Steve Backshall

Backshall attended Collingwood College in Camberley and he also attended Brooklands College, Surrey for his 6th form life. He backpacked solo around Asia, India and Africa. After this he studied English and Theatre Studies at the University of Exeter, and then an honorary PhD followed by Bsc biology at the Open University. In 2020 he received his Msc in bioscience with the Canterbury Christ Church University.

Backshall was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2020 New Year Honours for services to charity and wildlife conservation.

In 2020 he was awarded the Scientific Exploration Society Explorer of the Year Award.

On 20 January 2020, Backshall and Glover announced the birth of their twins, Kit Newlyn and Willow Bo. All their children's names had Cornish connections, due to Glover being born in Cornwall.

In March 2019, Steve Backshall, along with Liz Bonnin and Chris Packham, presented a four-part series Blue Planet Live on BBC One. Backshall was seen diving live with Great Hammerhead sharks, tiger sharks, Bull sharks and reef sharks from the shark sanctuary of Bimini.

In January 2018 Backshall participated in And They're Off! in aid of Sport Relief. Later in the year, he appeared in the first five episodes of Springwatch 2018 and also presented an hour-long documentary Steve Backshall Vs The Monster Mountain on CBBC. In summer 2018, he presented a ten-part series entitled Deadly Dinosaurs, also for CBBC.

2018-2019, Backshall launched the project Expedition, which was televised by BBC2, UKTV, SBS, PBS and Discovery Asia. This involved ten expeditions to parts of the globe that had never been explored before. The team uncovered many miles of sunken cave passages in the cenotes of the Yucatan. They made the first descents of rivers in Suriname and discovered a waterfall that had no record of ever being seen before. At over 100m high, it was the second highest in the nation. In Bhutan on the first descent of the Chamkhar Chhu river, Backshall was caught in a rapid for five minutes and nearly drowned. His life was saved by rescue kayaker Sal Montgomery. They also made the first ascent of Jebel Samnhan in Oman, and the first exploration of a desert canyon with a local explorer.

On 13 March 2018, it was announced that Backshall and Glover were expecting twins. On 9 April Glover stated that one of the twins had died, but that she and Backshall were "hopeful for the remaining baby to arrive this summer". On 24 July 2018 Backshall and Glover announced, on social media, the birth of their baby boy Logan.

In 2017 the BBC premiered another two-part documentary following Backshall's expedition to New Guinea called Down the Mighty River with Steve Backshall. The team of whitewater kayakers attempted to make the first ever descent of the 500mile long Baliem River in West Papua; an expedition Backshall had been planning since 1997. Over the course of six weeks, they battled against some of the hardest whitewater on earth, capsizes, illness and local politics. Eventually they made it from source to sea, although were open that they had not kayaked the entire length of the journey. A two-part series Japan's Northern Wilderness was presented by Backshall and his wife Helen Glover and three-part series Wild Alaska Live, co-presented by Liz Bonnin and Matt Baker, that aired in July 2017.

In 2017, Channel 5 aired one-hour documentary called Meet the Hedgehogs presented by Backshall and Brian May.

In 2017 Backshall and Glover were awarded Charity fundraisers of the year, after raising £360,000 for the World Land Trust. They also won the mixed category of the celebrated Devizes to Westminster kayak race.

In 2016 the BBC aired a series called Steve Backshall's Extreme Mountain Challenge, in which the explorer attempted another first ascent by climbing one of Venezuela's remote and forbidding tepuis - sheer-sided flat-top mountains. In Episode 1 Backshall and his team tackle Amaurai Tepui in south Venezuela's Canaima National Park. The expedition nearly ended in tragedy, when a storm hit the mountain, and rockfall nearly hit his climbing partner Aldo Kane.

In August 2015, along with Matt Baker and Liz Bonnin, Backshall co-presented Big Blue Live, a series of three programmes for BBC1, featuring marine life in Monterey Bay, California. The series won a BAFTA for best live series.

On 16 September 2015, Backshall and Olympic champion rower Helen Glover announced their engagement. On 10 September 2016, the couple married at Prussia Cove, Cornwall.

