Chris Packham is very proud that ‘The Really Wild Show’ inspired a generation of kids to become conservationists and work in jobs helping the environment.
The BBC wildlife programme ran each year from January 1986 until May 2006 and was hosted by Packham and the late Terry Nutkins whilst Packham’s ‘Springwatch’ co-host Michaela Strachan joined in 1993 and stayed on the series until it ended.
There have been talks about resurrecting the popular show and Packham, 56, is delighted that people want it to come back and he says he is forever approached by fans who tell him that it was his animal adventures on TV that made them want to devote their lives to helping animals.
Speaking to BANG Showbiz about the launch of a special one-off programme called ‘The Kiwi Wild Show’, Packham said: "The greatest thing about ‘The Really Wild Show’ is that it was imaginative, innovative, educational and entertaining. It ticked all those boxes and as a consequence it was very, very popular and the legacy that it has is that it seemed to inspire lots of young people to go into careers to do with the environment, conservation and natural history which is very reassuring."
Strachan, 51, hopes ‘The Really Wild Show’ will come back but thinks if it does return to CBBC it will need to be a snappy magazine-style series which focuses on lots of different creatures and conservation efforts.
The blond beauty believes that format would allow the presenters to cover lots of important wildlife stories which would not necessarily get featured on longer documentaries.
She said: "If ‘The Really Wild Show’ comes back as a children’s show then it would need kids involved, to reach that audience. Also, there’s so much going on with wildlife all over the world that it would be good to have a show that had snippets of wildlife news. It can be very difficult to get a whole hour’s special commissioned on one particular problem or a particular animal, but if you had a magazine show where you could six minute segments and give people little snippets of what’s going on would be great."
Packham and Strachan teamed up with Old Mout to create ‘The Kiwi Wild Show’ which aims to save the endangered bird.
Kiwis – which are flightless birds native to New Zealand – have seen their numbers decline by 99 per cent over the past 80 years, with just 50,000 remaining in the wild and the two conservationists jumped at the chance to help with the programme when approached by the cider brand because the efforts to save the species are really working.
Strachan said: "Old Moot approached us and wanted us to help the kiwis and help with conservation. Chris and I find this exciting because this is a project to help an animal that’s numbers have dropped significantly in the last generation from 5 million to 50,000 and it’s an animal that will become extinct unless our generation does something about it and it’s a conservation project that’s actually helping. There are some animals where our conservation efforts cannot help it and they will become extinct but this is an animal we are helping and it’s working. What’s being done is that they’re taking eggs from the wild, they’re incubating them and then hand rearing the birds before releasing them into the wild and that’s increasing the chances of the birds surviving into adulthood from 1/20 to 13/20 so that means it’s something that’s making a real difference."
Visit YouTube to watch ‘The Kiwi Wild Show’.
Chris Packham is proud The Really Wild Show inspired a generation
