ON-LINE NOAH’S ARK PROVIDES A HAVEN FOR THE LIFE’S WORK OF TV PIONEER, ERIC ASHBY 

The life’s work of one of the pioneers of natural history television is about to be given a new showcase before an international audience many million times greater than was even thinkable when his career began.

Eric Ashby - ‘the silent watcher’, who died on 6 February, aged 85 - revolutionised the way in which wildlife was shown on tv when his debut film The Unknown Forest was broadcast by the BBC in January 1961. For the first time, delighted viewers were given a programme which made no use of controlled settings; instead, it let them see how the badgers, deer and foxes near his secluded home in the New Forest really lived their lives.

The film’s success was such that it became a landmark in the history of the BBC’s Natural History Unit - an achievement soon repeated when Ashby worked on The Major (1963), the life story of a village tree, and the first BBC nature production to be shot in colour.

Now Ashby’s legacy is to be celebrated using technology undreamed of when he first started filming animals as a teenager almost 70 years ago. In a hand-written note, he has given consent for all his photographs and moving footage to be digitally copied and made globally accessible by ARKive - the innovative and internationally-acclaimed conservation website which will be launched by Sir David Attenborough this May.

Project Manager, Harriet Nimmo says: “Sir Peter Scott called Eric Ashby ‘the silent watcher’ and by all accounts he was the most shy and self-effacing man. But he was always interested in innovation - he began filming in the early 1930s when it was still quite rare for ordinary people to have the equipment; he was the first to capture British wildlife in natural settings, without lights; his debut film, The Unknown Forest, came as a revelation to television viewers and, with The Major, he broke yet more new ground by using colour film to shoot a nature television film.”

“Clearly, he retained his interest in new technology. He was well-informed about ARKive and its plans to harness the worldwide web to create a digital haven for endangered wildlife in images and sound. Even as his final illness was beginning, he was concerned to preserve the scenes of nature he was able to capture in such unique detail - he was determined to bequeath his extraordinary collection of photographs, films, notes and equipment in a way it could be shared by the world.”

ARKive’s researchers are only just starting to assess the full value of the gift but it has already produced one priceless contribution to the website - an on-line Noah’s Ark, holding multi-media profiles of British wildlife, and of the ‘red-listed’ global species most at risk of extinction in the wild.

Chief researcher, Richard Edwards, says: “On our very first dip into Mr Ashby’s material, we found a perfect picture of a red-backed shrike on its nest. It’s a species which was once found in the New Forest but sightings now are very rare and as far as we know it has been many years since any nested here. Certainly, we’ve encountered no other shot like this one. It’s a real treasure.”

The photograph will soon be added to the 5,000 stills and 40-plus hours of moving imagery which will make up the first generation of the ARKive project, and there are high hopes Eric Ashby’s bequest will contain further rarities as the research continues.