Sir David Attenborough turns 100
--Broadcaster, natural historian, conservationist, writer

Sir David Frederick Attenborough is an English broadcaster, natural historian, and writer, and is still active today. He began his career as host of the BBC show, Zoo Quest, in 1954. He went on to be the narrator for nine documentary series forming The Life Collection, Natural World TV series, Wildlife on One, and others, including the most famous Planet Earth series, the Blue Planet series, and the Frozen Planet series.

Early Life
David Frederick Attenborough was born on 8 May 1926 in England. He spent his childhood collecting fossils, stones and natural specimens. He won a scholarship to Clare College, Cambridge in 1945 to study geology and zoology, and obtained a degree in natural sciences. He joined the BBC as a radio talk producer; his association with natural history programmes began when he produced and presented the three-part series Animal Patterns, which led to Zoo Quest.

TV Series
Beginning with Life on Earth TV series in 1979, Attenborough set about creating a body of work which became a benchmark of quality in wildlife film-making. By treating his subject seriously and researching the latest discoveries, Attenborough and his production team gained the trust of scientists, who responded by allowing him to feature their subjects in his programmes.
Innovation was another factor in Life on Earth's success: new film-making techniques were devised to get the shots Attenborough wanted, with a focus on events and animals that were up till then unfilmed. International air travel enabled the series to be devised so that Attenborough visited several locations around the globe in each episode, sometimes even changing continents in one sequence. Although appearing as the on-screen presenter, he restricted his time on camera to give more time to his subjects.
Five years after the success of Life on Earth, the BBC released The Living Planet, a series focussed around the theme of ecology, the adaptations of living things to their environment. It was a critical and commercial success. In 1990, The Trials of Life completed the original Life trilogy, looking at animal behaviour through the different stages of life.
In the 1990s, Attenborough continued to use the "Life" title for a succession of authored documentaries. Although past normal retirement age, he then embarked on a number of more specialised surveys of the natural world, beginning with plants. He then turned his attention to birds, mammals, and invertebrates! He completed the set with Life in Cold Blood, on reptiles. Each became a memorable series with
beautiful camera footage and excellent commentary by him.
Alongside the Life series, Attenborough continued to work on other television documentaries, mainly in the natural history genre. He wrote and presented a series on man's influence on the natural history of the Mediterranean basin, in 1987. Two years later, he demonstrated his passion for fossils in Lost Worlds, Vanished Lives. 
Attenborough narrated every episode of Wildlife on One a BBC One wildlife series that ran for 253 episodes between 1977 and 2005. At its peak, it drew a weekly audience of eight to ten million, while the 1987 episode "Meerkats United" was voted the best wildlife documentary of all time by BBC viewers. He has narrated over 50 episodes of Natural World, BBC Two's flagship wildlife series.
His Planet Earth 2006 TV series was the biggest nature documentary ever made for television and the first BBC wildlife series to be shot in high definition. In 2009, Attenborough co-wrote and narrated Life, a ten-part series focussing on extraordinary animal behaviour, and narrated Nature's Great Events, which showed how seasonal changes trigger major natural spectacles.
In 2011, the Frozen Planet series was made on the natural history of the polar regions. For Planet Earth II, Attenborough returned as narrator and presenter. He made several more series in the following decade, on Birds, Dinosaurs, Prehistoric Planet, culminating in the Ocean movie just last year, in 2025. It is a British documentary film which explores the importance of the Earth's oceans and the threats they face. It is narrated by David Attenborough.

Environmentalist advocacy
His earlier work focused primarily on the natural world; however, his later work has been more vocal in support for environmental causes. He has advocated for restoring planetary biodiversity, limiting population growth, switching to renewable energy, and mitigating climate change.
Attenborough has been criticised for not giving enough prominence to environmental messages. He has earlier said that repeated messages on threats to wildlife in programming could be a "turn-off" to viewers.
By the turn of the millennium, Attenborough's authored documentaries included more environmental awareness. In State of the Planet, 2000, he used the latest scientific evidence and interviews with leading scientists and conservationists to assess the impact of human activities on the natural world.
He later turned to the issues of global warming in his The Truth about Climate Change, 2006, and human population growth How Many People Can Live on Planet Earth?, 2009. He contributed a programme which highlighted the plight of endangered species on Earth.
In 2019, Attenborough narrated Our Planet, an eight-part documentary series, for Netflix. This series emphasised the destructive role of human activities throughout the series. In 2022, the United Nations Environment Programme recognised Attenborough as a Champion of the Earth "for his dedication to research, documentation, and advocacy for the protection of nature and its restoration".
Attenborough was a key figure in the build-up to the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference and gave a speech at the opening ceremony. In it he stated that humans were "the greatest problem solvers to have ever existed on Earth" and spoke of his optimism for the future, finishing by saying "In my lifetime I've witnessed a terrible decline. In yours, you could and should witness a wonderful recovery.
While admiring the many varied contributions of this amazing person, we can only hope that he
is right!
Sources:
Wikipedia, 
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/oct/22/david-attenborough-climate-change-bbc