Gillian Burke – Vice President

Gillian Burke is a natural history television programme producer, and has been a co-presenter of the BBC nature series Springwatch and its spin-offs since 2017.

She worked as a producer and director on several series for Animal Planet and the Discovery Channel, and as a voiceover artist, before becoming a regular presenter on Springwatch in 2017. As part of this role, she has also presented Autumnwatch and Winterwatch. In 2019, she hosted Nature’s Strangest Mysteries: Solved (Animal Planet), and in 2020 narrated Thailand’s Wild Side (National Geographic Channel).

Gillian was born in Kenya, and moved to Vienna aged ten. Her ancestry is Afro-Trinidadian, Seminole, Mauritian and Somalian; her mother was a journalist who worked with the United Nations. As a teenager, she developed an interest in wildlife through photography. She studied biology at Bristol University, and subsequently worked as a researcher for the BBC’s Natural History Unit. She now lives in Cornwall with her two children.

She is also an ambassador of the rainforest protection charity Cool Earth and a Vice President of the Wildlife Trusts.