Assessing the environmental impacts of wildlife television programmes

Abstract

Wildlife TV programmes reach very large global audiences, but it is hard to measure their benefits for the natural world.The commercial need to entertain as well as inform means that many films omit the presence and impacts of people, giving the false impression that we do not affect the natural world.Many wildlife film-makers want to address the linked climate and biodiversity emergencies, but the obligation to be impartial has made some broadcasters reluctant to commission and show films that seek to change people's behaviour. Internet video streaming services are less constrained, but commercial considerations do apply.Privately funded programmes need not be commercially successful or editorially impartial. They can be distributed over the internet, independently of broadcasters. Increasingly, impact producers are being employed as key components in wider campaigns, to maximise their effect. Mainstream TV companies are starting to follow.Making international wildlife programmes entails a large carbon footprint, much of it due to travel. Many broadcasters and production companies are committing to become carbon-neutral.Programme-makers would welcome research that helps them maximise the real-world impacts of their films and quantifies positive changes for nature.

A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article.

INTRODUCTION

The world's wildlife is facing simultaneous biodiversity and climate emergencies. The concentration of atmospheric CO₂ is rising inexorably, making the most recent decade the hottest on record (WMO, 2020). As we approach or pass climate and ecological tipping points (Trisos et al., 2020), global populations of mammals, birds, fish, amphibians and reptiles have fallen by an average of 68%, since 1970 (Almond et al., 2020).

Greta Thunberg questions why the climate emergency is not on the news every day (Thunberg, 2018). Its absence was quantified by BAFTA’s ‘albert’ sustainable production scheme, which tallied phrases mentioned on UK television in 2019: Cats featured 14,454 times and Brexit 68,816. Even Shakespeare had 2,319 more mentions than climate change (3,125; Albert Annual Report, 2019-20, 2020). Wildlife documentaries are extremely popular (over one billion people have seen the BBC’s Planet Earth II and Blue Planet II series, Weston, 2019), but it is rare for wildlife film-makers to try to convert their audience's interest into urgent conservation action. Film-makers are also ill-equipped to measure the real-world impacts of their programmes.

The authors of this article are among a growing number of programme-makers concerned that most of their programmes have not addressed the climate and biodiversity emergencies. We are all professional film-makers, working mainly on the so-called ‘blue-chip’ or pure wildlife television programmes, which rarely include people.

Fredi Devas has a PhD in zoology and has produced episodes for several major BBC series. John is an independent cameraman and producer. Rowan is starting out and wants to make sure that his films do more good than harm. The authors have often witnessed severe environmental changes impacting wildlife and people. For instance, John has encountered albatross chicks on Pacific islands, choked by plastic rubbish, mud-covered penguins dying on the Antarctic peninsula, where climate change now brings rain rather than snow, and Greenlanders, frightened of travelling by sled on dwindling sea ice. He has also had to frame out massed tourist cars gathered around the remaining tigers in small protected areas, isolated within human-modified landscapes that support little wildlife. These distressing experiences have rarely been included in our programmes, and if so, mostly in stand-alone science episodes or short ‘making-of’ segments, which may be dropped when the programmes are shown elsewhere (Daily Mail Reporter, 2011; Yonada, 2011).

Here we describe how wildlife films are commissioned and made, and how their impact is judged. We conclude by suggesting ways in which research could help our films to achieve positive change.

This piece is informed by the discussions provided in the supporting documentation.

Ethics

The authors are practicing wildlife film-makers. None of us belongs to a university, so we have no access to ethics committees. Apart from the authors, there were two other participants, Ru Mahoney and James Fulcher, whom we interviewed together. All participants, including the author Fredi Devas who was also interviewed, gave written consent to be interviewed for this research study on the basis that it will be published. They were given the option of withdrawing at any time.

POPULARITY WITH VIEWERS DOES NOT EQUATE TO REAL-WORLD IMPACT

The great popularity of wildlife films has mostly been achieved by concentrating on natural spectacles and pure wildlife stories, while avoiding more difficult topics. Through news channels and personal experience, audiences are becoming more aware of the environmental emergency we all face. As a result, some television programme commissioners now seem willing to include more environmental information in wildlife films. There is an urgent need to understand how best to include such messages without losing the programmes’ appeal to wide audiences, and also to change how programme-makers and broadcasters define and measure the impact of their programmes.

