Wildlife presenter David Attenborough has realised a life-long ambition by reaching the North Pole for the first time, the BBC said yesterday.

The broadcaster, who turns 84 in May, was filming in the Arctic Circle for Frozen Planet, a natural history series due to air on BBC One in late 2011.

He narrates the seven-part series, which takes the audience on a polar expedition to "the last great wilderness on the planet – before the regions change forever".

Attenborough will present and author the final episode, looking at what the future might hold for the animals and people who live at the poles and what the effects of climate change there might mean for everyone else.

Speaking from the Svalbard archipelago, 700 miles from the North Pole, he said: "The poles, north and south, look superficially very similar but when you visit them within a few weeks of one another, as I have just done, you realise how profoundly different they are and how what is happening to them is going to affect the entire planet."

He said he did not know why he had never visited the poles before. "I can't imagine why I've left visiting these marvellous, astonishing and beautiful places until so late in my life."