Inquiry: MARTIN WALTERS: Bird Watch

Birds are great barometers of an areas environmental degradation. When bird populations are healthy and species diversity is high, you know you have found a place with a variety of protected natural habitats. There are 10,000 species of birds in the world today. Alarmingly one in eight of those species (c. 1240 species) are now threatened and a number of them are near extinction. How have we come to this point? Tonight on Inquiry we speak with writer, editor and natural historian MARTIN WALTERS. He has consulted with BirdLife International to create a beautiful and serious book on the rare birds of the world, where they are and how they came to be so rare: BIRD WATCH: A SURVEY OF PLANET EARTH’S CHANGING ECOSYSTEMS.