Seven of the top 30 TV shows of all types, ranked by IMDb users (IMBd, 2021), are wildlife documentaries. These films were all narrated by Sir David Attenborough (IMBd, 2021), and all but one was made by BBC’s Natural History Unit (NHU) in Bristol, UK. For more than 60 years, the NHU has helped the corporation ‘to act in the public interest, serving all audiences through the provision of impartial, high-quality and distinctive output and services which inform, educate and entertain’ (BBC 2021c).

For much of this time, with notable exceptions such as Serengeti Shall not Die (1959), film-makers have concentrated on wildlife behaviour, wild places and biological themes, arguing that people must learn to care about nature before they will want to protect it. While this is true, we feel that by focussing on the dwindling areas where wild animals are protected, without mentioning the climate and biodiversity emergencies, our documentaries risk giving the false impression that all is well. This may harm efforts to engage political leaders, change corporate behaviour or motivate people to make lifestyle sacrifices (Monbiot, 2018). In A Life on Our Planet 2020, David Attenborough presented a powerful witness statement about the state of the natural world, with a call for action. Such directness is relatively new and is still lacking from most wildlife films, as is practical information on what we can all do to help. A growing number of film-makers now believe that our programmes must do more (Filmmakers for Future, 2021). To date, the need for wildlife films to justify their high cost of production by attracting large audiences has stood in the way. Now that more than 50% of all people live in urban areas (Population Division of the UN Department of Economic & Social Affairs, 2019), pure wildlife films may be a welcome antidote to stressful, human-dominated lives, so dwelling on environmental problems could be seen as a commercial risk to the organisations who commission and pay for the films. Programme producers such as Fredi Devas have sometimes had to fight to include hard-hitting conservation stories. His ‘Cities’ episode of Planet Earth II (2016) showed turtle hatchlings being lured away from the sea by urban lights: ‘That went through lots of discussions (about) whether people were coming to Planet Earth II to see a sequence like that, or whether it would be a massive turn off…In the end it was celebrated as the sequence within the episode, and I think the risk paid off. When I look at that episode now, I think we could have had more places within the film when we were more hard-hitting about the issue that animals face in the urban environment’.

In hindsight, Planet Earth II is an early example of a trend to include more environmental issues in the BBC’s wildlife series. The popularity of the corporation's Extinction – the Facts (2020), presented by David Attenborough, confirms that people want to know the truth about important and contentious issues and that they trust Attenborough to tell them. He has been voted the most trusted person in Britain (Molloy, 2014) as well as the most liked (Smith, 2018). Although the BBC’s Head of Commissioning for Science and Natural History described the film as ‘utterly frightening and relentlessly grim’, it was the corporation's highest rated new factual programme that year, with five million viewers.

Another barrier to including the conservation context in wildlife films is that major series cannot always deal quickly with urgent issues, because they take years to make. When production teams think that a quick turnaround programme would do more good than their own series, they must first persuade their bosses that breaking the story early will not devalue the main programmes.

KNOWING WHO IS WATCHING: BROADCASTERS AND STREAMING SERVICES

Most wildlife programmes are commissioned by two main types of organisations—traditional broadcasters and online streaming services. Besides knowing how many people are watching, the latter also know their viewers’ identity, location and which other programmes interest them. This means they can give people more of the types of programmes they like, which conveys a competitive advantage. This may encourage online streaming services to innovate quickly.

Prior to the internet, traditional broadcasters such as the BBC estimated viewing figures and calculated their share of viewers against other channels, but film-makers generally had little data with which to judge the impact of their films on the audience. Internet streaming services such as Netflix, YouTube, Apple TV+, Disney+ or Tencent in China know a great deal about their subscribers, giving them a great advantage over traditional broadcasters. The popularity of programmes whose strong conservation messages might have deterred traditional broadcasters, such as Virunga (2014), Our Planet (2020) and Seaspiracy (2021), has persuaded Netflix of the business case for these kinds of films. Streaming services can also carry films which are linked to campaigns such as Chasing Coral (2017; Exposure Labs, 2017). They can partner more easily with NGOs, as Netflix did with WWF for Our Planet (2020). Their detailed audience data allow these companies to target precise messages at subscribers. Some wildlife TV productions are now using similar techniques to achieve impacts beyond increasing the size and satisfaction of audiences (see Producing a real-world impact below).

