What I am interested in with birds, just as I am with spiders or monkeys, is what they do and why they do it.
The fundamental issue is the moral issue.
London has fine museums, the British Library is one of the greatest library institutions in the world... It's got everything you want, really.
I like animals. I like natural history. The travel bit is not the important bit. The travel bit is what you have to do in order to go and look at animals.
The process of making natural history films is to try to prevent the animal knowing you are there, so you get glimpses of a non-human world, and that is a transporting thing.
Being in touch with the natural world is crucial.
The whole of science, and one is tempted to think the whole of the life of any thinking man, is trying to come to terms with the relationship between yourself and the natural world. Why are you here, and how do you fit in, and what's it all about.
An understanding of the natural world and what's in it is a source of not only a great curiosity but great fulfillment.
As far as I'm concerned, if there is a supreme being then He chose organic evolution as a way of bringing into existence the natural world... which doesn't seem to me to be necessarily blasphemous at all.
Before the BBC, I joined the Navy in order to travel.
I've been to Nepal, but I'd like to go to Tibet. It must be a wonderful place to go. I don't think there's anything there, but it would be a nice place to visit.
There is no question that climate change is happening; the only arguable point is what part humans are playing in it.
People talk about doom-laden scenarios happening in the future: they are happening in Africa now. You can see it perfectly clearly. Periodic famines are due to too many people living on land that can't sustain them.
We are a plague on the Earth.
I'd like to see the giant squid. Nobody has ever seen one. I could tell you people who have spent thousands and thousands of pounds trying to see giant squid. I mean, we know they exist because we have seen dead ones. But I have never seen a living one. Nor has anybody else.
I often get letters, quite frequently, from people who say how they like the programmes a lot, but I never give credit to the almighty power that created nature.
Many individuals are doing what they can. But real success can only come if there is a change in our societies and in our economics and in our politics.
It was regarded as a responsibility of the BBC to provide programs which have a broad spectrum of interest, and if there was a hole in that spectrum, then the BBC would fill it.
You know, it is a terrible thing to appear on television, because people think that you actually know what you're talking about.
I just wish the world was twice as big and half of it was still unexplored.