People need to support the conservation charities working to stop the killing of Africa’s last elephants and rhinos by joining them, says naturalist

David Attenborough has said Africa’s rhinos and elephants face extinction from poaching, possibly within a decade, calling on people to support the conservation charities who stand between those species and oblivion.

The pioneering wildlife broadcaster said the survival of Africa’s great beasts, known collectively as megafauna, was dependent on the interventions of governments and conservationists.

“I’m not going to say we don’t care about protecting rhinos or elephants or African megafauna. If you said ‘yes, they’re all going to die within the next 10 years’ you would stop trying to protect them and they would die within the next 10 years,” he said.

“If there weren’t dedicated people around the world who are caring for the African megafauna, it would go like that,” Attenborough told an audience at a Society of Biology fundraising event. “You have to support conservation charities. They need that. I can list them if you wish, but it’s unfair because I won’t be able to list them all because there are lots of them, all working hard and valuably and the world would be a much poorer place if there weren’t those things.”

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Despite the efforts of charities and governments, demand for ivory and rhino horn in the Far East is driving unprecedented levels of poaching in Africa. International criminal gangs grease the trade with corruption and make law enforcement difficult.

In 2014, rhino poaching in South Africa hit record levels and 2015 looks set to be even worse. This week it was announced that Mozambique has lost half its 20,000-strong elephant population in just five years. On Wednesda it was reported that thieves broke into a police storage and made off with 12 rhino horns from the country’s biggest ever seizure of ivory and horn – Mozambique government officials allegedly aided the robbers.

Asked if there was hope against poaching’s deadly momentum, Attenborough said: “You have to assume its a possibility [rhinos and elephants can survive], you have to assume that... To just say ‘no, it’s gonna go’ and wash your hands of it would be awful, awful.”

But he said the crisis in Africa paled in comparison to the “wholesale” degradation of the world’s oceans.

“The thing that worries me more than anything really, is what is happening to the oceans. The acidification of the oceans and rising temperature of the oceans is on the way to cause major problems with depopulation of the fish stocks, for example. And if you even just take the selfish attitude of ‘what does that do to human beings?’, it robs vast numbers of people of their livelihood of food.”

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It was, he said, a problem that required a global commitment and would require international cooperation.

“If you are living in a democracy, which we are, you have to support the government and insist that the government take a view about their ecological responsibilities. And you must demand that from our politicians, because in the end it has to be a global solution. It’s very little use protecting just one small corner of an ocean. In the end the whole ocean has to be protected.

“We have to have global determination to protect the globe. And that can only come through international agreement and there are signs of that happening. It’s not all gloom. We have greater success now than we had 30 years ago. The problem is we have greater problems too.”