CARING ABOUT NATURE: EMPATHY AND STORYTELLING

Commissioners want people to watch the films they have paid for. As programme-makers, it is part of our job to make them care enough to do so, using similar storytelling techniques to other film genres. A few film-makers choose to make films that will upset viewers, despite knowing that they may attract smaller audiences.

Most wildlife documentaries are based on rigorous research, but there is more to film-making than simply presenting facts; a well-told story can encourage us to care, for instance when we see individual animals facing situations we recognise from our own lives. Viewers enjoy being kept on the edge of their seats—think of the iguanas escaping from racer snakes in Planet Earth II. This applies equally when the animals’ problems are caused by people.

Just as in dramas, wildlife documentaries must first introduce their characters; showing us what these animals are trying to achieve and why it matters to them, always within the bounds of truth. Such stories are easier to tell when their heroes face visible adversaries, such as predators. Incorporating less visible threats requires careful directing, for example, Fredi Devas's ‘Antarctica’ episode of Seven Worlds: One Planet (2019) showed how grey-headed albatrosses are suffering because of people burning fossil fuels in countries far away from their colonies in the South Atlantic. The resulting stronger winds now blow more chicks from their nests. John filmed them struggling to climb back up.

In the same series’ episode about Asia, producer Emma Napper drew us into the life of a female Sumatran rhino, alone in a forest, singing for a mate. The narration revealed that no male will ever hear her because she is one of the last of her kind. The camera followed the rhino to a fence, behind which she lives for her own protection. Only then did we see the vast extent of deforestation.

Telling such character-led stories is easier than showing that biodiverse ecosystems are resilient and productive, and that every extinction leads towards their collapse, often damaging people's livelihoods. The Serengeti Rules (2019) is a rare exception, as is a recent Netflix documentary, My Octopus Teacher (2020), which features the bond between Craig Foster and a wild octopus. Although the film mentions environmental issues only briefly, saying that Foster now dedicates his time to protecting the kelp forest, Fredi points out that, ‘right at the heart of it, the lead character is talking about how so much of our lives are apart from nature, and ultimately everything we do which is harming the natural world is through ignorance and lack of care’.

HOPE AND SOLUTIONS VERSUS DOOM AND GLOOM

In addition to entertaining us, wildlife films can also inform and educate. Increasingly, broadcasters with a public service remit are acknowledging their obligation to show the urgency of the biodiversity and climate emergencies. They also know that some people may turn on the television to pass a restful hour, and that the gap between how they imagine the natural world is, and the very real threats, is simply too upsetting. To retain large audiences, wildlife films need to strike a balance between hope and fear, so most commissioners are keen on positive, solution-based stories.

The powerful series about Amazon deforestation, Decade of Destruction (1986), is sometimes cited as an example of hard-hitting ‘doom and gloom’ programmes, which left their audiences feeling powerless. In their wake, many pure wildlife series became deliberately escapist. Their audiences felt good and, when Zelenski (2015) showed that people who had watched Planet Earth (2006) behaved more sustainably in a tragedy of the commons simulation, so did the film-makers. Fredi recalls the feeling at that time that pure wildlife films were doing enough if they might prompt people to find out about the issues and act on them: ‘I think it is very hard for [some filmmakers] to re-envisage their work to take audiences to a bleak place where animals are suffering and whole habitats are being destroyed or collapsing…It is very regrettable that in the last 15 years there could have been lots of experimentation on how to achieve large audiences and raise the alarm.’ [Correction added on 6 October 2021, after first online publication: ‘Fredi worked on the series and recalls’ changed to ‘Fredi recalls’.]

Film-makers whose programmes mourn the ongoing loss of the natural world are extremely rare. The directors Chris Jordan (Albatross, 2017) and Patrick Rouxel (Green: Death of the Forests, 2009) are exceptions. Green is an orangutan, rescued when her forest is razed to grow a palm oil plantation. As the film ends, a credit-style roller shows the names of the individuals and companies who have destroyed her forest; a list of ‘those responsible for these crimes’ (Blewitt, 2010).

By sharing another person's relationship with nature, films can move us from being passive observers to vicariously experiencing that person's emotions. In Albatross, when we see the film-maker break down, howling over a dying chick, the film stops being simply a documentary about young birds dying after being fed ocean plastic by their parents. Now we care as much as he does, and the birds’ problem has become our problem too.

