May 8 marks the 100th birthday of perhaps the most influential broadcaster in history. More than any other individual, he has brought natural history and biodiversity to global attention and inspired generations of naturalists, biologists and environmentalists with fascination, adoration and a yearning to protect the living world. Without David Attenborough, I wouldn’t be the person I am.
And yet, his lifespan has coincided with more environmental devastation than had occurred for thousands of years previously, and he has often been slow to confront the forces fuelling this destruction. What will his legacy be?
Earning his stripes at the BBC
Born in London and raised in Leicester, where his father was principal at what is now the University of Leicester, Attenborough was an avid collector of fossils during childhood. He studied natural sciences at Cambridge towards the end of the Second World War.
By 1950, Attenborough was a trainee producer at the BBC’s Talks Department and began producing interviews and factual programmes. One such project was Animal Patterns, a short natural history series fronted by renowned evolutionary biologist Sir Julian Huxley, exploring how animals use camouflage, mimicry and aposematism (bright or contrasting colours warning predators of toxicity or bitter taste). This series brought animals into the studio from London Zoo, and thereby introduced Attenborough to Jack Lester, the curator of the zoo’s reptile collection.
Together, Attenborough and Lester developed the idea for Zoo Quest, a series filming expeditions around the world to collect animals for the zoo. Originally, Lester was supposed to present the programme but he became ill after the first episode aired, so Attenborough stepped in. The rest, as they say, is history.
Although with hindsight Zoo Quest was based on a rather exploitative premise reminiscent of the plundering of wildlife by Victorian collectors, it earned Attenborough recognition as a presenter of travel and nature programmes, as opposed to merely a producer.
After seven series of Zoo Quest, Attenborough took a hiatus from the BBC, before being lured back as the controller of a fledgling BBC2 in 1965. In this role, he made an indelible mark on television, pushing the channel to be more experimental and overseeing the advent of colour. Taking advantage of colour, Attenborough commissioned the first snooker coverage and also oversaw such programmes as Monty Python’s Flying Circus, a considerable risk for a channel controller given the show’s surreal and absurdist humour, and how vaguely the show was originally pitched.
Attenborough revolutionised wildlife filmmaking
Towards the end of the 1960s, having commissioned several in-depth documentary series such as Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation, Attenborough was keen to make a similar series about the evolution of life, and discussed the idea with producers at the BBC’s Natural History Unit. Wishing to be involved in making and presenting the series himself, in 1973 he resigned his administrative position and returned to making programmes, with negotiations in progress for the planned evolution epic.
When Life on Earth was broadcast in 1979, it revolutionised wildlife film making, documenting species and behaviours never filmed in the wild before and communicating current scientific research in a competent and serious way. It also provided one of the most extraordinary and emotionally resonant sequences in wildlife television when Attenborough filmed with mountain gorillas in Rwanda.
The series was a resounding success, and cemented Attenborough as the face – and the cosy eiderdown voice – of wildlife documentaries, and he proceeded to narrate every episode of the BBC’s Wildlife on One over the next 30 years. Life on Earth was followed by several companion series, such as The Living Planet, The Trials of Life, The Private Life of Plants and Life in the Undergrowth. These were among my earliest introductions to the awesome complexity of wildlife.
Over the last several decades, Attenborough has shown little sign of slowing down, providing voiceovers for, and occasional appearances in, major series such as The Blue Planet, Planet Earth and Frozen Planet, all with Alastair Fothergill as the producer or executive producer.
These latter series have shifted in tone from purely natural history to emphasising threatened species and habitats, and championing efforts to conserve them. Sequences from some of these films have been harrowingly poignant and generated huge public attention, in some cases contributing to government action, such as on single-use plastics.
Was there a reluctance to confront power?
But these series have also drawn criticism from environmental circles, where it’s argued that they’ve downplayed the situation we face, presenting blinkered and selective pictures of unspoiled wilderness and tending to individualise responsibility for environmental crises rather than calling out powerful industries or failures of government.
This instinct for avoiding confrontations with power and misdirecting blame isn’t just a problem with the BBC, but extends to Attenborough personally. A patron of the charity Population Matters, he has long argued that much of our environmental predicament is due to human population. He even went so far as to argue in 2013 that sending food aid to famine-stricken countries was ‘barmy’ because it would only prolong crises caused by overpopulation.
This neo-Malthusian attitude has contributed to a litany of global injustice, allowing powerful industries and the wealthy to dodge responsibility for their disproportionate impact on the planet and instead lumping the blame onto the global poor for having too many children. The very fact of Attenborough’s universal appeal is evidence of his unwillingness to confront power – in stark contrast to the horrifying levels of vitriol directed towards Chris Packham, for instance.
The greatest figure in promoting the natural world
Notwithstanding these limitations, Attenborough has been the single greatest and most respected figure in promoting the public understanding of, and passion for, the natural world. Whether he is explaining the principles of natural selection, or on all fours squeaking at a blind rhino calf, he seems deeply sincere, unpatronising and engaging. To his credit, his recent work also seems to have taken some of the criticisms on board.
While the state of the planet today is far worse compared to the beginning of his career, those working to combat environmental threats, from climate change to biodiversity destruction to wildlife diseases, will owe some of their earliest inspiration to him.
His legacy is therefore not his alone to determine; it’s shared by all of us who have looked up to him. As he turns 100, we should all reflect on how we can help to continue to shape it.
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