This is taken from The Guardian:

Dilys Breese
Television and radio producer renowned for her work at the BBC Natural History Unit in Bristol
by Barry Paine
Wednesday October 17, 2007

Dilys Breese, who has died of cancer aged 75, became a well-known figure in radio and television, especially through her work with the BBC Natural History Unit in Bristol. With her passion for broadcasting, in particular for radio, she was dedicated to the pursuit of excellence, which is what she believed the BBC was all about.

Dilys was born in Abergavenny, Monmouthshire, the daughter of a Presbyterian minister. After matriculating from Oswestry girls' high school in 1950, she went up to St Andrews University, where she read English language and literature. In 1954 she graduated with a MA. From university she applied to the BBC for training as a studio manager. By the time I followed a similar path to London in 1961, Dilys was a very experienced studio manager there. We both worked on shows such as Housewives' Choice with Richard Murdoch, the Jimmy Young Show, Roundabout with Nigel Anthony and the last of the live dramas for children produced by David Davis.

By 1963, we were both with the BBC in Bristol, being allowed to try out our fledgling DJ voices on Records from the Rack. We could broadcast almost anything we liked. But few people were listening to the BBC West Region Home Service while The Archers was on the Light Programme at the same time.

Dilys had gone to Bristol to try her hand at producing Round Up, the evening regional radio news magazine. This was introduced by broadcaster Derek Jones, and it was the start of a long producer/presenter partnership. Dilys also became, for a time, a general radio reporter on Good Morning Wales, Woman's Hour, Home This Afternoon and Today in the South and West, the latter a show she compered in 1968.

Her personal enthusiasm for natural history inevitably drew her to wildlife broadcasting, and by 1970 she was producing nearly all Bristol's radio output in that field. She built an audience for the successful 52-week series The Living World (1968). These varied programmes firmly established the popular radio nature trail, which takes listeners on to a seashore, moorland or mountain, broadcasting the sounds of such locations and the kind of informed conversation still enjoyed today. Then came Wildlife (1975), a studio programme, which answered listeners' wildlife questions.

Through all these radio shows, presented by Jones, Dilys brought new voices to the microphone from the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, the British Trust for Ornithology (BTO), the many county wildlife trusts, as well as academic scientists and popular naturalists. Dilys often worked all night meticulously editing the tapes. She would then drive her MGB-GT from BBC Bristol to her home in Chepstow to feed her cats and then on to Broadcasting House, London, to deliver the programme tape in time for transmission.

To some her move into wildlife television production was a surprise. In 1977, when still new to the medium, she was a director on In Deepest Britain, a series of experimental film programmes. Each was an unrehearsed country walk presented by Jones with guest naturalists, each was photographed in one day in unidentified corners of the countryside by two or three camera crews, all of them hoping for something to happen.

By the 1980s Dilys was a fully fledged producer with some outstanding programmes to her credit for Wildlife on One, The Natural World and other strands. Her Nightlife (1983) was the first BBC wildlife film recorded in stereo sound. The award-winning Meerkats United (1987), which she executive-produced with producer-writer Marion Zunz and cameraman-director Richard Goss, was a special pride. As was Trivial Pursuit: the Natural Mystery of Play (1988), with its huge audience of 12 million, and The Great Hedgehog Mystery (1982), which was the first film to show hedgehogs mating. She also wrote a book, Everything You Wanted to Know About Hedgehogs, and another about otters in the same series.

In 1983, Dilys was awarded the BTO's Golden Jubilee medal. She was its first recipient, recognised for her outstanding service since first becoming a council member in 1973.

She saw a need to break down barriers between professional and amateur scientists, playing a key role in the setting up of the Turnstone Fund, which helps amateurs to write up and publish ornithological observations in a professional way. Her work with the BTO included being its honorary secretary from 1998 to 2001. She then chaired a working group overseeing the development of Garden BirdWatch, which has since become the largest year-round citizen science project in the world.

By 1991 the BBC had changed and Dilys was edged into an unwanted early retirement. Although regarding herself as dumped, she gathered the courage to create Kestrel Productions, her own company. In 1995, The Advance of the Armadillo was shown on Wildlife on One, but she produced little else. She missed her broadcasting years, particularly in television. In 1996 and 1997, she made short programmes about animal life for the BBC World Service, but ill health prevented her from pursuing that path.

Dilys could never be thought of as retired. In the grounds of her cottage at West Kington, Wiltshire, she established a wildlife-friendly pond and a small woodland within which badgers established a sett. Similarly, she successfully campaigned for a nature reserve among the trees and bushes in a corner of the village churchyard where she has been buried. She was an active participant in parish life, and there are many in broadcasting who will remember Dilys for her friendly advice and support, particularly of women trying to make their way in a male-dominated world and young would-be producers.

A marriage ended in divorce.

· Dilys Viola Breese, broadcaster, born June 2 1932; died August 22 2007