Road to Extinction | Years of Living Dangerously

Climate change here is disrupting a way of life that has allowed humans and animals to live side-by-side for centuries. Yes, the were in what is a key leader within the African Wildlife Foundation, one of the premier conservation groups on the continent. She tells me the droughts are frustrating decades of efforts to protect endangered species.

So I look around and I see a lot of grassland and greenery, and you're telling me about the drought, but it seems like it's recovering pretty well. It's only inside the park. Just drive ten kilometers out of the park, and the story is completely different. The reason why you only see it in the pockets is because it's a protected area, but outside the community area it's overgrazed.

This land degradation and the springs have almost dried up now, which leaves the elephant without any water access. It has to keep traveling, keep moving, looking for water. They just don't have it. They don't have it because the demand for space is becoming higher, both for wildlife as well as for humans.

So, every time wildlife gets out of the park, then you have the human-elephant conflict. We have worried about the incidences of poaching, and poaching is becoming a very, very big issue because a lot of people have lost their livestock to drought. If they have lost their livestock to drought, then they don't have any other source of income. The demand for ivory is now very high, and therefore that pushes them completely into illegal activities such as poaching.

So there is a direct relationship between poaching and climate change. Could we see a day in Africa when all the elephants are gone? My answer will be a big yes. Africa at the moment has between 400,000 to 500,000 elephants left, but if we don't work extremely hard, then one day we are likely to find that most of the thousands of elephants, you know, not even 100 years, talk of 10 to 15 years to come.

Come on! Yes, we are talking of about 30 to 35 thousand elephants a year. That's what we lose every year. We lose 30 to 35 thousand elephants a year. So if this situation continues like that, we are not going to have elephants anymore in Africa.

And it's not just the elephants. Once upon a time in Amboseli, there were more than ten thousand rhinos; today, not a single rhino is left. What? Not a single rhino is left in Amboseli National Park. They are almost becoming extinct. Hippos—the numbers are not looking very good because hippos are so reliant on water.

If we continue having frequent droughts, the hippos will never survive. They will die of overheating. We're losing hippos already, and losing hippos already means almost losing species. So the large mammals, the large wildlife that we're so used to seeing—yes, they will all be gone. They will all be gone.