan at the top of a 60ft tree and crashing around on the forest floor with a net to catch it when it falls out of a tree is not something I am used to in my regular vet career. It seemed so violent and hectic compared to the quiet and gentle nature of these creatures but the alternative was to let bulldozers bury them in the forest the next day. No other experience brought home to me just how desperate the situation is for many of our threatened species.