Transcriber: Sarah M Reviewer: David DeRuwe
Hello everyone, my name is Jack Randall,
and I’m a zoologist and wildlife TV presenter.
My job involves studying the animal kingdom,
IDing species and how they relate to each other,
mapping the habitats that they live in,
and learning more about their populations out in the wild.
The information we gather as zoologists
is important to making conservation plans for these animals.
When I was younger, all I dreamed of was exploring the wild.
It started off with a fascination for monkeys.
I remember watching Tarzan and his life in the rainforest,
living alongside chimpanzees.
In this beautiful picture of life, man lived with wildlife,
being part of their world and living harmoniously together.
Being connected to the wild is part of our very nature.
I grew up in the countryside in Oxfordshire, in the UK.
I lived in a small village where there was no playground,
but my garden backed onto a forest.
It was only a small piece of land,
but I would go there with my brother and our friends and play hide-and-seek.
It was a fun place.
Staying there till sunset
and being called in for dinner was part of the routine.
We got to know that place intimately.
I now get this same feeling when I explore a wild place,
day in, day out.
The place at first, it feels disorientating,
but over time, every branch and hole that once felt a hazard and out of place,
it just fits in, just as much as the sofa does in the living room
or the kettle in the kitchen.
It becomes a home.
This is how the animals feel here -
the foxes, the badgers, the hedgehogs, and the robins.
I recently went back to my old childhood home.
That wild place I loved, it was gone.
The house is still standing, but the wild place behind the garden,
it’s now a housing estate.
Where did these animals go?
The reality is, the world over the past 100 years
has had a rapid change in the human population,
growing from 5 billion when I was born to 8 billion now.
Rural areas are being rapidly urbanized.
We’re seeing a barrage of viral videos of wild animals wandering
into our backyards, crossing roads, or taking a dip in our pools.
Some of these interactions are fascinating to us, sometimes funny,
sometimes portrayed as animals taking over and being a threat to us,
but these animals, they are homeless.
They have nowhere else to go.
Over the past 15 years, working in the field as a zoologist and filmmaker,
I’ve seen the impacts of development on animal homes,
not just in my own backyard, but all across the globe.
I made my first-ever film after graduation up in Australia.
My friend and I followed the story of a company that wants to mine bauxite
at the Steve Irwin Wildlife Reserve,
a pristine habitat in far north Queensland,
home to unique species, such as a rare palm cockatoo.
To extract the bauxite, it meant clearfelling the forest.
The trees that the palm cockatoo roost in would be gone forever.
Fortunately, over a five-year battle campaign,
the mine was halted, and the reserve was saved,
but the surrounding regions have not escaped.
I recently returned to that region
and was staggered to see how expansive the mines have become.
The result is the palm cockatoo this year was listed as endangered,
and only 2,000 remain.
In our very own lifetime,
the palm cockatoo could go extinct.
After I finished that film, looking for a new subject,
I noticed while reading the newspaper, on the third page,
there was a picture of a massive green anaconda
being pulled out of the ground by a digger.
It was the site of a new dam being built in the Amazon,
the Belo Monte Dam, a huge hydroelectric project.
With my fascination for anacondas,
I went there to see if I could find out more.
Over a four-week expedition,
I managed to collect DNA from specimens of anacondas for further research.
But what became evident
was that there was so much pressure being put on the Amazon,
not only by the dam causing flooding of habitats,
but also by clearfelling for agriculture.
Three years ago, fires across the Amazon became headline news.
The area where the dam is had the largest fires of all regions in Brazil.
It's because these impacted forests are unstable
and more vulnerable to forest fires.
The stories continue everywhere I go.
The result is that there are now 1 million species of plants and animals
at risk of extinction, according to the UN.
I often get asked, nine times out of ten by children,
what can we do to save our wildlife?
My only answer to this question: I believe we must all be local zoologists.
We must step into our wild places and familiarize ourselves.
After all, these places are not just home to the wildlife, but also to us.
All life is connected.
Do we want to be known as the generation that helped save our planet,
or the generation that helped destroy it?
I believe it is our responsibility to protect habitats,
that allows the coexistence for all those who call this planet their home
for many generations to come.