Wild Isles: TV producers feared avian flu would kill David Attenborough

Producers of David Attenborough’s latest TV series have told how an outbreak of avian flu triggered fears for the veteran presenter’s safety.

Wild Isles is the “96-year-old broadcaster’s first foray into exploring the wildlife of the UK” during his 69-year television career, said The Independent. The new show, which debuts on BBC One and iPlayer on Sunday, was due to include a segment in which he got close to shearwater chicks on Skomer Island, off the Pembrokeshire coast of Wales, as they took flight on a 6,000-mile migratory journey.

“The shearwaters are not great at taking off, so what the warden on the island said is, ‘If you sit David close to the burrows, they will almost certainly climb up his arm on to his head and take off from his head’,” producer Alastair Fothergill told Radio Times. “We thought, ‘Wow, that could be TV gold.’ That was the plan.”

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But the plan had to be ditched two weeks before filming was to start, following reports that bird flu had hit the neighbouring island of Grassholm.

“I have an old friend who’s an expert on infectious diseases and I rang him up for his opinion,” Fothergill continued. “He said, ‘Well, bird flu is actually extremely hard to catch, but if he [Attenborough] gets it he will die.”

After deciding the risk was too great, the TV team instead “used two infrared cameras to capture the moment – one facing David and the other a boulder a few feet away from where they hoped the chicks would take flight”, the London Evening Standard reported.

Fothergill told Radio Times that the final footage was one of Attenborough’s “classic” moments.The new five-part series, which was three years in the making, features wildlife ranging from killer whales and white-tailed eagles to dormice, according to the BBC.

As Attenborough fans gear up for his latest TV outing, The Observer reported that it is “likely to be viewers’ final time seeing him in a series filmed on location”.

Announcing the series, Attenborough said: “I’ve been lucky enough to travel to almost every part the globe and gaze upon some of its most beautiful and dramatic sights. But I can assure you that nature in these islands, if you know where to look, can be just as dramatic and spectacular as anything I’ve seen elsewhere.”