How much time should be devoted to celebrating nature’s marvels, and how much to confronting their destruction by people? It’s a question that anyone who makes media about nature can struggle with, from an Instagrammer posting snapshots to the most acclaimed nature documentarian of all.

David Attenborough, whose voice and vision can be found on dozens of programs, including the BBC’s beloved Planet Earth and Blue Planet series, is credited with drawing extraordinary amounts of mainstream attention to the living world. He’s also been criticized for whitewashing nature’s precarious state by focusing on beauty while failing to explain why so many species and natural communities are threatened.