BBC - Extinction: The Facts

Sir David Attenborough: Our planet is home

to a seemingly infinite ‫variety of species...

From ocean giants...

To the tiniest insects.

We call this abundance of life biodiversity.

But today it's vanishing

at rates never seen before in human history.

[Men shouting in native language]

News anchor: A U.N. Panel of experts has found

that one million animal and plant species

face extinction.

It is worse than expected.

This is happening much faster than we have ever seen before.

Today we are the asteroid

that's causing many, many species to go extinct

simultaneously.

Attenborough: The evidence is that unless immediate action

is taken, this crisis has grave impacts for US all.

We're not just losing nice things to look at.

We're losing critical parts of earth's system.

And it's threatening our food,

our water, our climate.

This year has shown US we've gone one step too far.

Attenborough: Scientists have even linked

our destructive relationship with nature

to the emergence of COVID-19.

We're encroaching further and further

every day into wildlife habitat,

and that drives emerging diseases.

If we carry on like this,

we will see more epidemics

as bad as this, and some of them could even be worse.

Attenborough: The decisions made

as we rebuild our economies are critical.

Get it wrong, and we

will be in deeply dangerous territory.

Get it right, and we still have the ability

to pull back and rein in the collapse of biodiversity.

We have a moment

when we can change our world

and make it better.

This is that moment.

Over the course of my life, I've encountered

some of the world's most remarkable species of animals.

Only now do I realize just how lucky I've been.

Many of these wonders seem set

to disappear forever.

We're facing a crisis

and one that has consequences for US all.

It threatens our ability to feed ourselves,

to control our climate.

It even puts US at greater risk of pandemic diseases

such as COVID-19.

It's never been more important for US to understand

the effects of biodiversity loss,

of how it is that we ourselves

are responsible for it.

Only if we do that will we have any hope

of averting disaster.

In 2019,

the United Nations asked over 500 scientists

to investigate the current state of the natural world.

This is the first time there's been a global assessment

where all the evidence has been pulled together,

thousands and thousands of papers.

We're losing biodiversity at a rate

that is truly unprecedented in human history.

Willis: All groups

in the natural world are in decline,

which means their populations are getting smaller day by day.

Since 1970,

vertebrate animals... Things like birds,

mammals, amphibians, and reptiles...

Have declined by 60% in total.

Large mammals have on average disappeared

from 3/4 of the range where they were historically found.

What's different is that it's happening simultaneously

in the Amazon, in Africa, in the arctic.

It's happening not at one place

and not with one group of organisms,

but with all biodiversity everywhere on the planet.

Watson: It means that one million species

out of 8 million species on earth

are now threatened with extinction...

500,000 plants and animals

and 500,000 insects.

Willis: Extinction is a natural process.

Things come, they grow, their populations get huge,

and then they decline, but it's the rate of extinction.

That's the problem,

so when you look at previous groups in fossil records,

then it's over millions of years, they go extinct.

Here, we're looking at tens of years.

Attenborough: Since 1500,

570 plant species

and 700 animal species

have gone extinct.

Studies suggest that extinction is

now happening a hundred times faster

than the natural evolutionary rate,

and it's accelerating.

Willis: Globally, there was a shock

because you hadn't pulled all that data together,

that people hadn't realized that we have

a very serious crisis on our hands.

Many people think of extinction being

this imaginary... tale

told by conservationists,

but I have lived it.

I know what it is.

I am caretaker of the northern white rhinos.

We only have two left on the planet.

They are mother and daughter.

Good girl.

This is najin,

the mother, who is 30 years old.

She's very quiet.

And her daughter is fatou.

This is fatou. Hey, come on.

Hey, fatou. Fatou, now, come on.

She is 19 years old. Stop it.

She... pretty much like a human teenager.

She's a little bit unpredictable

and can be feisty sometimes,

especially when she wants something.

Attenborough: Northern white rhinos were once found

in their thousands in central Africa,

but were pushed to the brink of extinction

by habitat loss and hunting.

By 1990,

just 7 known individuals survived.

I have seen these beautiful rhinos

count from 7 down to 2.

Mwenda: They are here because we've betrayed them.

And I think they feel it,

this threatening tide of extinction

that is pushing on them.

They feel their world is collapsing.

Unless science saves them,

when najin passes away,

she will leave the daughter,

fatou, alone forever...

The last northern white rhino.

And their plight awaits one million more species.

Hadly: Once we lose these species,

we do not have hope

of accumulating them back

on a timescale that we exist on.

Attenborough: Unique animals with complex and varied lives

disappearing from our planet forever

isn't just disturbing, it's deeply tragic,

but this is about more than losing the wonders of nature.

The consequences of these losses for US as a species

are far-reaching and profound.

Willis: What we now know about the natural world

is that everything is joined up...

From a single pond to the whole tropical rainforest.

All of biodiversity is interlocked

on a global scale, and all parts of that system

are required to make it function.

We tend to think that we're somehow outside of that system,

but we are part of it,

and we are totally reliant upon it.

Watson: The problem is we're now changing

those ecological systems on a massive scale

right across the globe...

And its threatening food and water security.

We're losing many of the things that nature provides for US.

Watson: One of the big threats is the loss of insects.

We've estimated 10% are at risk of extinction.

Other scientists believe the number could be much larger.

Hadly: Driving around, we don't have moths,

butterflies, bees,

all sorts of insects in our windshield anymore.

And that is scary

because they form the food chain

for hundreds of thousands of other species,

and they are extremely important for pollination.

Attenborough: Three-quarters of the world's food crops

rely partly on pollination by insects

to produce the food that we need.

Another threat is

the loss of diversity below ground.

Soil should be teeming with life,

but reports have suggested that up to 30%

of the land's surface globally has been degraded

and has soils of low biodiversity.

One of the most important things that animals

in the soil do is break down organic matter...

Which can then be used for plant growth...

So if we lose diversity of the soil,

the consequences of that can be catastrophic.

Watson: We're seeing already that, due to soil degradation

and changes in the earth's climate,

food production in some parts of the world is going down.

Unfortunately, the most affected

would be poor people in developing countries,

but there's no question everybody in the world,

one way or another, is being affected

by the loss of biodiversity.