As film-makers, the three of us can admire the craft and the emotional impact of Albatross, while finding it almost unbearably upsetting to watch. Fredi has forced himself to confront this grief and has shown the film to his colleagues and friends: ‘I’ve watched it three times … and it's had an impact, but you definitely remember it. The longevity of the film in your conscious mind is massively increased, for me, when I'm left in despair. The risk is, if you don't turn [the despair] around; that's a real problem’.

BBC Audiences research (BBC, 2018a) recognises that by watching and talking about films with other people, we build long-term memories, especially if their content is surprising or shocking. The makers of Albatross encourage group screenings but they have had to trade away large broadcast audiences in exchange for the freedom to express their powerful message. In contrast Blue Planet II (2017) became a much discussed ‘appointment to view’ event for millions of people, who spread the conservation message about ocean plastics by word of mouth and social media.

We were all encouraged in October 2020, when the BBC’s Head of Commissioning, Science and Natural History acknowledged that ‘there is a renewed hunger to understand the most urgent issues affecting our planet's health’. He has commissioned a series to highlight the £50 m Earthshot prize (BBC, 2020), saying he wants films that are ‘solution facing - at individual and systemic levels - or they risk fatigue and apathy’.

If more wildlife films are now to include solutions, they will require nuanced considerations of social justice; for example, the satellite images showing Earth's conurbations in the BBC series A Perfect Planet (2021) were centred on India and China, without mentioning that historically these countries have not been big emitters, or that their populations now want their living standards to catch up with Europe and the United States, which can better afford to lower their emissions.

Our films must provide inspiration for people to act on climate change and biodiversity loss, rather than discouraging them from trying. A Perfect Planet (2021) was one of the first BBC wildlife series to incorporate some environmental messages. It suggested switching to renewable energy and being less wasteful, but gave few other details about what viewers can do to help. Fredi Devas believes there needs to be a mix of types of films, addressing different needs and audiences. He is delighted that Extinction – the Facts reached so many people, including decision-makers, saying: ‘We need more of those. We [also] need more gentle pieces aimed at children’. He is producing an episode of Planet Earth III: ‘You've got to be aware that children are going to be watching and my current feeling is that the ideal ending…would be the feeling of a call to arms; not that you feel despair…but there's a feeling of outrage that it's all happening, and a feeling that “I need to do something about this”’.

MEASURING IMPACT

The commissioners and broadcasters of most programmes only measure the ‘reach’ of their programmes and the satisfaction of their audiences. These films might also have an impact on their viewers' attitudes. This is distinct from whether people change their behaviour towards nature conservation or climate change. Such real-world impacts of films are harder to quantify.

In Measuring the Impact of Viewing Wildlife, Hughes (2013) argues that the best indicator of a wildlife viewing project's effectiveness is whether it increases viewers' commitment to, and involvement in, conservation actions. She says a well-defined impact assessment strategy, with clear goals, is essential. The same is true of wildlife viewing on TV but programme-makers rarely set well-defined goals.

The Centre for Environmental Filmmaking has complied several impact case studies (Burnette Stogner et al., 2020), and the film Chasing Coral also has a detailed report (DocImpactHi5, 2019). These mostly document the programmes’ reach rather than their real-world impacts. One of the most thorough assessments was conducted after the Our Planet series aired on Netflix. Our Planet included an online ‘halo’ (WWF/Netflix, 2020) which WWF hoped would help to engage half a billion people and make ‘the destruction of nature politically, socially and economically unacceptable’. Between 90 and 180 million people viewed the series in the first month, and by the end of 2019, there had been 90 million views of the Our Planet halo as well. WWF showed episodes to 13,000 children and a stand-alone film aimed at businesses (WWF, 2020; WWF/Silverback, 2020) was screened to 23,000 business people in 55 countries. Similar material was shown at the World Bank, the IMF and the World Economic Forum at Davos in 2019 (WEF, 2019). Surveyed viewers of the Netflix series generally felt it provided enough hard-hitting footage of the impacts of environmental issues, and what individuals could do. Viewers recalled facts about climate and the interconnectedness of nature, and deforestation and unsustainable fishing had become new concerns. About half said they would make lifestyle changes to benefit the environment, compared to 38% of non-viewers, and they believed more strongly that businesses and governments should take urgent action (WWF, 2020). In total, 350,000 people signed a Voice for the Planet petition, calling for a new deal for nature and people. This was fewer than WWF had hoped. Audiences mainly searched the Our Planet website for advice on changing their behaviour, and for positive, solution-based stories, but WWF notes the difficulty of defining a simple call to action for a global audience; it may be impossible to switch to renewable energy in some countries, for example. WWF did not quantify any real-world impacts.

