All language subtitles for Planet Earth The Future - 1x01 - Episode 1.HDTV.BiA.en

NARRATOR: There have been
few natural history films like it.

Planet Earth.

What a world we live in.

And what an experience
it must have been to film it.

So why have the production team
come away with mixed emotions?

Filming Planet Earth
has been a wonderful experience

because we've been able to visit
an extraordinary range of our planet, really,

and it's been something of
a bittersweet experience

because, yes, we have seen
some very threatened animals, you know,

and that's always sad to see,

but at the same time we've met some wonderful
impassioned individuals

who are doing a great deal on the ground

to improve the situation
for those particular species.

And also, you realise that there is
an enormous amount of wilderness still out there.

NARRATOR: But for how long?

Will those impassioned individuals
that Alastair met be enough to save

what remains of the world's threatened
wildernesses and their animals and plants?

How much will it matter to us if they are lost?

What can we really do to save them?

And in this new millennium,
are we still going about it the right way?

In this series,
we'll put such questions to the decision-makers

and conservationists on the ground.

We'll demonstrate
that the environmental debate today

has never been more important.

We have to make hard judgements

about what investments will yield
the biggest returns for conservation.

And that means we make choices about
what species to invest in,

and about what strategies
make the most difference.

NARRATOR: Is it right that those strategies
are usually drawn up by Westerners with money?

I don't think that the conservation organisations,
the giants of conservation,

know better than the people
who, historically, have been staying with wildlife.

NARRATOR: We'll use footage from Planet Earth

to look at some of
the world's most important wild places

and what's been happening to them.

The situation in the Asian region in particular
is extremely serious.

Nearly all of the natural rainforest has gone
from several countries now,

Thailand and the Philippines,
and what remains in the big blocks,

for example, in the Indonesian islands
and New Guinea is now under serious threat,

not least because of the huge consumption boom
that's going on in China.

NARRATOR: We might know in our bones
that that matters, but why?

What, if anything,
does wilderness actually do for us?

We're getting a better understanding today

of how there are some basic life-supporting
services that the planet provides.

Fresh water is a classic example of that.

That if we don't put effort into conservation,

we're not going to only make our lives worse,
but it's also going to impact wildlife.

NARRATOR: Is this radically new understanding
enough to make us all think again?

And why are the world's religions
suddenly getting involved?

Wilderness always speaks to human beings
of transcendence in the widest possible sense.

It says,
"You as a human being are part of a system

"which is not just about
your needs and your concerns.

"Like it or not, you're part of
something immense and very mysterious."

NARRATOR: Immense,
mysterious and disappearing.

Disappearing as human society expands, develops.

But surely an aware society
can learn to live sustainably.

The term "sustainable development"
is a contradiction in terms.

We can have no kind of development.
We've gone much too far.

What we need is a sustainable retreat
from the mess that we're now in.

Who's really going to go out there
and pretend there isn't going to be development

in human societies?

Development in our own evolution as a species.

Development in the way we help poor people
to live better, more dignified lives.

What kind of world is it
in which there's going to be no development?

Everything stops right now.

If you want to use
these mountainous forests, for example,

for the plantations to produce paper,

or to produce building materials, you can.

But you do that
at the risk of not having rivers flow,

and not having rainfall.

It seems to me that the issue of conservation
of the natural world

is something which can unite humanity
if people know enough about it.

Persuade them to change
the way in which they behave,

to change the view that gross materialism
and the search of material wealth

is not the only thing in life.

This is an opportunity for greatness
which has never been offered to any civilisation,

any generation in any civilisation
in human history before.

To act as a generation to do the right thing.

If we fail to receive that opportunity, to act on it,
then my feeling is

we will become the most vilified generation
that's ever lived in human history.

NARRATOR: Saving wilderness,
saving ecosystems, saving the planet,

saving humanity, for that matter,
all have to start somewhere.

And one of the first, and saddest things

that struck the crews
who filmed these particular animals

was that so many of them were threatened.

Our series begins with those animals

and with what's being done to try and save them.

ATTENBOROUGH: The Amur leopard,
the rarest cat in the world.

NARRATOR: The Amur leopard is rare all right.

So rare, so highly endangered,

that the Planet Earth crew
filming in the Russian Far East

may turn out to have been
the last humans ever to see a wild one.

They were shocked by the rarity
of many species that they filmed for the series,

not just Amur leopards.

I just felt amazingly excited, incredibly privileged.

