Beloved broadcaster and naturalist David Attenborough talks with Mike Walsh about the basics of human survival on Planet Earth.

Attenborough notes: 'The animal life and the plant life actually provides the wherewithal for us to live. If there were no plants and no animals we would starve. We can't eat rock. And we can't turn gases in the air into edible substances, as plants can, so we have to conserve the natural world because we are dependent on the natural world. But quite apart from that, I think actually we have a moral obligation not to exterminate the other creatures and the other living organisms with which we share the world.'

Episode 4132 of The Mike Walsh Show was originally broadcast on 15 August 1984.

Notes by Beth Taylor