The Press and Journal (Inverness, Highlands, and Islands)
Sir David mourns rhino
Extinction ‘catastrophe’ says 91-year-old as he opens exhibition
Sir David Attenborough has said the death of the last male northern white rhino is “another catastrophe and another warning signal”.
The 91-year-old was speaking following the death of Sudan, the 45-yearold last male of his species, in Kenya earlier this week.
He said the problems facing those protecting other endangered animals was “huge” as the world was now so crowded.
Sir David said: “It’s another catastrophe and another warning signal.
The naturalist and filmmaker said: “It applies across the animal kingdom. We’ve being going on about the way in which human beings have been exterminating species for a long time. And we started doing it in the 17 th century with the dodo. But now the problems are huge, simply because the world is so crowded there’s not the space for things.”
Sir David was speaking at the opening of a dinosaur exhibition at the Yorkshire Museum, in York, where he said he was “mystified” as to why his Blue Planet II show has had such a worldwide impact on the debate over the use of plastics.
He said: “I think it came at a particular moment, when people are concerned and there’s a worldwide concern about what’s happening. And that series just pressed that button.”
Sir David was visiting the museum to open the Jurassic World exhibition, which takes visitors on an journey back through 150million years of Yorkshire “to discover lost giants and the changing worlds they inhabited”.
He tried out the stateof-the-art virtual reality headsets, clearly enjoying the experience as he joked with the staff.