This loss of wildlife is a disaster of our own making

What is the most dangerous animal on the planet? Any child reared on the inimitable Steve Backshall’s Deadly 60 series on CBBC will come up with any number of candidates: the black mamba, the hippopotamus, the great white shark.

Then, when they’re told the most destructive creature alive is humanity, you can see the emotions – confusion, indignation, realisation – flicker across their wide-eyed faces, and it’s impossible not to feel humbled and saddened at the damage inflicted by mankind on the world they will inherit.

Unlike the wolf eel or the polar bear, our species doesn’t honour its apical position in the food chain, killing to eat and no more.

Humans recklessly destroy habitats for agriculture, pollute the overfished seas, poach endangered animals for medicine or pelts and commodify wild creatures as pets, to be traded for pleasure or slaughtered as a delicacy.

Adults know this. Yet it still came as a terrible blow to learn that global wildlife is in “freefall”, according to a damning report published by the World Wildlife Fund.

From elephants in Africa to Arctic skuas in Orkney, populations of wild mammals, birds and fish have plunged by two thirds over the past 50 years.

This isn’t about worthy if niche conservation projects to protect snow leopards or persuade the last few pandas to breed – this decline affects all living things.

We urgently need to alter the wasteful way we consume the earth’s resources. But first we need a new mindset. Enter the nearest we have to an ecological guardian, Sir David Attenborough, who has sounded a clarion call for a new consensus.

“Above all, it will require a change in perspective,” he says. “A change from viewing nature as something that’s optional or ‘nice to have’ to the single greatest ally we have in restoring balance to our world.”

His message is clear: all is not lost. Yet. But without dramatic intervention, the consequences will be catastrophic for us and generations to come.