“I wish I could travel the world,” one YouTube comment reads below the trailer for Our Great National Parks, Netflix’s ambitious, visually stirring five-part docuseries for Earth Day, produced and narrated by Barack Obama. “These documentaries really make me realize how little I know of the world, and how little of it I will ever get to see.”

“The amazing things we take for granted,” another commenter notes. “I hope nature will thrive one day, how it used to before us.”

That first comment demonstrates one of the driving reasons behind Our Great National Parks: The need — some would say a sacred obligation — to show the natural world in all its glory to those who will never have the chance to see it for themselves.

The second comment cuts to the heart of the raison d’être behind Earth Day, this idea that, just once, one day a year, humankind will be collectively encouraged to reflect on planet Earth as our home, and how we share a collective responsibility to preserve and protect what remains of the natural world — the way it was, before we arrived.

During his presidency Obama signed protections for more public lands and waters than any other US president and established 19 national monuments, covering more than 260 million acres. Obama signed legislation to save endangered species such as the greater sage-grouse; passed the Clean Water Rule to protect streams and wetlands that provide clean drinking water for 117 million Americans; helped restore ecosystems in vulnerable natural areas throughout the continental US, including Chesapeake Bay, the Everglades, the Gulf of Mexico and the Sacramento-San Joaquin California delta. He signed off on programs to counter illegal wildlife trafficking, combat ivory poaching in Africa, tackle e illegal fishing and seafood fraud; and fought to reform energy development on American land and in American waters.

Obama and Our Great National Parks executive producer James Honeyborne, a BBC veteran instrumental in producing the award-winning David Attenborough-narrated series Blue Planet II, settled on some of the less high-profile, less well-known parks around the world for their Earth Day series, protected areas that include Torres del Paine National Park in Patagonia, Chile; Tsavo East and Tsavo West parks in Kenya; the US National Marine Monument in Monterey Bay, USA; and Gunung Leuser National Park on Sumatra, Indonesia.

Natural first include never-before-seen images of Sumatran tigers in the wild, using remote camera traps that had to be installed following a 10-day trek up jungle mountains through leech-infested forest; increasingly rare captures of the critically endangered monarch butterfly; dwarf mongooses hurling snails at rocks in Kenya’s wild, rugged Tsavo East National Park, to enjoy a delectable and nutritious snack, a previously unrecorded behavior; and the first comprehensible filming of “surfing hippos” in the equatorial Atlantic coastline ocean off Gabon, using specially modified drones for the first time. Among the series’ several discoveries was a recently discovered rock iguana, so recent that it has yet to be given a formal scientific name.

“I hope viewers will come to see wilderness not as empty places but important spaces that have value and are relevant to us all,” producer Honeyborne said. “We’ve come to understand that these precious spaces are more than just beautiful wild places. They regulate our climate, purify our water, pollinate our crops — we depend on them for our future just as they depend on us for theirs.

“We want everyday people to recognize that these places aren’t preserves cut off from human activity or reserved for wealthy tourists. We want people to recognize the broader role that national parks play in our economies and celebrate their value to us all. Whether they’re giving someone space just to walk and exercise, or promoting conservation, these places play an important role to the whole of our society.”

Honeyborne said it was intended all along that Our Great National Parks focus on regions that Obama had, and continues to have, strong personal connections to.

The parks had to be unique in some way: Monterey Bay, for example, is an example of how people and parks can thrive side-by-side; Tsavo highlights the daily struggle for survival for species living in one of Africa’s most vast, remote and sun-scorched regions; Gungun Leuser in Indonesia is a crucial illustration of how rainforests are hot-spots for biodiversity and are essential if humankind is to avert climate catastrophe on a global scale.

“We wanted to focus on the importance of these wild spaces, especially at a time when the pressures on wilderness and wildlife have never been greater,” Honeyborne noted.

Where other recent nature docuseries such as Our Planet have mainly focused on the problems the natural world faces, Honeyborne felt it essential that National Parks also highlight potential solutions.

“It’s about finding ways to connect with as many people as possible on an emotional level — to engage us, make us laugh, and even help us cry. We understand how stories like these have the power to move people at the deepest levels. They can propel ideas into the world, catalyze the conversations we all need to have, get things started and get things done. We knew if we could create a series that could reach people, it might help tweak the dial in helping more people connect with wildlife and learn how to care more for the future health of this planet. We need to show the possibilities as well as the problems.

“The world is facing many threats: the climate crisis, the biodiversity crisis, the crisis of escalating pollution — all of which significantly impact the world’s remaining wilderness and wildlife. So it’s not just the climate crisis, though that’s bad enough.

“We’re living in a time when the health of our last wild places is declining alarmingly, just as the actual value of what they do for us is being fully appreciated. While we may recognize their value in theory, all too often we squander it in practice.

“No matter who we are or where we live, we all depend on a fully functioning, healthy planet for our own survival, and for that of future generations.

“No one wants to sit in the comfort of their living room and be told a list of what’s wrong in the world — I get that. What I’ve learned is that we must be brave enough not just to lecture and preach but to make our storytelling entertaining, ambitious and emotionally engaging as well, so that it stirs our hearts and challenges our minds.

“We can change. I honestly believe that.”

Our Great National Parks streams in full on Netflix, starting Wednesday, April 13.