Fifty years ago, David Attenborough changed the way we see the world. Now we must heed his warning
Sir David Attenborough has spent his life helping us to understand the natural world and why its fate is inseparable from our own
This month marks an extraordinary milestone. Sir David Attenborough turns 100 – a full century lived in curiosity, wonder, and deep attentiveness to the natural world. Few people have shaped our collective understanding of life on Earth as profoundly as he has.
For decades, his voice – calm, precise, and unmistakable – has guided us into forests, oceans, deserts and grasslands, revealing the richness and complexity of the living world. It is no exaggeration to say that Sir David is the most trusted communicator nature has ever had.
A master of his craft, yet always humble in its service, he has set the gold standard for wildlife filmmaking. Not simply through technical brilliance, but through storytelling – helping us see animals not as specimens, but as fellow travellers on this planet.
A turning point for humanity
Most recently, the BBC’s Secret Garden returned his gaze closer to home, uncovering the extraordinary life unfolding in our own backyards. And this year, Netflix will revisit one of the most iconic moments in broadcasting history: that breathtaking scene from Life on Earth, filmed 50 years ago, when Sir David lay quietly among a troop of mountain gorillas in Rwanda.
More than 15 million people watched that episode when it first aired. I was one of them. When a young gorilla, Pablo, clambered onto Sir David’s back, the moment felt almost impossibly intimate. Those few minutes could have ended very differently. Instead, they became perhaps the most famous sequence in wildlife filmmaking, and a turning point in how humanity related to the wild.
Whichever way you look at it, there is no one quite like Sir David. More than 50 species of animals and plants are named in his honour. An estimated 500 million people worldwide have seen Life on Earth. Yet his most important achievement may not be measured in viewing figures at all.
For decades, he has carried out what might be the most important job on Earth: explaining, patiently and persistently, why protecting the natural world is not a luxury, but a necessity for our own survival. And yet, tragically, it seems not everyone is listening.
When words are forgotten
Recently, I shared a stage with TV broadcaster and conservationist, Chris Packham. At the end of the event, I asked what he hoped people would take away from the discussion.
“Cast your mind back to COP26, when the greatest advocate for life on Earth, Sir David Attenborough, addressed world leaders. He spoke with calm authority, truth and moral clarity,” he replied, referring to the United Nations’ climate summit held in Glasgow in 2021.
He relayed Sir David’s response when he asked a few days later how it had gone: “I think they listened. But the problem, Chris, is that the next morning they had forgotten everything I said.” Those words have stayed with me.
In my lifetime – and even more so in Sir David’s – the natural world has suffered an extraordinary and devastating decline. Since the spread of industrial agriculture, the planet has lost more than two-thirds of its wildlife populations. Today, 96 per cent of all mammal biomass on Earth is made up of humans and farmed animals. Just four per cent is wild.
At the same time, our food system is destroying the very foundations on which it depends. A recent report by the Food System Economics Commission estimates the true cost of food – in human suffering, environmental damage and climate harm – at more than $10 trillion a year. That is more than food systems contribute to global GDP. In other words, the way we produce food is destroying more value than it creates.
Industrial farming also erodes our soils – the living skin of the Earth. The UN has warned that if current trends continue, we may have fewer than 60 harvests left before the soil is gone. No soil. No food. Game over. Caring for nature is not optional. It is the baseline for a liveable future.
Life lessons
Yet Sir David has never been a prophet of despair. What I have learnt most from him is not doom, but faith in human possibility. He believes deeply in our capacity to cooperate, to innovate, and to choose a better path – especially when younger generations are empowered to lead. As he told world leaders in Glasgow, we are “the greatest problem-solvers that have ever existed on Earth”.
Across the world, I see that spirit alive in farmers restoring soils and bringing back free-ranging animals, in communities bringing wildlife back to the land, and in pioneers re-imagining food systems that work with nature rather than against her.
Because the truth is this: we are not separate from the natural world. We are part of it. The air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat – all arise from a living web of connections that sustains us. Sir David has spent a lifetime gifting us with something far more enduring than film: a legacy of attention, humility, hope – and a challenge to act.
At COP26, he ended his address with words that deserve to be remembered: “If working apart we are a force powerful enough to destabilise our planet, surely working together we are powerful enough to save it… In my lifetime I’ve witnessed a terrible decline. In yours, you could – and should – witness a wonderful recovery.”
As Sir David turns 100, let us do him the honour not merely of admiration, but of action.
Philip Lymbery is chief executive of Compassion in World Farming, president of EuroGroup for Animals and a UN Food Systems Advisory Board member. His latest book is Sixty Harvests Left: How to Reach a Nature-Friendly Future. He is on X/Twitter @philip_ciwf
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