Veteran UK environmentalist David Attenborough said he has been ‘completely overwhelmed by birthday greetings’ for his centenary.
In a recorded a message he said: ‘I had rather thought that I would celebrate my 100th birthday quietly, but it seems that many of you have had other ideas.
‘I’ve been completely overwhelmed by birthday greetings, from pre-school groups to care home residents and countless individuals and families of all ages. I simply can’t reply to each of you all separately, but I would like to thank you all most sincerely for your kind messages.’
The BBC broadcaster who has described the wonders of life on Earth for a global audience, has inspired efforts to treasure and protect wildlife during a lifetime that has coincided with mass species threat and extinction alongside the climate crisis.
To mark his birthday, London’s Natural History Museum has named a newly discovered species of parasitic wasp – Attenboroughnculus tau – after him and is running an exhibition, ‘Our Story With David Attenborough’, until August.
The Times newspaper reviewed the production saying: ‘And here the words of one of the greatest Homo Sapiens, telling us that we have a big and potentially positive role to play, sound as beautiful as whale song.’
A commemorative evening including film clips and music took place at London’s Albert Hall, while conservation groups across the UK organised local events, such as talks, countryside hikes and guided wildlife walks.
At Kew Gardens, staff recorded a birthday message paying tribute and calling on people to honour him by taking greater care of plants and fungi.
Tributes Roll In
Tributes rolled in from personalities in science, politics and popular culture, including naturalist Chris Packham who said: ‘He is the greatest living broadcaster and has been the greatest ambassador for life on Earth the planet has and will ever see.’
Actor and friend Sir Michael Palin said: ‘He’s curious, he’s careful, he’s thorough, he has a marvellous way of communicating with people, always has done. The fact that he’s been broadcast for 60 or 70 years without ever lowering the standards of the work he does is truly remarkable.’
Lord of the Rings star Sir Ian McKellen added: ‘His ability to communicate his own enthusiasms are very precious and he’s brought such joy to so many people.’
Attenborough was born in Isleworth, West London, in 1926 and brought up near Leicester in the Midlands.
His interest in the natural world started at an early age, as he cycled across the countryside to reach woodlands where he could find fossils under rocks.
After stints in the Royal Navy and publishing, he applied for a job at the BBC in 1950, despite not even possessing a television set, and was soon making factual programmes, including a series from London Zoo.
His primary interest was always in wildlife and documentary film-making, leading in 1979 to the pioneering 13-part series ‘Life on Earth’.
In one early episode, he had an unexpectedly close encounter with an adult male gorilla in Rwanda but continued his commentary saying: ‘It seems really very unfair that man should have chosen the gorilla to symbolise everything that is aggressive and violent, when that is the one thing that the gorilla is not – and that we are.’
Attenborough raised environmental alarms, such as 2000’s ‘State of the Planet’ and recently has drawn even more attention to the damage being done to the natural world.
He told the Guardian in 2018 that his goal was to make people care enough about the planet to do something, firstly drawing people in and then, hitting them with an environmental message – an approach particularly successful with ‘Blue Planet’, which sparked a global campaign against plastics.
Attenborough took to the stage at UN climate talks in Poland in December 2018 stating: ‘Right now we are facing a man-made disaster of global scale, our greatest threat in thousands of years: climate change. If we don’t take action, the collapse of our civilisations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon.”
Three years later, he told a young audience at Cop26 in Glasgow: ‘In my lifetime I have witnessed a terrible decline. In yours, you could and should witness a wonderful recovery.’
Alastair Fothergill, of the production company Silverback Films, said: ‘Working with David over the decades has been one of the great privileges of my life. Before him, wildlife television was often seen as niche or educational programming, but David brought the wonders of the planet into people’s living rooms in a completely new way.
‘Suddenly, audiences everywhere cared about places and animals they’d never seen before. Not only did he bring a unique sense of wonder and emotion to these stories, he also gave audiences a huge sense of responsibility towards the planet.’
