HANDS up anyone who remembers a film on woodpeckers by a Swedish film-maker named Heinz Seilmann and a string of TV programmes on Kenya's Serengeti national park by husband-and-wife team Armand and Michaela Dennis.

A decent show of hands, I see. Thank God. Though just beginning to thin alarmingly, the ranks of we who can look back at least 50 years are not yet quite threadbare.

And it was in the late 1950s that Seilmann's woodpecker film, which amazed people with its pictures from inside the nest, and the Dennis Serengeti series virtually established the BBC's towering reputation for wildlife programmes. Ever since then we have been oohing and aahing over one series or another, in recent times chiefly those by David Attenborough, whose latest epic, Planet Earth, is being hailed as the greatest masterpiece of all.

So it might be. But throughout the half century when we have been drooling over ever more brilliant wildlife images, what has actually happened to Planet Earth's wildlife? Much of it has become extinct, with the losses occurring at an accelerating rate. Except for pests like locusts and rats, just about everything now seems to be under threat.

While the Attenborough programmes have been running, I have noted the following stories of imperilled wildlife: Australia - coral reefs smothered as a result of human sewage. India - the Olive Ridley turtle threatened by over fishing. Six of the world's seven breeds of turtle are endangered. Congo - Bonobo apes threatened by war and forest clearance. China's Yangtse - the world's only freshwater dolphin apparently extinct, perhaps a victim of the new dams. The Poles - wildlife threatened by global warming and (Antarctica) intrusive tourism.

The damage isn't all abroad. "Butterflies down by third on farmland'' read a recent headline about our own country. Similar news about birds followed. Dolphins and porpoises off our coast are falling foul of nets.

All those wonderful wildlife programmes haven't galvanised us into taking proper care of Planet Earth's wildlife. In the end, extinction will overtake us. And we will have deserved it.

SLEAZE. Has this thought crossed your mind? A reason why the Tories won't reveal the identities of people who have made loans to the party is that some of the names might also appear on Labour's list. After all, if you are worth £300m-£500m, why not back both horses in a two horse race? That way you are sure to get into the winner's enclosure. But of course such a suspicion is absolute poppycock since, as New Labour and the New Tories assure us with a single voice, no-one gives money to a political party with any thought of personal gain.

BELLS across the meadow. So evocative of the English countryside. But what's this that now comes with it? A whiff of barbecue, that's what.

And when these are in conflict, which should give way? The bells, silly. In a Norfolk village residents have complained that church bells spoil their barbies, a ritual now commanding greater reverence than Evensong. Together with grumbles about mud on the road and crowing cockerels, here is more evidence of the suburbanisation of the countryside. Expect it soon as a storyline in The Archers.