You know, you're aware that
very few people in the world have seen this cat

and there's a risk that not many people
will see one in the future.

Here in this wilderness

you have this group of animals,
these wild Bactrian camels,

and I would say
that 99% of the world's population

don't know these animals exist.

And yet they're one of the most endangered
large mammals on our planet.

We've been filming here for six weeks
and we've got some remarkable footage,

but anyone would have thought
that this was a Shangri-la.

But sadly, that's not the case.

Several times during the trip,
and the trip has been about six weeks,

we've been woken in the middle of the night
by gunshots.

I've lost count of the number of times
I've visited a field station

and worked with a scientist who says,
"Oh! I don't understand it."

You know, "This place always yields
this amphibian, that amphibian.

"It's the first time ever we can't find them."

And the overall sense
is that amphibians are really, really collapsing.

I think we are faced probably with the extinction
of at least half the world's frogs.

NARRATOR: Down beneath these clouds
something drastic is happening.

This planet is unique in its solar system
in supporting life,

complicated life, animals.

But a lot of those animals
are now in danger of dying out.

We have perhaps one in four mammals now
on the threatened list,

we have one third of all amphibians
on the threatened list.

So we know that we are progressively pushing
more and more species to the edge of extinction.

We have lost half of the world's forests,
half of the world's wetlands,

half of the world's grasslands.

We are systematically eradicating
many of the habitats

that make up the world's ecosystems.

If you just lose one species,
it's probably not going to have a big impact.

At least nothing that you and I will recognise.

But if we continue to lose loads and loads
and loads and loads of species,

what we're actually saying is that
the underlying fabric of nature is tearing.

And that tearing of that underlying fabric
will have huge repercussions

for the well-being of people
who live within that environment.

Of course, scientists often spend
a lot of their careers in one place,

gaining immense detail.

As filmmakers we tend to travel the world,

we just nip in for a week and nip out for a week.

But that does mean we get great overviews

and one of the senses you definitely get
as you travel the world

is that amphibians are in collapse.

NARRATOR: Frogs were an important part
ofPlanet Earth's Jungles programme,

and the crew travelled extensively to film them.

ATTENBOROUGH: I've just come back
from Central America.

In one small area in Panama
there were over 50 different species of frogs.

And they are very vulnerable

because they are able to absorb substances
through their skins, their moist skins,

and thus are easily infected by fungi.

And there' s a fungus moving up Panama

which by next year will certainly have killed
another two species.

NARRATOR: Frogs are becoming extinct
throughout Central America,

but what significance does that have?

What do the inhabitants of Costa Rica think?

The loss of a species should be
a sad thing for everyone.

We already lost

a very emblematic frog of Monteverde,
the golden toad.

And that was the only place on Earth
that it existed.

And it was a symbol of that forest, Cloud Forest.
It's lost and it's lost forever.

NARRATOR: The golden toad, like
so many other species that have become extinct,

were hit by the fungus.

So what is it? Has it always been around?

There' s been a lot of forensic work, obviously,
to say, "Well, where has the fungus come from? "

And it's now been traced back
to the African clawed toad.

And it looks as if toads from South Africa
were exported in the 1930s

in very large numbers to hospitals
in the Western world

because they're used as a biological indicator
of human pregnancy.

And then presumably some have escaped,

and once the fungus
has got into the water systems,

we're now still seeing
the effects of its spread worldwide.

Whole frog communities are crashing,

and on a global scale, out of something like
6,000 frog species altogether,

now nearly one third are classified as endangered.

NARRATOR: In another forest,
in a very remote part of Africa's Congo basin,

the Planet Earth team filmed forest elephants.

Which are a little smaller
than the better-known Savannah elephants,

are less exposed and are presumably
less likely to be killed for their tusks.

Cameraman Martyn Colbeck found
that remoteness and vast, dense forest cover

made almost no difference to the elephants'
and other animals' vulnerability.

You go to these wonderful places
on series like this,

and it's always really sad and disappointing,
you know, when you go to a place like this.

An extraordinary place,
you see extraordinary animals,

and you know that there are people out there
shooting game for bush meat

and if they came across elephants,

they'd be poaching elephants as well
for their ivory.

There's no doubt that if poaching
becomes a serious problem,

I mean, it can quickly wipe out a population.

I mean, we've seen that happen
in remarkably short time frames.

Countries that had great elephant populations
decade or two decades ago,

almost completely wiped out 20 years later.

