David Attenborough Quotes

I don't think any human society is prepared to make decisions which they may not like if they're made by people who don't speak the same language... It's very easy, as we all know, to be very tolerant of minorities until they become majorities and you find yourself a minority. It's easy to say 'Oh yes, these lovely people – I love the way they wear such interesting costumes.' You know, that's fine until some day you find that they're actually telling you what to do and that they've actually taken over the town council and what you thought was your home was not. I'm not supporting it; I'm saying it's what it is.

For most people the idea of someone else telling them how many children they should have is simply unacceptable so when governments attempt to do just that it always causes controversy. In 1979 the Chinese government introduced its infamous one-child policy, changing family life in China forever. Families were encouraged to have fewer children. Those that didn't were fined. The policy was a direct response to the preceding decades of famine and starvation. It's still in place today. According to official figures, without the one-child policy, there'd be four hundred million more people in China, that's more than the entire population of the USA. Its unlikely that other governments could undertake such an extreme path without major civil opposition. In the 1970s the Indian government also sought to bring down its birthrate. To start with it took a less aggressive path, setting up festivals around the country where vasectomies were carried out for small incentives. m31s56

The island is immense. It's 1,000 miles long, if you discount a narrow arm of sea that crosses it in the middle, and it contains mountains over 12,000 feet high. It's New Zealand. The first land-living mammals to get here were human beings and they didn't arrive until a mere 1,500 years ago. So here you can glimpse what the world would have been like if the birds had won that battle with the early mammals and now ruled the Earth, for here they once did.

It seems to me that an understanding of the natural world is crucial for all of us – after all we depend upon it for our food, for the air we breath and, some would say, for our very sanity. Its a relationship that we're stretching to breaking point as we continue to grow in numbers. m44s31-m44s57

Today we're living in an era in which the biggest threat to human well-being, to other species and to the Earth as we know it might well be ourselves. The issue of population size is always controversial because it touches on the most personal decisions we make, but we ignore it at our peril. m0s50-m1-13

The food-chain that sustains a meat-eater could scarcely be shorter than it is here. [...] Algae that can uniquely tolerate these salty waters proliferate in the sunshine by the ton. Flamingos filter the algae from the water with their beaks, and vegetable is turned into flesh. And that flesh is food for eagles.

You might think that a hornbill would have the most powerful excavation tool of all, but in fact its huge beak is a relatively delicate structure and no use at all as a chisel.

Birds were flying from continent to continent long before we were. They reached the coldest place on Earth, Antarctica, long before we did. They can survive in the hottest of deserts. Some can remain on the wing for years at a time. They can girdle the globe. Now, we have taken over the Earth, and the sea, and the sky. But with skill and care and knowledge, we can ensure that there is still a place on Earth for birds in all their beauty and variety, if we want to, and surely, we should.

Our planet, the Earth, is, as far as we know, unique in the universe. It contains life. Even in its most barren stretches, there are animals. Around the equator, where those two essentials for life, sunshine and moisture, are most abundant, great forests grow. And here plants and animals proliferate in such numbers that we still have not even named all the different species. Here, animals and plants, insects and birds, mammals and man live together in intimate and complex communities, each dependent on one another. Two thirds of the surface of this unique planet are covered by water, and it was here indeed that life began. From the oceans, it has spread even to the summits of the highest mountains as animals and plants have responded to the changing face of the Earth.

There are some four million different kinds of animals and plants in the world. Four million different solutions to the problems of staying alive. This is the story of how a few of them came to be as they are.

Penguins underwater look somewhat like dolphins, and indeed the two families have similar evolutionary histories. Dolphins are descended from air-breathing land animals, just as penguins are descended from air-breathing flying animals. Both subsequently took to swimming for their food. They became beautifully adapted and streamlined. And now, both are superlative swimmers and highly accomplished fishermen.

If we and the rest of the backboned animals were to disappear overnight, the rest of the world would get on pretty well. But if they were to disappear, the land's ecosystems would collapse. The soil would lose its fertility. Many of the plants would no longer be pollinated. Lots of animals, amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals would have nothing to eat. And our fields and pastures would be covered with dung and carrion. These small creatures are within a few inches of our feet, wherever we go on land – but often, they're disregarded. We would do very well to remember them.

We have overfished 30% of fish stocks to critical levels. We cut down over 15 billion trees each year. By damming, polluting, and over-extracting rivers and lakes, we've reduced the size of freshwater populations by over 80%.

We're replacing the wild with the tame. Half of the fertile land on earth is now farmland. 70% of the mass of birds on this planet are domestic birds. The vast majority, chickens. We account for over one-third of the weight of mammals on earth. A further 60% are the animals we raise to eat. The rest, from mice to whales, make up just 4%.

And yet, today the harbour is silted up, most of the city lies buried beneath sand dunes and the land has become a desert. As the population had grown and more people wanted more fields, so more of the forest that once stood around the city was cut down, until eventually it was all gone. With no roots to hold the soil, and no attempt to conserve it, it was carried away by the wind and the rain.