It is sometimes possible to attribute real-world changes to individual films, for example, a tweet sent during the UK transmission of the ‘Cities’ episode of Planet Earth II (BBC Earth Twitter feed, 2016) was retweeted 9,000 times and subsequently quoted by many newspapers. This tweet and a related BBC web video (Planet Earth II Web exclusive, 2016) mentioned the work of the Barbados Sea Turtle Project. Fredi says this project subsequently received significantly more donations and volunteers. Similarly, within about a month of the launch of Seaspiracy on Netflix in 2021, Sea Shepherd had received around 1,500 crew applications. After Blue Planet II showed a mother pilot whale whose baby had possibly died from plastic pollution, the UK’s Environment Minister described himself as ‘haunted’ by these images (Rawlinson, 2017) and called David Attenborough to ask what action was needed. A ban on plastic straws, stirrers and cotton buds has since been enacted (UK Government, 2020), although more government action is still urgently needed. Supermarkets also responded to the public's concern about plastic pollution. In the 6 months after Blue Planet II, one chain had received so many online questions and posts that it reduced its use of plastic, saying: ‘It's a cause we can all get behind’ (Waitrose, 2019). Supermarkets still use vast amounts of plastic however.

Sometimes an audience of one counts most of all: President Obama (Obama White House, 2015) and Greta Thunberg (Wildscreen, 2020) have both said that David Attenborough's programmes inspired their interest in the natural world. In 2006, President Bush and his wife (The White House, 2006) viewed Voyage to Kure (2006), a film about Hawaii made by Jacque Cousteau's son, Jean-Michell. Within 3 months, Bush had designated the world's largest protected marine area (Wikipedia, 2021). During a state visit, the British Prime Minister gave a copy of Blue Planet II to the Chinese Premiere (Connett, 2018).

After years of campaigning by NGOs, Blue Planet II may have tipped the balance on plastic pollution, but Fredi Devas reflects that it is easier to act on marine plastic because the solutions are self-evident. It is far less obvious how to help the albatross chicks struggling to survive stronger winds. Programme-makers and their audiences may be unwilling to interrupt their wildlife stories, in order to explain the need to address climate change by switching to renewable energy or eating less meat.

PRODUCING A REAL-WORLD IMPACT

New broadcast platforms and funding routes offer more possibilities for films to have real-world conservation impacts, shaped less by broadcast restrictions. Commercial considerations may not apply to films that are philanthropically funded to achieve specific impacts.

Several organisations aim to help film-makers change the behaviour of their audiences (DocSoc, 2021; Incredible Oceans, 2019; Media Impact Funders, 2018). The UK Climate Report (DocSoc, 2020) concluded that a range of storytellers, subjects and types of media are needed for climate messages to cross political and cultural divides, including an emotional range beyond just hope and fear, to help audiences cope with uncertainty. People of colour and in the Global South are at the forefront of dealing with environmental devastation, so their voices and solutions need to be heard. The Doc Society has produced an equivalent US report (DocSoc, 2019).

If watching programmes provides inspiration, then converting that into action usually requires more direct engagement. Silk et al., (2017) have explored the connections between NGOs and feature films, and there is scope for collaboration between NGOs and documentary makers too, although this is limited for all UK TV channels by the broadcast regulator's due impartiality rules (OFCOM, 2021). These set strict limits on news and political reporting, but do allow some channels to screen programmes linked to campaigns (Keo Films, 2010). As a public service broadcaster, the BBC’s charter (BBC, 2021a) does not allow this, unless the work of NGOs is the subject of the film. Bears About the House (2020) is one example. The NGO Free the Bears reported more enquiries about volunteering after the series aired.

The risk of political controversy may deter broadcasters from tackling environmental subjects (BBC News website, 2018; Global Warming Policy Foundation, 2019).

The new media landscape is less affected by the impartiality rules of state broadcasters, allowing direct collaborations with NGOs. Traditional broadcasters are changing too; in 2016, the BBC’s production arm became a commercial organisation called BBC Studios, allowing its NHU to make wildlife films for any customer, including conservation organisations and private individuals. On a smaller scale, a new free video streaming service has partnered with 80 NGOs to provide videos about 200 conservation projects (Waterbear, 2020).