So, you know, poaching is not necessarily
something that happens on the fringe.

If poachers move in and they're organised

and it's for an external market
rather than an immediate consumptive market,

it can wipe out a population.

Last year we got 70 guns.

Six years ago, for example,
we confiscated about ten.

So, that's about a 700% increase.

The same with the snares here.
I mean, this is about 250 snares.

Last year, we confiscated 70,000.

And if you look at the devastation
these snares cause in the forest...

I mean, they don't just get to
the little blue duikers,

or the medium-sized red duikers
that they're intended for,

they get leopards, they get gorillas,
and chimpanzees.

Often you see chimpanzees
walking around without hands,

and those are the lucky ones.

Because that means that the hand
just developed gangrene and fell off,

whereas the others developed septicaemia
from the infection and they die.

NARRATOR: It isn'tjust barely-accessible deep
forest that poachers have managed to penetrate.

In other parts of Africa
there are other kinds of inaccessibility.

Among the towering cliffs, peaks and ridges
of Ethiopia 's Simien Highlands,

the so-called Roof of Africa,
the filmmakers also found problems.

Walia ibex, Ethiopia 's national symbol.

They can exist in these precarious places,
and they do.

But that's mainly because they have to.

The cliffs are something like a kilometre high
and they're almost sheer,

and that's where the walia ibex live.

And to see them in this enormous distance,
way, way off there

on these sheer cliffs is truly spectacular.

I tried to film them years and years ago for
another series and they proved just too difficult.

The walia ibex were much wider spread
at one time throughout the mountains of Ethiopia

and are related to the ibexes of Europe.

But as humans have spread through Ethiopia
and the environment has dried out,

the walia ibex has been pushed into
the most marginal habitats it can find

and some of the last remaining places
that humans can't get to

are these incredible sheer cliffs.

And it's only just been with
a lot of warfare in the last century in Ethiopia,

the Italian invasion and then a big civil war,

that the walia ibex
became favourite food for soldiers.

The Simien mountains saw a huge amount
of fighting through the 1 970s and 1 980s

and in that period the easiest food
for a very cold soldier

would have been to take a shot
at one of the walia ibex.

And so we saw the numbers decimated.

The one thing the walia has going for it
is the habitat that it lives in,

which is these sheer, sheer cliffs.

There's very few animals in the world
that could live on precipices like the walia.

And so it has a little niche that it can cling to,

but it's such a fragile situation.

I mean, 600 animals for a large mammal
is just nothing.

And when you have no other habitats
to spread into,

no other populations to interbreed with,
no walia ibex in captivity,

you'd better be sure that you can protect
that one last piece of cliff that they have.

NARRATOR: When you're trying to save
a species from extinction,

one of the first things you have to know
is how close to extinction the species is,

how many animals are actually left.

In the case of the high-profile walia ibex,
counting is easy,

and its would-be conservers
know exactly what the problem is.

But in other mountains on another continent,

in the case of a species
that's distinctly low-profile, it's not so easy.

Pakistan. The Himalayas.

This.

ATTENBOROUGH: The snow leopard,
the rarest of Himalayan animals.

NARRATOR: The Planet Earth team spent months
just trying to glimpse a snow leopard,

and more months to film one.

How do you conserve a creature
that you're lucky even to see?

How do these scientists,
or how do these conservationists,

know where this animal is,
how many they are and what their behaviour is?

Someone told me that there were 3,000
between China and Afghanistan.

Now, I mean, we've had a very tough time
identifying three.

There is a threat to its existence
simply because not enough is known about it.

We really don't know where it thrives.

Because it's isolated,
you expect that a lot of wildlife is there.

How much of it and what are the elements
affecting it are unknown.

I was up there for two years, never saw one.

Following snow leopard tracks into the snow,

and you'd come back in the evening
and the snow leopard tracks were on top of ours.

So they were following us.

For such an elusive creature,
what could possibly threaten it?

Mostly, it's poaching.

It's mostly snares and people
who are trapping the snow leopards

either to provide their furs to Lhasa

or to other parts of the world
that can still use snow leopard skins,

or from shepherds
who are trying to protect their flocks.

MALIK: There isn't enough research.
It's brand-new almost.

It needs a lot more time and effort
because the terrain that you're dealing with

is anywhere between
1 0,000 feet to about 1 8,000 feet

and access to those places is almost impossible,
especially in winters.

NARRATOR: But even such a secretive animal
in such a forbidding terrain

can't entirely avoid poachers.

