An independent broadcast on a connected graph $G$ is a function $f:V(G)\to \mathbb{N}_0$ such that, for every vertex $x$ of $G$, the value $f(x)$ is at most the eccentricity of $x$ in $G$, and $f(x)>0$ implies that $f(y)=0$ for every vertex $y$ of $G$ within distance at most $f(x)$ from $x$. The broadcast independence number $α_b(G)$ of $G$ is the largest weight $\sum\limits_{x\in V(G)}f(x)$ of an independent broadcast $f$ on $G$. It is known that $α(G)\leq α_b(G)\leq 4α(G)$ for every connected graph $G$, where $α(G)$ is the independence number of $G$. If $G$ has girth $g$ and minimum degree $δ$, we show that $α_b(G)\leq 2α(G)$ provided that $g\geq 6$ and $δ\geq 3$ or that $g\geq 4$ and $δ\geq 5$. Furthermore, we show that, for every positive integer $k$, there is a connected graph $G$ of girth at least $k$ and minimum degree at least $k$ such that $α_b(G)\geq 2\left(1-\frac{1}{k}\right)α(G)$. Our results imply that lower bounds on the girth and the minimum degree of a connected graph $G$ can lower the fraction $\frac{α_b(G)}{α(G)}$ from $4$ below $2$, but not any further.