An increasing number of wildlife films are funded by philanthropists. These are unrestricted in their messaging and are usually integrated with conservation campaigns, often using impact producers to maximise their effect. The supporting material includes an audio interview on impact producing, with Ru Mahoney and James Fulcher of Project Impact.

Unlike traditional television producers, impact producers must first decide who has the power to achieve the outcome they want and what those people would need to do; tailoring their films to that end. Project Impact is running a campaign for Protect the Arctic (2021), a Terra Mater/Cosmic Pictures giant screen film. While this film is not for television, there are many parallels with Sea of Shadows (2019) and other TV programmes where Ru has acted as impact producer (Mahoney, 2020). Prior to oil drilling starting in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the Protect the Arctic team provided influential users of the social media platform TikTok with a toolkit including video clips of Arctic wildlife and key facts about damaging seismic surveys. Within weeks, the resulting TikTok posts had been viewed over 100 million times and more than six million people had sent objections to the US Fish and Wildlife Service. Later, the team will geotarget the same people with invitations to watch the giant screen film premiering nearest to them—a win for conservation impact and marketing the film. The Project Impact team relies on the latest research on how best to communicate climate change to different audiences (Yale, 2021).

YOUNGER AUDIENCES

New formats and styles of programmes may be needed to attract younger audiences and inspire a lifelong interest in nature and the importance of conservation. The environmental youth movement is a powerful source of hope, but younger audiences (aged 16–24) are more likely to view online services, rather than traditional broadcasters (Waterson, 2019). This may mean they are less likely to watch pure wildlife films, or those which have been rigorously researched.

BBC Audiences (2018) note that the BBC ‘already struggle(s) to attract younger people to our content but knowing that this is the time of their lives when many of their lifetime memories will be formed gives us added reason to win their hearts and minds. Otherwise, we risk losing them forever’. So, perhaps, does the natural world, to its great detriment. Informed young people can influence others. Lawson (2019) found that daughters were most effective at increasing their parents' level of concern about climate change, especially their fathers, possibly because girls were more concerned or better communicators than boys of the same age.

Fredi Devas enjoys the joy and knowledge his daughters gain from pure wildlife films. He protects them from more shocking programmes, knowing that their cousin was so traumatised by seeing walruses plunging to their deaths in Our Planet that he will no longer watch wildlife films. New programmes to engage young adults are being planned ahead of the 2021 COP26 climate conference, for instance A Seat at My Table, a YouTube series featuring 27-year-old Jack Harries (Studio Silverback, 2021).

SUSTAINABLE PRODUCTION

Wildlife film-making has a high carbon footprint, so the negative impacts of films that produce little benefit for the natural world could outweigh the good they can do.

The UK’s BAFTA ‘albert’ scheme certifies participating productions as carbon neutral (Albert, 2020). It calculates that emissions from ‘International factual’ programmes are the highest of all TV genres (Albert Annual Report, 2019-20, 2020). A sample of wildlife films averaged 61 tCO2e/hour on screen, with one reaching 413 tCO2e/hr. One major six-part series had total emissions of 2,480 tCO2e, more than half of which was due to transporting people (unpublished Albert carbon calculator data).

All BBC Studios' UK productions must now achieve albert certification, and by 2022, the corporation aims to have cut emissions by 24% (BBC, 2018b, 2021b).

Streaming services use a great deal of electricity. Netflix offset 100% of its non-renewable energy use in 2019, and the majority of emissions associated with travel (Netflix, 2020).

Offsetting emissions by conserving, planting or regenerating trees could capture a great deal of CO₂ (Bastin, 2019, 2020) while promoting biodiversity, but growing trees will take years to fulfil their promised carbon sequestration (Buis, 2019). Offsetting the emissions of a major six-part wildlife series using direct carbon capture and storage (Climeworks, 2021) would have an almost immediate effect but would cost more than £2m, compared to 0.1% of a production's budget for tree planting schemes (Albert, 2021a, 2021b). The need to achieve carbon neutrality is very urgent but the low cost of slower schemes may act as a disincentive to reduce emissions by travelling less, or by training and employing local crews instead. Using local crews would bring many other advantages, incorporating a wider diversity of perspectives than are included at present. Reusing footage can save money and resources too, but this risks giving the impression that nothing has changed, whereas, for instance, just 2 years after filming fossas in Madagascar, the Our Planet team discovered that parts of their forest had already vanished (Vyawahare, 2019).