Everywhere the Planet Earth team filmed,
poaching was going on.

In one case, a new threat appeared
while they were filming.

ATTENBOROUGH: The Amazon is so large
and rich in fish

that it can support freshwater dolphins.

These botoes are huge,
two and a half metres long.

We thought these animals were almost immortal.
They seemed to be going on forever and ever.

Every time we went out, we marked animals,

and those animals were seen
day after day, week after week, year after year.

And just in the last few years,
we've suddenly noticed

that animals which were being seen very regularly,
have suddenly disappeared.

They're being killed
because there's a new fishery for a type of catfish

which hasn't been eaten
in the Brazilian Amazon historically,

but now that a market has opened up
in Colombia...

And this catfish eats dead meat.

We've actually found three of our marked animals

which have definitely been killed
for this bait fishery.

I think the population
is almost certainly declining now.

I'm a biologist and I try to be
as dispassionate as I can

but the fact is
you do get to know them very intimately.

Last week I saw one give birth,
only for the second time in my life.

And, of course, that stirs real emotions inside you.

This is a new life being created
and at the same time,

a few kilometres away
there are people taking those same lives.

The fact is that humans
and river dolphins don't mix.

They're all after the same resource,
water and fish really.

It's inevitable that the dolphins come off worst.

NARRATOR: New reasons for poaching
are only part of an array of new threats,

many arising only in the past few years.

In the high Arctic,

the Planet Earth team saw polar bears
behaving in ways they'd never seen before.

Get your eye behind the viewfinder,
the adrenaline starts rushing,

you know you're recording something so unusual,

something so amazing that
really very few people have ever seen before,

but you have to focus.

It's very rare to see a bear go after walruses

and to actually physically jump on them
and attack them, stalk them, to hunt them.

NARRATOR: Ten years ago,

at the same time ofyear and at the same latitude,

this, as filmed in a BBC wildlife special,
was what polar bears were doing.

The sea was frozen and the bears were hunting
less intimidating prey.

Not enormous walruses
in defensive herds on dry land,

but manageably small ringed seals out on the ice.

We are rapidly losing ice cover.
It is happening as we speak.

The ice cap is getting thinner
and its extent is greatly reduced,

and it is that ice cap
which is the home of the polar bear.

And so they are finding that the places
they are accustomed to breeding

and the places they are accustomed to hunting
are disappearing.

There' s no doubt that people in Svalbard
can see the ice breaking up.

They can see the glaciers retreating.

And that's a real, real problem for polar bears.

Polar bears are in deep trouble
and there is lots of research to show that.

And there are two possibilities.

One, they go extinct
as they try desperately to find ice,

or they may go further south
and come onto firm land.

And, of course,
their habits will have to change greatly.

Maybe they will evolve to do that.

But it's got a very short time in which to do this.

If the projections that the polar ice cap
will have disappeared within 50 years,

we are expecting an awful lot
in the way of habitat change,

annual movement change, feeding habits,
hunting techniques of a bear,

and I think it's going to be very interesting
to see if it can do that.

McNEELY: The estimates that we have
is that we might lose 35% of them

over the next 50 years.

And as that population starts to go down
and their prey species move further out,

it's going to be a real tough adaptation
for the polar bear.

NARRATOR: So the planet's changing.
But hasn't the planet changed before?

And haven't species
always had to change with it or die out?

Species after species of animal
have been going extinct,

but the crisis that we face now

is that the rate of extinction is accelerating,

and that it will really reach biblical proportions
within a few decades.

We now face an extinction episode on this planet

comparable to that which marked the end
of the dinosaurs about 65 million years ago.

Largely driven by habitat change, driven by
the release of pollution into the environment,

by global warming.

All these things are combining
in a series of forces

that's likely to lead,
if we don't take action very soon,

to the extinction of a large proportion
of this Earth 's wildlife species.

SANJAYAN: When it comes to species extinction,
we are able, through extraordinary means,

to sometimes save the last of the last.

But they will never, never inhabit the range
that they once inhabited.

So extinction itself is an issue that
we might be able to, to some extent, deal with.

What we're not going to be able to deal with
is the massive decline in populations of animals.

NARRATOR: The Planet Earth team
experienced such a population crash.

Fifteen years ago, saiga antelope
were filmed in their millions

on the central Asian steppes
for another BBC series.

Cameraman Martyn Colbeck
remembers that occasion

and the magnificence of the spectacle
that he saw through the lens.

