"Last chance to see"  is the title of a wonderful BBC TV program seeking out truly endangered animal species. It pairs the very witty comedian Stephen Fry with the zoologist, writer and photographer Mark Carwardine - and reprises Mark's 1989 series with the late lamented author Douglas Adams.

The twenty years gap between the first and the second series has meant that not every animal hanging on by its claws or flippers survived -  the Baiji, a unique river dolphin only found in the Yangtze River in China, has been polluted and hunted to oblivion.

That is, extinction. That's it. No more, ever again.

The American naturalist Charles William Beebe put it most evocatively:

"The beauty and genius of a work of art may be reconceived, though its first material expression be destroyed; a vanished harmony may yet again inspire the composer; but when the last individual of a race of living beings breathes no more, another heaven and another earth must pass before such a one can be again."

In fact, this quote was one of Gerald Durrell's favorites - the wildly talented naturalist, author and conservationist - and motivated him like nothing else to work to protect animals from extinction. It was he, with the Jersey Zoo in the Channel Islands off the French coast, who was among the very first to think of breeding ultra-rare animals and birds in captivity so that you could, down the road, reintroduce them to the wild if the causes of their near extinction have abated. He and his colleagues - and those he inspired -  have been quite successful:  captive breeding and reintroduction program have been set up for animals from the spectacular (like the Mauritius Kestrel) and very strange (the aye-aye lemur) to the modest but still beloved by God (Indian Pygmy Hog). The California Condor, for one, would have been snuffed out long ago were it not for such an initiative.

Durrell espoused the idea that we should never neglect the small and obscure - land snail, lizard, frog, snake, tiny bird - however non-photogenic they were. One is reminded of what the Patriarch of the Romanian Orthodox Church, Daniel Ciobotea, is meant to have said: "Extinction is a loss of our knowledge of God - erasing his fingerprints"

And which ones do we choose to preserve? If we have to choose? A fascinating article on the BBC News website cites work from a team of zoologists from Puerto Rico, Slovenia and Virginia that identifies some mammals that are in dire need of protection. Amongst others, the list includes monk seals, the giant and red pandas, the giant otter of South America, the sea otter, the spectacled bear, the walrus...and some almost-unheard of beasts like Owston's palm civet, the binturong, and the fossa. Why these? Because they are unique amongst the unique, the end points of evolution or God's finest workmanship (or both!)...and every single one of them is in danger of being sent the way of the Baiji. Then they will only be found - like insects trapped in amber - on a web site of animal photographs somewhere.

If this moves you to tears, as it does me, we need to do something. This could indeed be our last chance to see them.  Visit Durrell.org to get some ideas.