Recently, as well as agreeing to aim for net-zero by 2030, seven UK media companies have also decided to drive climate-friendly behaviour change through the content of their programmes (Responsible Media Forum, 2021). Similarly, the albert Planet Placement scheme aims ‘to inspire the creative community to include climate in the stories they tell, no matter what genre’ (Albert Annual Report, 2019-20, 2020).

The BBC's Director General has recognised that while ‘…our programmes and content can help inform our audiences about the changing world and the actions they can take to reduce their own environmental impact. This is not about promoting a particular ideology or political viewpoint; it is a critical aspect of our mission to inform’ (BBC 2018b).

HELPING US TO HELP THE NATURAL WORLD: SUGGESTIONS FOR RESEARCH COLLABORATIONS

It is time for broadcasters to start judging the success of their programmes not only by the size and satisfaction of their audience, but also by whether the natural world is better protected as a result. Only by collaborating with researchers will we understand how our films can best achieve this outcome and whether they are succeeding. We suggest that the following areas might be suitable for future research:

1. The easiest way to include human impacts in films is to mention them more often in the narration, but this may have a detrimental effect. When the Netflix series Our Planet did so, one reviewer wrote ‘with the sound off, viewers could easily think they are watching Planet Earth’ (Jones et al., 2019). It would be interesting to investigate whether viewers’ perceptions of these pressures are altered by the apparent contradiction between alarming words and apparently unaffected wildlife. It is relatively simple to change the sound track on films, so viewers’ reactions could be tested by showing them the same images with different narrations.

   It would also be possible to test the impact of the same narration over different films; comprised of just wildlife images, images which also show the threats and images showing inspiring people creating solutions.

• Striking the right balance between hope and fear is important. We would like to quantify the effect of viewing and talking about films with other people, especially if their content is surprising or shocking, in particular, we would like to know how best to engage audiences with upsetting stories while avoiding despair. Again, versions of the same film could be trialled.
• Long-term collaborative research, initiated early in the production process, could properly test the real-world impacts of including different storylines and information in a major wildlife series. Doing so could also give commercial benefits to broadcasters keen to enhance their reputations.
• Streaming services know precisely when their subscribers have watched each episode in a series, what they have seen and whether they were interested enough to binge watch. Interrupting their viewing with a call for action could be counter-productive, but so might waiting long enough for their interest to wane, so research into the most effective time to introduce a conservation message would be valuable. This would require collaboration between researchers, film-makers, the broadcaster/streaming service and NGOs. Broadcasters are usually reluctant to share data on their audience, but such research would offer them marketing and commercial benefits. It could be conducted in conjunction with impact producers.
• Small NGOs lack the resources to assess how much benefit is directly due to programmes about them. This might be a fruitful area for researching real-world impacts.
• To excite the interest of younger audiences, the messenger may be as important as the message. It would be valuable to know how young people change their behaviour when they receive messages from their peers, compared to older voices of authority, neutral narrators and more diverse voices. The ability of a diverse range of narrators to inspire young people to make changes could be assessed by testing versions of the same film, re-voiced by different people.
• Research on how to increase sustainable programme production would be valuable, perhaps by modelling the effect of setting a carbon budget across the industry, then steadily reducing it.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors are grateful to Matthew Silk and Sarah Crowley for suggesting that they write this piece. They acknowledge the help received from Ru Mahoney and James Fulcher, and thank them for agreeing to be interviewed.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST

John and Rowan Aitchison are practising wildlife film-makers, not employed as permanent staff by any broadcasting organisation. Fredi Devas is employed by the BBC. His opinions expressed here are his personal views.

AUTHORS' CONTRIBUTIONS

J.A. and R.A. led the writing of the manuscript; F.D. provided crucial input and ideas through an extended interview. All authors contributed critically to the drafts and gave final approval for publication.

DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT

Data deposited in the Zenodo http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5110296 (Aitchison et al., 2021). This comprises an audio recording of an interview with Ru Mahoney and James Fulcher of Project Impact, an impact production company and the transcript of a discussion between Fredi Devas, John Aitchison and Rowan Aitchison. Fredi's quotes in this piece are taken from that discussion.