David Attenborough’s refusal to step aside has probably harmed environmentalism.

Not because he’s bad at what he does. Quite the opposite. He became so dominant that nature broadcasting now revolves around a single elderly figure instead of developing new generations of advocates.

For decades, every major wildlife documentary, environmental campaign or mainstream nature series has defaulted back to Attenborough. The result is that younger naturalists, conservationists, biologists and presenters struggle to gain mainstream recognition because there’s never any room at the top of the genre. Broadcasters keep going back to the safest, most iconic option.

That creates a long-term problem for environmentalism itself.

Movements survive by constantly producing new voices that connect with different generations, cultures and audiences. Instead, environmental storytelling in the UK has basically become tied to one man in his 90s. That’s not healthy. It creates a kind of institutional dependency where nobody else is allowed to fully emerge as a trusted public figure in the space.

And before people say “well if someone was good enough they’d break through anyway”, media simply doesn’t work like that. Exposure matters. Institutional backing matters. Repeated prime-time visibility matters. Attenborough occupies a cultural space so large that it inevitably crowds others out.

He should have transitioned years ago into more of a mentor or occasional contributor role while actively helping cultivate successors. Instead we’ve ended up with environmental communication bottlenecked around a single personality.

That’s bad succession planning, and honestly, probably bad for the environmental movement overall.