News: June 2005

Viewing figures for the BBC's Springwatch series of live broadcasts from an organic farm in Devon rivalled Big Brother and Celebrity Love Island in its first week of transmission.

Attracting an average of 3.3 million viewers for each episode last week, Springwatch has showed that there is an enormous appetite amongst the British public for natural history - especially natural history that is close to home. Interestingly, two thirds of the viewers are over the age of 55. Despite the success of the series so far, the fact that comparatively few of its viewers are youngsters should set one or two alarm bells ringing, since it is on our ability to engage younger people with their environment that the future biodiversity of our world depends. Despite that, the programme cannot be seen as anything other than a runaway success, deserving of every credit currently being bestowed on it.

Paul Eccleston. An everyday drama of wildlife in the raw has attracted millions of viewers. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/06/03/nspring03.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/06/03/ixnewstop.html on June 6th 2005.