The truth about Britain’s wildlife crisis is stark: the timid BBC must let David

Is there no limit to the timidity of the BBC? Bang in the middle of the row over tweeting by the widely respected Gary Lineker, it now seems to be muzzling the most trusted Briton of them all – David Attenborough.

As the Guardian reports today, it has decided not to broadcast the sixth and last programme of the veteran broadcaster’s widely hailed new series on Britain’s wildlife, in which he exposes its dramatic decline, and what has caused it. While the other five episodes of Wild Isles will go out in prime time, amid enormous hype, it will be available only to those who look for it on the BBC’s iPlayer service.

Sources say that the programme, already filmed, and entitled Saving Our Wild Isles, is being suppressed for fear of antagonising rightwing groups with “dinosaur ways”. Its showing, even on iPlayer, has already been attacked in the Daily Telegraph for being partly funded by WWF UK and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, two establishment wildlife groups, which it describes as having a “campaigning agenda”.

This is not the first time that the BBC…