When you get to know an animal really well
and you can actually enter its world
you start feeling the wind on your skin
and it's like seeing the world in Technicolor
you become alive
Climate change is robbing the world of its biodiversity
its only natural defence against rising carbon levels
We are facing the greatest environmental
catastrophe of our time
the world is sick
and the condition, if left untreated, may well be terminal
As I was growing up
I used to to sit there and dream
about what may be possible in the future
I didn't want to be an objective scientist watching through binoculars
I wanted to go out there and be part of it
I heard about the plight to the Mauritius kestrel in the early 1970s
that was likely to become extinct
and I remember thinking
I could save that
I had a telephone call saying that a job was coming up in Mauritius
and that was the moment I knew that my life was going to change forever
I just remember thinking
Wow!
this is great!
I've never wanted anything more than this in my whole life
When I saw the Mauritius kestrel I was just blown away
it was such a dynamic, lovely creature
and I threw myself into saving them
and it became my absolute life
Mauritius is a paradise island
but it's just a veneer which is hiding a devastated ecosystem
a symptom of man's destruction of natural habitat
We found six eggs
I put them in an incubator
I slept on the floor of the room where the incubator was
and I waited for them to hatch
and they all died
I was just devastated
deep down I felt that I was responsible
The funding organisations pulled out
and I was told time and again that it was a hopeless situation
I remember as a child
in Wales
I was breeding kestrels in my back garden
I sort of made it up as I went along
I had this burning desire deep down
that I wanted to do something to help
so I formulated the plan
The conservation organisations tended to think that all these ideas are far too radical
and I was being told time and again, we can't be involved with that.
I went and took the last clutches of eggs from the last two pairs of Mauritius kestrels
I was taking huge risks
I thought
I can't allow the Mauritius kestrel to become extinct
I can't be involved with that
We succeeded in rearing three young
and I spent days, weeks living with them
I just was blown away with
yeah...the emotion was just so strong
Once the world's rarest bird
we now have several hundred
to know that they're there I think is absolutely wonderful
What we've done with individual species
Is driving the restoration of whole systems of animals and plants
One of the most effective ways of countering
the impacts of climate breakdown
is to restore natural habitats
absorbing some of the carbon dioxide
reversing the catastrophic effects of climate change
In the young people of today I see huge amounts of passion and drive
people who want to change the world
"After saving the Mauritius Kestrel he went on to save a further eight species from certain extinction, please welcome to the stage professor Carl Jones"
I'm sure that many of you here today
have come to hear me talk about the problems facing the earth
and that we are looking towards a very bleak future
but I'm going to disappoint you
I don't believe that
I believe there is tremendous hope for the future
and by rebuilding lost habitats
we can mitigate the problem of carbon buildup and climate change
Human beings have caused the problem
but very often we've stood back and expected nature to sort itself out
We're now realising that we have caused so much damage to the world
that we've actively gotta start putting things back together again
reversing the problems that we've caused
making the world a more magical, complex and beautiful place