Extinction: The Facts review – David Attenborough presents a parade of animals on their way out

The BBC documentary points out that there is no earthly reason why a new virus won’t one day wipe out the very species that has been trying to kill the planet for the past few centuries – us lot

You might have thought a pandemic that has taken half a million lives, inflicted pain and suffering on many millions more, and cost us trillions would make us think twice about the way we humans interact with nature. It seems not. The poor old pangolin and blameless bats are still being flogged and slaughtered in various so-called wet markets, even though it is widely believed that the coronavirus emerged through the close proximity of humans to these usually harmless wild animals.

As Extinction: The Facts makes clear, however, many deadly viruses – Sars, Ebola, Aids – have infected us via still-thriving wildlife markets and the intrusion of humans into natural habitats to rear cattle or grow soya (for animal feed) or produce palm oil (for processed food and fuel); places we don’t really belong. So, as the impressive collection of environmental talking heads assembled for this latest message from Sir David Attenborough depressingly points out, even when the climate crisis and mass extinctions are a clear and present danger, and coronavirus is taking our loved ones, humanity is still incapable of changing its voracious ways.

The documentary points out that there is no earthly reason why some new virus will not one day appear that is even more infectious and deadly than this coronavirus, and could wipe out the very species that has been trying to kill the planet for the past few centuries – us lot. You could call it a revenge attack.

Still, it’s always nice to see nature’s survivors on film, and Attenborough is certainly one of them. If it’s possible to be a youthful 94-year-old, then that is what he is, his passion undimmed. He made his earliest TV appearance back in 1954, chasing giant anteaters around scrublands. These days, his knees probably aren’t up to that sort of lark, so his contributions are limited to impassioned pieces to camera, linking the archive footage of cute creatures, breathtaking panoramas and the controlled explosions of anger from thoughtful environmentalists. He also wouldn’t find it so easy to run around with anteaters now because there are fewer about; they too are losing out to land needed for cattle, to feed humans’ insatiable taste for a juicy burger.

Indeed, much of the show is basically a parade of animals that are on their way out – the last killer whale pod around Scotland (rendered infertile by pollution), the last two northern white rhinos (poaching), and of course the beleaguered pangolin (bogus “medicinal” usages for its scales, which are just keratin, the same as your fingernails).

Attenborough and his peers try to offer a little hope with the enviro-doom, because otherwise you’d just wipe away a tear, shrug and help yourself to another Big Mac, seeing as there is sod all anyone’s going to do about anything. Or you could join Extinction Rebellion and glue yourself to a train.

Thus it was genuinely moving to learn that the mountain gorillas Attenborough famously befriended four decades ago, then on the brink of extinction, have actually staged a recovery. That intimate encounter from his landmark series Life on Earth (1979) has lost none of its power, and seeing Sir David so young adds some poignancy. Now, an enlightened scheme taking money from tourists and, basically, using it to pay the local community to protect them, has seen the great apes population rise to more sustainable levels.

The wider message is that the planet too can be saved, if only we ease up on our consumption and waste. Covid, said one expert, is a “moment” when we can reconsider how we live our lives. That’s true, but the inconvenient fact is that we all know we won’t, and we too are on our way to extinction. The viruses may inherit the Earth.