Backshall was a contestant on the twelfth series of Strictly Come Dancing from September 2014 on BBC One. He was partnered with former champion Ola Jordan. The couple left the series in week nine after dancing a jive to "Little Bitty Pretty One" by Frankie Lymon.

In 2014, he summitted the highly technical granite Mount Asgard in Arctic Baffin Island, in one single 27-hour summit push. Ice and alpine climbing are described as being among his great passions, and he has climbed such peaks as Cho Oyu, the sixth highest mountain in the world at 8201m, and Cholatse in the Himalayan Khumbu. He qualified as an advanced Himalayan Expedition leader from India's Nehru Institute of Mountaineering. He partnered John Arran and Ivan Calderon up the first ascent of Upuigma-tepui in Venezuela, and led the first ascent of the North face of Mount Kuli in Borneo.

In Supergiants, BBC One 2013, he sought to explain why species grow very large. It included diving with Nile crocodiles in Botswana, sperm whales in the Caribbean, and avoiding 2-ton elephant seals in California.

In 2013 he voiced Nature's Microworlds on BBC Four.

In Swimming with Monsters, Discovery TV 2013, he swam with large animals, including anaconda, hippopotamus, Humboldt Squid, and great white sharks without the safety of a cage.

Backshall stated, "First and foremost I hope that the reader will be entertained," but added "I hope that some of the readers – and if it's a very small percentage that's fine – will come away and want to learn more and will want to go out and find out for themselves what they can do."

In May 2012 he published the first of a series of fiction novels entitled The Falcon Chronicles.

Lost Land of the Volcano won the 2012 Wildscreen award for best popular broadcast.

In 2012 Blue Peter awarded him a Gold Badge, their highest honour.

In 2012 he was awarded an honorary PhD from the University of Exeter.

In 2012 he was awarded the Animal Carer Badge in the Scout Birthday Badge Awards.

In 2011, Backshall won two BAFTAs; best Children's Television Presenter, and Best Factual series.

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. Their presence at these altitudes has been previously reported from reports from India, Nepal and Bhutan. They also made the first ever descent of the grade V white-water river the Drangme Chu.

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 new species of cuscus, frogs and a giant rat, the biggest on Earth. They also uncovered miles of undiscovered passages in the Mageni cave system in New Britain.

In 2009 and 2013, he was nominated for a BAFTA for Best Children's Television Presenter. Deadly 60 was nominated for Best Children's series. Lost Land of the Jaguar was nominated for Best Factual series.

In 2008 Backshall's 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 whilst searching for anaconda in an Argentinian swamp. The programmes were transmitted on Nat Geo Wild, Animal Planet and BBC to 157 countries worldwide. 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 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 Extreme 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 Venom Hunter, Discovery Channel TV, 2008, he travelled South America aiming to find out as much as possible about venom, including taking part in the bullet ant ritual where he was stung hundreds of times by the world's most painful stinging insect.

In July 2008, while attempting to climb a wet cliff face in the Wye Valley in the Forest of Dean, he fell 10 metres (33 ft) onto rocks. The impact sent his heel bone through the bottom of his foot, dislocated his ankle, and fractured two vertebrae in his back. He required twelve operations and several years of rehab to get back to fitness.

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 2006 he filmed Inside the King Cobra for Sky One.

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 2005 he ran the Marathon des Sables 243 km across the Sahara desert to raise money for the Wolftrust.

In 2003 he moved to the BBC's The Really Wild Show. In his first series he travelled up Australia's east coast from Tasmania to Cape Tribulation. 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, with long-standing host Michaela Strachan. After four years, The Really Wild Show was axed so he joined the BBC Natural History Unit's expedition team.

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.

Stephen James Backshall MBE (born 21 April 1973) is a BAFTA-winning English naturalist, explorer, writer and television presenter, best known for BBC TV's Deadly 60. His other BBC work includes being part of the expedition teams in Expedition, Lost Land of the Tiger, Lost Land of the Volcano and Lost Land of the Jaguar. He has worked for the National Geographic Channel and the Discovery Channel. He has published four novels for children The Falcon Chronicles, three adult non-fiction works and numerous other children's non-fiction books.