We came up to the top
of this slight rise, and as we came over the top

there was literally just a brown band
from horizon to horizon.

They were a long way off
and it was very heat hazy,

but it was literally a band from horizon to horizon.

NARRATOR: The Planet Earth team
wanted to film it again.

This was one of nature's mass migrations.

But to their horror, the spectacle had gone.

In the past 1 5 years, poachers in central Asia

have reduced this huge population
to nearly nothing.

No more spectacle.

In the 1 980s and the early 1 990s
there were about a million saigas

and then the break-up of Soviet Union happened

and there was the collapse in the rural economy

and people had no sort of food or income
and they started to hunt the saigas.

And for the first time in 70 years,
the border with China had opened

and the saiga antelopes' horns
that the males have

are used in traditional Chinese medicine,
and they're very valuable.

And obviously there was this massive market
just waiting there.

And so there was also commercial hunting as well.

And within two or three years,
at the end of the 1 990s,

the saiga population had collapsed.

COLBECK: You just never imagine that it's possible
for all those animals to suddenly disappear.

And they now realistically face
the possibility of extinction.

NARRATOR:
So for their spectacular migration shots,

the team had to go east,
into a complete wilderness area.

ATTENBOROUGH: In the distant reaches
of outer Mongolia

one of the planet's great migrations is underway.

Few people ever see
this extraordinary annual event.

Mongolian gazelle.
Two million are thought to live here.

NARRATOR: But what will happen
to the gazelle in 1 5 years?

And if they go the way of the saiga, will it matter?

Should we concentrate
only on the most important species?

If so, which ones are the most important?

WILSON: We need every species.

We need a great diversity of species.

We need every species because

when you start decreasing the numbers of species,

especially in an environment which is adapted
to a high level of diversity,

you start reducing the stability of the area.

I think that any extinction
that is before its time matters.

But if one was to pick two groups,
it's at the very top and the very bottom.

You know, the creatures
that keep the planet going,

and the big organisms that keep our souls
and imaginations on fire.

The Tiger, probably the best-known poem
in the English language,

Blake's "Tiger Tiger", which every child can recite
and every child understands what it means.

Tiger! Tiger! Burning bright
In the forests of the night.

And they know that it's notjust dark forest.
It's to do with the pulse of life.

And if we lose these majestic creatures,
with their sense of power and ancestry,

and their possibility of power over us sometimes,

then I think we are diminished by that,
as well as the ecosystem.

If you go to a village in India and you start
talking to them about saving the tiger,

people will say to you,

"Look, how can you talk about saving the tiger
when we've got starving people here? "

And I think the way conservation
was developed over the last 50 years,

we have focused our energy
into trying to convince people

that things like tigers are inherently important.

Ultimately, if our movement is not relevant
to the lives of real people dealing with real issues

then we're just going to be preaching to the choir.

My concern is the great indifference
that most people have toward the species

of lesser creatures that they never notice
or dismiss as bugs and weeds,

and that's where the bulk of life on Earth exists.

And when you magnify
one of these organisms to human size,

and approach it as an independent,
highly-complicated entity on Earth,

then you see it as the equal of a large mammal.

MABEY: The organisms that matter
perhaps most of all are the plants.

Many of them are very unglamorous,
hardworking, fantastically common,

of course, without which there would be
no way in which the energy of the sun

was translated into available energy
for all other organisms.

Each of these creatures
plays a role in its ecosystem.

Some of those roles are quite important.

But if you think in terms of a brick wall,

we are systematically knocking out bricks,
and sooner or later the wall collapses.

NARRATOR: This is biodiversity,

the planet's full, wide range of life forms,

and it benefits every single species,
including the human one.

How?

The whole planet Earth is a system

and we, human species, are only part,

a very small part, of the systems.

There are literally millions of species out there.

We may not know them,
we may not know their value,

but we want to conserve them.

There are a very wide range of practical reasons

as to why we need to conserve
this planet's biodiversity.

For a start, all of our food ultimately derives
from biological systems.

So do a lot of our medicines.

A lot of our industrial products
are based upon chemicals

that we've taken from nature, for example.

Biodiversity is very much part,
therefore, of the global economy,

very much part of our well-being.

I don't think there's a single compelling reason
of an economic kind

that compels us to preserve biological diversity.

But in so far as there are reasons,
one says we want to preserve all these...

This gene pool because maybe we can use it.
Very human-centred.

