WEBVTT

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Our populations are expanding at such a huge rate...

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Never in the history of the world

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have we had to deal with such an aggressive,

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destructive species taking over so much of the world's surface,

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both land and water.

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When you ask, should you conserve endangered species,

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and why should you care about them in the first place?

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It's like if you don’t care about these other species,

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you don't really care about yourself in the long term.

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Because your life is going to be horribly affected

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by losing the diversity that we have on the earth now.

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I work on a conservation project that goes in at the angle

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where we're trying to conserve the 
maximum diversity across the tree of life.

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Given that we don't have enough resources

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to save every endangered species.

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It's really important to conserve pandas and tigers,

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but it's also really important to conserve 
flatworms, pufferfish and amphibians.

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People don't think about that as much as they should.

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Because global conservation initiatives are dominated by

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these large charismatic species, 
rhino, elephant, cheetah...

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and it's almost like, they're the only thing worth worrying about.

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When you render a species extinct before its ever been studied,

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or fully appreciated, we could be losing thousands of different cures...

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...cancer, lots of different future crop varieties.

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Lots of things that would really help us in our everyday life.

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When we start to realise the importance of
 conserving our environment,

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 it will be when we are all individually suffering
 as a result of the environment,

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being brought to its knees, just being destroyed.

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Until our everyday life is affected, by the extinction of

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all of these species and the destruction of this habitat,

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then we're not going to really think about it.

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I think a lot of people who are trying to decide how they're

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going to be a better person, how they're going to help the world,

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they do wonder, should I help humans, or should I help animals?

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What's more important? But I really don’t think it's a choice.

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If you want to get involved in conservation then you shouldn't

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see it as something that's turning your back on mankind.

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It literally is helping mankind.

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To conserve this diversity of life is to make a better world

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for the people as well as all of the other species.

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This is a really crucial point in history

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when it comes to our relationship with the environment,

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we could still save a lot of species.

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Or at least start living on this earth in a sustainable way,

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where we are not causing the extinction of the species.

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And I think that that's something we've really got to

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learn how to do over the next few years.

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If we're going to live on a diverse planet full of life.

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I don't think that you have to be a hippy 
to be an environmentalist,

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you can be any kind of person.

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And we should all be environmentalists a bit

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because to be an environmentalist 
means you care about your home.

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You care about the world, and you realise we've only got one world.

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So we have to all work together, to conserve it.