By the time Quest Under Capricorn was completed, Attenborough felt that the series had run its course. The practice of catching wild animals for zoos had also begun to fall out of favour as zoos became more aware of their environmental impact. (Today London Zoo only captures animals in the wild if a species is so endangered that a captive breeding programme is its only hope.) Attenborough spent the next eight years as an administrator, rising to become Controller of Programming of both BBC 1 and 2, at the BBC before returning to full-time programme-making with Eastwards with Attenborough in 1973.
