Saving our species
The Documentary Podcast
BBC
4.3 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 19 April 2022
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Australia is famous for its unique wildlife and landscapes. But Australia also has the highest mammal extinction rate in the world, and there are big declines in frogs, reptiles, and birds caused by introduced predators and land clearing. Some species are hanging on in small numbers on private land. Could paying farmers and indigenous landowners to return parts of their properties to nature or turn them into carbon farms help solve Australia’s biodiversity crisis?
ABC producer Belinda Sommer takes you to the wide plains and sub-tropical forests of Australia to meet the farmers who are combining commerce and conservation.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | I really think that Australians really don't comprehend just how much our ecosystems have |
| 0:14.3 | been changed. |
| 0:16.6 | In a country famed for its unique wildlife and landscapes, the list of endangered animals |
| 0:21.6 | and plants is continuing to grow. |
| 0:24.4 | 34 mammals gone extinct is an atrocious record. Australia leads the world not only in things |
| 0:31.3 | like skin cancer but mammal extinctions and that's not a proud record by any means. |
| 0:37.1 | And beyond that, some species are now occupying 1% of their range. |
| 0:43.3 | The desert bet on the lesser bilby, a bat called the Christmas Island Piperstrow, all gone. |
| 0:50.1 | Wipeed off the earth by the combination of introduced predators like cats and land clearing. |
| 0:56.2 | Farmers are business people and they understand dollars. |
| 0:59.1 | They can now start to understand that conservation is a dollar value. |
| 1:03.1 | It allows people, our people, to be on country doing what we do best, looking after country, |
| 1:09.5 | making it healthier like that in itself is a reward but to be able to gain an ongoing |
| 1:15.4 | revenue stream from that is important. |
| 1:20.2 | I'm Belinda Summer reporting for the BBC World Service and ABC Australia for a series of |
| 1:25.5 | programmes called Shifting Cultures. |
| 1:28.2 | Tales from Australia have our changing relationship to nature and the environment. |
| 1:33.1 | And in this episode, we're looking at whether paying farmers for conservation can slow Australia's |
| 1:38.4 | wave of plant and animal extinctions. |
| 1:41.8 | Quick, Jackie! |
| 1:43.8 | Violet, violet! |
| 1:45.8 | Right, yes now we're on Savonac Station which is my home, where I was born and this means |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.