Protests will be held in Dublin, Cork, Galway and Belfast on Saturday over the “lack of political action to prevent a mass extinction of life on Earth”.

Organisers, the Irish Wildlife Trust, cited last month’s report from the World Wildlife Fund and the Zoological Society of London showing 60 percent of the world’s large animals have disappeared since the 1970s.

“According to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change there may only be 12 years remaining where meaningful action can be taken to avert dangerous climate breakdown,” the trust said.

The organisation’s campaigns officer Padraic Fogarty said “the world around us is dying” and it was “vital for Irish people to know that the extinction crisis is not something that’s far away but is right here on our doorstep”.

“Our seas and rivers are being emptied of fish, we have lost our bogs and forests and even our farmland has become a nature-free zone.”

Research in Ireland, for example, shows about one-third of the 99 species of bees here are now either regionally extinct or vulnerable.

Mr Fogarty called for political action saying the Government had “failed spectacularly in this task”, and this failure had seen a loss of heritage and livelihood in Ireland.

What are billed as family-friendly protests will take place at 2pm in Dublin (Natural History Museum, or “dead zoo”, at Merrion Square), Galway (Salthill Prom), Cork (City Hall) and Belfast (City Hall).