Maybe we can be clever enough
to just understand the molecules ourselves.

The second says we depend on the services
ecosystems give.

Pollinating, cleaning water,
and as we reduce the number of species

we can't be sure
they will continue to deliver those services.

Maybe we could be clever enough
to live in an impoverished world.

The third reason is a straight ethical reason
that says we have a responsibility of stewardship.

And how strong that is
depends on the luxury you have to enjoy it.

We are getting an immense amount of value
from wild creatures left alive

and the more of them there are,
the better job is done.

One estimate made in 1 997
was that the services provided to humanity,

scot-free incidentally, by all those bugs and weeds

and, you know,
seemingly disposable birds and the like,

was about 30 trillion dollars.

But in holding water in the watersheds,

filtering it, purifying it, pollination,

and cleansing the atmosphere,

in restoring soil and on and on
through the other ecosystem services,

we are getting an immense amount of value.

We should have a lot of respect for the system,
for the natural system, for the biodiversity.

Don't worry if you don't know
what good they are for.

You didn't create it,
so you don't know what it is for.

Just let it be.

Because, who knows, someday down the road,
our future generations might find

that they can survive
because of that aspect of biodiversity.

NARRATOR: But if all species matter,
and many, many are endangered,

how do conservationists decide
which to conserve first?

I think, in this business, with limited resources,

and with, frankly, an overabundance
of critically-endangered species,

we, inescapably, have to make choices.

We have to make hard judgements

about what investments
will yield the biggest returns for conservation.

And that means we make choices
about what species to invest in,

and about what strategies
make the most difference.

Generally speaking, what we spot

are places where there are large numbers
of endangered species together.

So to save one, typically means you save them all.

This is the basis
of the "hot spot" concept of conservation.

NARRATOR: One of the hotter hot spots,
a place with an intense concentration of species,

is the Congo basin.

WWF's strategy here
is to use anti-poaching patrols

ostensibly to protect one species.

Elephants.

But because it's a hot spot,
a lot of others get protection into the bargain.

This place is as special
as any in all of central Africa.

It's really a jewel of the Congo basin.

You can't go anywhere
and see animals like you can here.

We've got a team of 50 guards
run by four unit chiefs.

And they are conducting patrols every day
in the park and the reserve.

And we should really give thanks
to nationals like those guards

that are working every day here at
Dzanga-Sangha to try and protect these animals.

They are doing an exceptional job
under very harsh and unforgiving

and thankless circumstances.

NARRATOR: Maybe they are.

But they're being paid
by a large conservation organisation to do it.

Is that really a viable long-term solution?

Is this the best way forward?
Just maintaining this costly anti-poaching effort?

If we d on't keep these anti-poaching teams
mobilised in the reserve on a daily basis,

this amazing place, it's going to disappear
in a matter of months, literally months.

NARRATOR: In Kenya, not everyone agrees
that the large conservation organisations

have all the best solutions.

Omar says, "If I am the director
or the person in charge

"of conservation of wildlife in this country,

"one, I will no longer depend
on the rangers with bullets

"to protect wildlife."

But he is going to give
the communities of this country

who live with wildlife,

he is going to make policies
which allow the people themselves

to be the protectors
and the benefactors of wildlife.

NARRATOR: There is some evidence
from another part of Africa,

the Simien Highlands of Ethiopia,

that solutions found from within
are the only ones that will work in the long term.

When the walia ibex numbers got down to 1 50,

it was when Ethiopians themselves
started turning around saying,

"Hang on, this animal is so iconic to our culture,
to our nation, we put it on flags,

"this is when we draw the line."

It really was the beginning of conservation
generated from within Ethiopia

and so since then,
even in the last, say, 1 0 or 1 5 years,

we've seen the number of walia ibex
come back from about 1 50 to 600,

and that's one of the best good-news stories
that I've heard out of African conservation.

NARRATOR: The head count
of the Amur leopard is much more disturbing.

Because of habitat loss and poaching,
there are just 30 left in the wild.

With extinction so close,
conservation becomes desperate.

Here in New Orleans, at the Audubon Zoo,
we have a pair of the Amur leopards

and our long-term strategy with them

is to work with
what we call the Species Survival Plan.

It is a plan that is part
of the American Zoo and Aquarium Association,

which is our, kind of, parent organisation
here in the United States.

And the Amur leopard
is one of the high-priority animals.

