Renowned environmentalist David Attenborough celebrates his 100th birthday

Few voices have shaped humanity’s understanding of the living world like David Attenborough’s, and on his 100th birthday the veteran British naturalist is being celebrated as both a broadcasting icon and one of the most influential environmental campaigners of the modern era.

Across more than 70 years of filmmaking, Mr Attenborough’s unmistakable narration has become inseparable from the way nature is seen, heard and understood.

Even now, he remains at the forefront of the fight to protect the planet, delivering some of the most resonant work of his long career in recent years.

His documentaries have brought audiences around the world face to face with both the splendour of the natural world and the devastation threatening it.

He has also left viewers astonished by scenes such as a pod of orcas working together to generate waves that break up ice and expose a seal, while his 2012 telling of the story of ‘Lonesome George’, the last Pinta Island tortoise, reduced many to tears.

“He’s about 80 years old, and getting a bit creaky in his joints – as indeed am I,” Mr Attenborough, then 86, said.

George died two weeks after filming, and with him his species vanished.

“He’s focused the attention of the world on the fragility of our environment,” Mr Attenborough said at the time.

Britain’s Prince William and his wife Catherine watch a message from David Attenborough at The Earthshot Prize 2022 in Boston, Massachusetts

As the climate crisis has deepened and the risks facing communities and ecosystems have become starker, Mr Attenborough spent much of his 90s intensifying his efforts to alert the public.

His 2017 hit series “Blue Planet 2”, which spotlighted the plague of plastic pollution in the seas, drew some of British television’s biggest audiences before being sold around the world.

Images of albatrosses unknowingly feeding plastic gathered from the ocean to their chicks helped shift public sentiment and prompted the British government and major retailers to unveil measures aimed at cutting plastic use.

In Britain, his centenary is being marked with a week of special BBC programmes, a live concert at London’s Royal Albert Hall, museum events, nature walks and tree planting.

The broadcasts include his new series ‘Secret Garden’. At 100, colleagues at the BBC say he remains deeply involved in programme-making, still propelled by curiosity and the sheer pleasure of telling a story well.

David Attenborough signing copies of ‘Life In The Undergrowth’ in 2005

“That’s typical David. He makes everything really enjoyable,” said Mike Salisbury, who has worked as a producer on several Attenborough ⁠documentaries.

For all his renown, the broadcaster – whose brother was the late actor and film director Richard Attenborough – has consistently resisted the label of celebrity.

Born on 8 May 1926, Mr Attenborough spent his early years collecting fossils, insects and dried seahorses.

His rise at the BBC began in 1954 with ‘Zoo Quest’, the series that sent him to remote corners of the globe and involved bringing animals back to London Zoo.

By the 1970s, he had climbed to the role of programme controller at the broadcaster, but chose to step away from management and return to wildlife filmmaking.

Broadcast in 1979 when he was 52, ‘Life on Earth’ turned him into a household name. He wrote the full 13-hour script and spent three years travelling the world to trace evolution from simple organisms to human beings.

Dozens more documentaries followed, among them “Blue Planet,” “Frozen Planet” and “Dynasties”. With each passing decade, so too grew his urgency about the need for action.

“How could I look my grandchildren ‌in the eye and say I knew what was happening to the world and did nothing?” Mr Attenborough said.

‘Completely overwhelmed’

In the days before the milestone, Mr Attenborough said he was “completely overwhelmed” by the flood of birthday messages and thanked well-wishers “most sincerely”.

David Attenborough with two ring-tailed lemurs during a Christmas lecture at London zoo in 1961

In a recorded audio message shared last night, 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.

“I wish those of you who have planned your own local events tomorrow a very happy day.”

RTÉ Archives: David Attenborough on the Late Late Show in 1980

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British Prime Minister Keir Starmer was among those offering tributes to Mr Attenborough.

He said: “I would like to send my warmest wishes to Sir David Attenborough on his 100th birthday.

“Like millions of people across the country and around the world, I grew up watching Sir David’s programmes. For decades, the nation has been captivated by his passion for nature and his remarkable contribution to public broadcasting.

“He is a true national treasure and a pioneer in his field – may his work continue to inspire people of all ages for years to come.”

The Royal Albert Hall event will be hosted by Kirsty Young and will feature performances from musicians whose work has appeared in his BBC Planet Earth series.

Bastille frontman Dan Smith will perform Pompeii with the BBC Concert Orchestra, after the track featured in Planet Earth III, while Icelandic band Sigur Ros is set to play Hoppipolla, used to promote Planet Earth and Planet Earth II.

Artists drew David Attenborough’s likeness in the sand at Morecambe Bay in England for his birthday

The BBC Concert Orchestra will also perform music linked to some of the most memorable sequences from Mr Attenborough’s programmes, including the high-stakes snakes and iguanas chase from Planet Earth II and the striking wave-washing orcas scene from Frozen Planet II.

The line-up will also include British singer Sienna Spiro and Paraguayan harpist Francisco Yglesias, who will perform the traditional Pajaro Campana, a piece heard in Zoo Quest, Mr Attenborough’s first wildlife programme.

It is only one part of a wider programme of celebrations for his birthday.

At Britain’s Natural History Museum, the immersive exhibition presented by Mr Attenborough will be turned into a free five-minute show in central London for the occasion.

Our Story With David Attenborough will be adapted for screening at Outernet London in Tottenham Court Road from Mr Attenborough’s birthday today, with the veteran BBC presenter guiding audiences through the history of humanity and the Earth before offering a vision of London’s future.

He has also been swamped with messages from environmental and animal charities and has had a “wise” bull named in his honour by animal charity PETA.

The bull, called Sir Attenbullock, was among the first animals rescued through PETA India’s Delhi mechanisation project.

At 100, Mr Attenborough is no longer trekking through the jungles and deserts of the world.

But he has continued to chronicle the planet from much closer to home.

In “Wild London”, broadcast in early 2026, he celebrates the wildlife of the British capital, where he was born, from foxes and beavers to hedgehogs and harvest mice.

For all his travels, he has said that his favourite place is still Richmond, the leafy and affluent suburb in southwest London.

He has lived in the riverside town for many years and still lives in the family home he shared with his late wife Jane and their two children.

Mooney Goes Wild will mark David Attenborough’s 100th birthday with a special programme on RTÉ Radio 1 at 10pm tonight

Additional reporting AFP, Reuters