Many viewers are feeling a bit emotional after tuning into A Life On Our Planet. It is a new feature-length documentary by David Attenborough on Netflix. This makes viewers heartbreaking especially when it comes to a scene that involves orangutans.
In the movie, Attenborough illustrates that deforestation has left much of the earth’s rainforests curtailed to ‘regimented rows of oil palms’, which has an effect not only on an area’s plant diversity but also many other lineages.
Attenborough explains in the voiceover, “Many of the millions of species in the forests exist in small numbers. Everyone has a critical role to play.”
“Orangutan mothers have to spend 10 years with their young, teaching them which fruits are worth eating. Without this training, they would not complete their role in dispersing seeds. The future generations of many tree species would be at risk.”
“And tree diversity is the key to a rainforest. In a single small patch of tropical rainforest, there could be 700 different species of tree – as many as there are in the whole of North America.”
“And yet this is what we’ve been turning this dizzying diversity into a monoculture of oil palm, a habitat that is dead in comparison.”
A Life On Our Planet Is Featuring Deforestation At Its Peak
He further continues about A Life On Our Planet, “There is a double incentive to cut down forests: people benefit from the timber, and then benefit again from farming the land that’s left behind.”
“Which is why we’ve cut down three trillion trees across the world – half of the world’s rainforests have already been cleared.”
“What we see happening today is just the latest chapter in a global process spanning millennia.”
“The deforestation of Borneo has reduced the population of an orangutan by two thirds since I first saw one just over 60 years ago.”
A clip of A Life In Our Planet shows orangutans clenching on desperately to the residues of their home, as Attenborough warns and says, “We can’t cut down rainforests forever, and anything that we can’t do forever is by definition unsustainable.”
“If we do things that are unsustainable, the damage accumulates – ultimately to a point where the whole system collapses.”
Viewers found the progression hugely poignant. Many took Twitter to say this made them cry.
One person tweeted about A Life On Our Planet, “Just got to the part where the orangutan is climbing up the last remaining tree on #DavidAttenborough #ALifeOnOurPlanet and man… that made me CRY.”
While the other wrote, “Watching #DavidAttenborough #ALifeOnOurPlanet and couldn’t help but cry watching that beautiful orangutan walking around looking for somewhere to call home. Breaks my heart.”
David Attenborough’s A Life On Our Planet is available on Netflix now.