What's happened recently,

and some of the work that we're doing
involving cloning,

has allowed us to now
not necessarily take eggs and sperm,

but we're able to take tissue samples
from these animals,

put this tissue sample into culture
and where it was once maybe 1 00 cells,

we can now grow thousands of cells.

And each one of those cells contains
the complete copy of DNA of this animal.

So we can freeze these cells
and, let's say, 50 years from now,

scientists go into those liquid nitrogen containers

and they pull out the DNA
from tigers, Amur leopards, rhinos.

That DNA is alive and it's able to be used
to produce embryos

that then could result in babies, in offspring.

So, what I'm hoping we leave in our lifetime
is this living library for the future.

For, 50 years from now, the scientists can say,
"Oh, my gosh, you know, we're about to lose

"this little rusty spotted cat from Sri Lanka
or this Amur leopard.

"But you know what? We have the DNA.
We have the science behind this

"to be able to at least bring the numbers up
of this species so they won't go extinct."

I think we have to be very careful
about producing something

which is a facsimile of a wild animal,
from something which is able to exist in the wild.

And one of the problems
of keeping animals in conventional zoos,

the selective pressures are very great,

and you're actually moving that animal
towards domestication.

It may look the same,
but it may not have the skills

or the behavioural attributes
or the physiology to survive in the wild.

You know, it's funny when people say
we may be playing God,

we may be controlling, we may be taking charge
of, kind of, these species' destinies.

But, you know, man played God a long time ago.

I think, and I believe,
God gave us stewardship over these animals,

and what we're doing is using
the capabilities that we have as humans

to not destroy animals any longer,
but to try to protect them,

to preserve them, to bring them back.

Should we go to the extreme
of thinking about captive-breeding programmes

and, you know, storing embryos
or germ cells from a particular species?

I think that is something
that we probably should do.

But it is not going to be
anything more than the smallest fraction

of what conservation really ought to be.

I guess my thinking is,
someday we may have to populate another planet.

You know, if you look back a hundred years ago,
we were in horses and buggies,

and if somebody had said,
"Hey, we're going to be on the moon

"in a number of years
before this next century is over,"

everybody would've laughed.

And in 1 963, where were we?
We were on the moon.

So, if we try to look out 1 00 years from now,
we are going to have technology

that we can't even think about right now,

but if we try to populate another planet,

what better way than to take
animals in some frozen form, perhaps,

to the moon, to Mars?

That's pretty futuristic thinking,
but something's going to have to be done.

And what we do in the laboratory,
I believe at least, is a safety net.

And so if we can't release animals
back to the wild today

because of our shrinking habitats,
even though we'd like to,

maybe there'll be another option some day.

NARRATOR: Tigers on the moon. Well, well.

But the point is,
it's tigers that are getting the attention.

Or leopards. Or elephants.

Of all the endangered species,

why do we always concentrate
on the big, beautiful, charismatic ones?

The g ood thing about doing species conservation
is that when you latch on to charismatic species,

often people sit up and realise that's going on.

And they will give money
and they will write letters

and they will take direct action in order to save it.

There is something about a panda
that touches people

and I can't tell you exactly what it is.

But it is something which just...
That reaches people at a different level

than other species do.

And in that sense,
it's a very important ambassador for the wild.

It is something that reminds people
that they relate to the natural world,

in some way
that's beyond the clinical or statistical.

And I would say pandas,
because of their charisma, also matter

because they are such an effective symbol
for conservation worldwide

and because they draw so many people
to that cause.

ATTENBOROUGH:
I think you have to be very careful

aboutjust making an appeal to the emotions.

The appeal should be to logic.
The appeal should be to rational thinking.

We might emotionally feel
that small baby animals

with big eyes and snub noses
have a better case for survival than, say, fish.

That may or may not be the case,
but it's not because we should feel

emotionally attached to the one,
and not emotionally attached to the other.

Our concentration on highly-endangered species,

especially very glamorous,
large endangered species,

that's a morally tricky one,
but probably politically sound.

If we were to let go of those creatures

that figure so much in people's love of nature,

figure so much in the historical imagination,

as it were the people's favourites,

then I think that the cause would be lost

because I think it would be hard
to make a case then

for the defence of the stinging nettle
which we need just as much.

Arguably, it's the little things,
the invertebrates, the grotty things in the soil,

that actually are more important
to the functioning of ecosystems,

but they attract less emotional resonance with us.

Given that we are going to lose species,

I and others would like us
to take a more analytic view,

that we try to evaluate what will preserve

the greatest amount
of independent evolutionary history

of life on Earth.

