George Page, 71; Creator and Host of PBS Series ‘Nature’

George Page, 71, creator and host of the long-running PBS series “Nature,” died Wednesday from cancer at his home in Equinunk, Pa.

“Nature” debuted in 1982 and has consistently been one of public television’s highest-rated shows. The Emmy and Peabody Award-winning series will begin its 25th season this fall.

Page narrated every episode of “Nature,” nearly 300 overall, until retiring from television because of illness in 1998. He went on to write the book “Inside the Animal Mind,” which was made into a three-part series of the same name and broadcast on “Nature” in 2000.

“The world has lost a great storyteller,” Paula A. Kerger, president and chief executive officer of PBS, said in a statement. “George Page took his skills as a journalist and applied them to subjects that our society often overlooks: science, nature and the animal kingdom.”

Page was born in Hartwell, Ga., and graduated from Emory University. He worked for an NBC affiliate in Atlanta before joining NBC News, where he covered the Vietnam War.

He joined PBS in Washington in 1972 and was the director of science and natural history programming, supervising such shows as “Medicine at the Crossroads” and “The Brain.”