As Sir David Attenborough, the world’s most famous naturalist, turns 100 on 8 May, HRH the Princess Royal has paid tribute to the man who first appeared on TV screens nearly 60 years ago in 1954 and has reached more than a billion people through his documentaries.
“He has made such an impact and I’m sure his experience made such a huge difference to so many people being able to say, it’s worth trying,” Princess Anne, who is patron of the Whitley Fund for Nature and their awards, said in a recent film that paid tribute to Sir David, a former trustee of the charity that champions grassroots conservation leaders.
“I hope that many of our winners took inspiration from that because, my goodness, they made such a difference.”
The Princess Royal has been a dedicated patron for the Whitley Fund for Nature since 1999, both speaking at the annual awards ceremony and visiting its winners in their home countries, most recently going to China to see conservation efforts for the protection of the endangered finless porpoise.
Sir David has been a trustee and ambassador during two decades of support for the charity since 1998.
Anne first met David at the BBC in 1958 when she was six and her brother Charles was nine. “I had a pet cockatoo and I was asked to bring it to the studios, which I did,” David told the presenter Kirsty Young on the eve of Charles’s coronation in 2023.
© BBC / Plimsoll Productions“Little ‘Cocky’ was sitting on his hand,” he said of the King, a lifelong environmentalist. “They have a very powerful beak and a very powerful bite. Although I was confident about Cocky, he could actually have removed Charles’s little finger! But all was well, and it was actually a very happy occasion.”
“On behalf of the Whitley Fund for Nature, on behalf of our donors, on behalf of our winners and on behalf of all creatures great and small that you’ve helped us save, we’d like to wish you a very happy hundredth birthday,” added WFN founder Edward Whitley.
For more information about the work of the WFN, visit whitleyaward.org