'Silent watcher' leaves his wildlife archive to website

The stunning wildlife photographs and films of one of Britain's most remarkable naturalists are to be made available to millions of people through a new conservation website.

Eric Ashby, known as "the silent watcher", revolutionised the way in which wildlife was shown on television by filming animals such as deer, badgers and foxes in entirely natural settings near his home in the New Forest.

When his debut film The Unknown Forest was broadcast by the BBC in January 1961 it set a new benchmark for natural history broadcasts, and won lasting praise, as did a series of films that followed.

Mr Ashby died last week aged 85, but his legacy is to be celebrated using technology undreamt of when he first started filming animals as a teenager. Before his death he gave consent for all his photographs and moving footage to be digitally copied and made globally accessible by Arkive, a Bristol-based conservation website recording the images and sounds of threatened wildlife, which will be launched by Sir David Attenborough in May.

"Sir Peter Scott called Eric Ashby 'the silent watcher' and by all accounts he was the most shy and self-effacing man," said Harriet Nimmo, the Arkive project manager. "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, and he broke yet more new ground by using colour to shoot a nature television film. Clearly, he retained his interest in new technology – 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 researchers are only just starting to assess the full value of the gift but it has already produced one special contribution to the website, which has been described as an online Noah's Ark.

"On our very first dip into Mr Ashby's material, we found a perfect picture of a red-backed shrike on its nest," said Richard Edwards, the chief researcher. "It is 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 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 that Mr Ashby's bequest will contain further rarities as the research continues.

The Arkive website can be found at www.arkive.org.uk.