NARRATOR: The grasslands of Assam, India.

What is the focus of conservation here?

Elephants? Rhinos? Tigers?

No.

It's a tiny pig, the pygmy hog.

We chose the pygmy hog because it appealed,
particularly to Gerry Durrell,

as one of the little brown jobs
that no one else was looking after.

And, of course, it turns out
to be taxonomically unique

and is well worth, on any criteria,
specific effort to keep it alive in the wild.

Now, the pygmy hog is probably part
of a large food chain of other predators.

Tigers undoubtedly eat them,
pythons and things like that.

And I would argue that if you lose
that pygmy hog, you lose that bite-sized pig,

a lot of other things may suffer as well.

There is a very strong culture
in all those range states

of burning grasses every year.

Is it accidental? Is it deliberate management?
And, of course, it's both.

In some ways
we're having to play catch-up, I think,

with some rather stereotyped old-fashioned views
about burning grasslands.

If the stuff is tall and dead
at the end of the dry season,

if you burn it,
then the green stuff comes up easier.

QED, it must be better.

Well, there's a huge cost to a lot of species
of just burning the place.

Obviously, all your invertebrates,
tortoises, pygmy hogs, all get roasted.

We've got to have a much more holistic view now
about the management of those ecosystems.

NARRATOR: But people, poor people,

burn the grassland to improve the grass,
the grazing.

That's their livelihood.

Do we in the West, with the so-called solutions

for conservation of wildlife
in third world countries,

put the needs of the wildlife
before the needs of the people?

Do pigs matter more than people?

Will our solutions for the wildlife
ever work if they're not solutions to poverty?

I really worry about the progress
we'll make as conservationists

unless we start to deal
with the poverty in these countries.

You just can't go to somebody
who's trying to feed their children

and talk about the conservation
of a wolf or a whale.

It just doesn't mean anything.

And so we can deal with some of the symptoms

and try and stick some Band-Aids
on these last few pockets of environment,

but it really is not going to be addressing
the core problem,

and that is the poverty
that surrounds a lot of these environments.

You're not talking about the Western world,
you're not talking about even Eastern cities,

you're talking about remote villages.

And without these people
coming into an economic cycle of some sort,

where they benefit directly, indirectly,
in any other way,

these people are never going to be
in a position to look after that animal.

And if they don 't, you can 't enforce it.

We people sitting outside
cannot enforce something on a local

who has to live with life and death every day.

You can't ask him to look to the future.

Wildlife mean different things to different people.

To the large-scale landowners, wildlife is an asset

because they can crop it, they can trade in it,
they can manage it.

It can become a very good laboratory
for them to research on wildlife.

And to the small-scale holder,
who have got a small plot

and is trying to have some of these annual crops,
wildlife is such a menace.

There's a fear of, you know,
wildlife coming and destroying the crop

which is a year's hard labour.

NARRATOR: So maybe in the end,
conservation is only a wealthy Western concern,

a luxury.

A fantasy, even.

Can we really believe that by investing money
in some other animal species,

we're going to save the planet?

Save ourselves?

When there are hungry humans out there,

can we justify spending money
on wildlife conservation?

You bet your life.

The expenditure of a few thousand,
up to even a few million,

if it can bring a species through,

that has so much to give us,

if we can keep it alive
in every sphere of human consciousness,

aesthetic, scientific, relation to the environment,

yeah, that's a very good investment.

It's sure better an investment
than conducting wars.

If you look at the amount of money
that we've been able to generate

for all kinds of other things,
like invading Iraq, for example,

now, what has that cost?

What tiny proportion of that would it take
to ensure that those species do in fact survive?

Miniscule.

We're not talking huge amounts of money here.

We're talking about targeted investments,

ways of ensuring that the welfare of the people
who live around these species is also improved,

so also developing
the human capacity to conserve.

NARRATOR: It wasn't by design
that the Planet Earth series

featured a lot of animals
that were critically endangered.

They were chosen
because they represented something.

Migrating grazers,

resourceful predators,

each integral to a larger machine, an ecosystem.

The animals just turned out
to be endangered, too.

So what does it mean for their ecosystems?

In our next programme,
we'll be asking the experts

about the health of the planet's working engines,

the oceans, the forests, the tundra.

We'll look at what happens to them

when their components die out,
when the climate changes,

when human societies grow out of control
and elbow in.

We'll look at the future of ecosystems.