Fergus Michael Edmund Beeley is an English wildlife conservationist and filmmaker. He is best known for his work producing films for BBCNatural World, including "White Falcon, White Wolf"; "The Eagle Has Landed"; "Return of the Eagle Owl"; "Spectacled Bears: Shadows of the Forest" and Planet Earth – The Future. He joined the BBC Natural History Unit in 1990 and spent over 12 years producing award-winning series, including Planet Earth – The Future and The Life of Birds in collaboration with David Attenborough.
Fergus joined the BBC Natural History Unit in 1990 and has spent his career specialising in natural history programmes for television. This includes producing the award-winning , The Life of Birds and PBS Nature: "Jungle Eagle". A month before Fergus was due to depart to Ellesmere Island for filming of the documentary "White Falcon, White Wolf", he fell whilst filming high up in the Andes and was flown back to the UK by air ambulance for surgery on a broken ankle. This meant he could not be on location with the crew for filming and had to assist via GPS and edit from his hospital bed. In 2009 Fergus spent a year in the rural Scottish Highlands on Beinn Eighe and neighbouring Loch Maree, filming the documentary "A Highland Haven".
Schnee-Eulen - Schwingen über der Arktis – writer and producer
Conservation
Fergus has created a community conservation project called the BLUE Campaign, which encourages anyone with access to a green space to give a piece back to nature, helping to develop a connection to nature and promote biodiversity in their area. The scheme was piloted in Chipping Sodbury in 2017 and will be rolled out nationwide in 2019. He is a fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society and patron of Flamingo Conservation Rift Valley. Fergus was executive director for a company called Fountain Digital Labs, which developed a children's wildlife entertainment app called Virry, which won a Webby Award in 2015 and a BAFTA for best interactive children's original app.
Author
In 2006 Fergus co-authored Planet Earth: The Future – What the Experts Say in conjunction with Rosalind Kidman Cox and Jonathan Porritt. It was published by BBC Books on 5 October 2006. In 2010 he co-authored a paper in The Wilson Journal of Ornithology entitled "Hatching Synchrony, Green Branch Collecting, and Prey Use by Nesting Harpy Eagles " regarding the observation of an occupied harpy eagle nest over three separate periods in eastern Venezuela. In 2018 he co-authored in conjunction with author An allegorical historical fiction novella taking place in 1940s United Arab Emirates that strongly features falconry.
Road rage incident
On 22 July 2017, Fergus was involved in a confrontation in a car park of a service station off the M27 motorway. The confrontation apparently resulted from an earlier incident on the motorway. During the encounter, Fergus was filmed threatening a family with a citizen's arrest and shouting "I want you dead!" repeatedly. Footage of the incident circulated widely over social media and was reported by numerous news outlets.
