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David Attenborough has just realised a life-long ambition by filming in the North Pole for the first time in his long and illustrious career with the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ's Natural History Unit.

The veteran broadcaster, who turns 84 this May, was filming for Frozen Planet, a landmark natural history series due to air on ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ One in late 2011. He narrates the seven-part series which follows the amazing cycle of the seasons to take the audience on the ultimate polar expedition to the last great wilderness on the planet – before the regions change forever.

David will present and author the final episode Meltdown, an environmental special, in which he looks at what the future might hold for the animals and people that live at the poles and what these changes might mean for the rest of us.

Speaking from the Svalbard archipelago, 700 miles from the North Pole, David said: "The poles – North and South – look superficially very similar, but when you visit them within a few weeks of one another, as I have just done, you realise how profoundly different they are – and how what is happening to them is going to affect the entire planet.

"A century ago, the poles were just about the most inaccessible place on earth. Today that has changed. Nonetheless, to have visited them both within a few weeks of one another is a huge privilege.

"Most of the programmes I have made over the past 50-odd years have been about the tropical parts of the world. Having seen what I've just seen – from penguins to polar bears, from the frozen ocean to snow-covered volcanoes – I can't imagine why I've left visiting these marvellous, astonishing and beautiful places until so late in my life."

The team that produced the multi-award winning Planet Earth and Blue Planet use the latest in filming technology to show the Arctic and Antarctic teeming with life – from the adelie penguin and killer whale in the south to the polar bear and wolf in the north – and the irreversible changes that are occurring to their habitat.

Frozen Planet is produced by the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ's award-winning Bristol-based Natural History Unit. The series producer is Vanessa Berlowitz and the executive producer is Alastair Fothergill.

BR/LS2