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Deep in the forest of Uganda's Rwenzori national park, I had perhaps the most emotional encounter of my career. The cameraman and I had trekked all day up into the cloud forests, hoping to catch a glimpse of the fabled mountain gorilla.

When we finally found our clan of gorillas, they were clustered in the undergrowth like huge, black, furry boulders, munching on shoots, eyeing us with either mild suspicion or plain indifference.

The one exception was a huge male silverback, one of the most impressive creatures on the planet, strutting around on his knuckles with the arrogance of King Kong. 

Steve Backshall, (above) best known for the BBC TV programme Deadly 60, is urging people to take action to prevent a 'mass extinction' of the planet's wildlife 

Everyone was mesmerised by this huge, majestic beast, fulfilling every cliché by beating his chest, and scowling at us like a giant hairy doorman guarding the entrance to an exclusive nightclub.

But while we filmed him, my eye was caught by a tiny baby gorilla, a ball of black fuzz, who had spotted me from about 15 metres away. He was looking at me as if to say: 'What on earth is that? And what's he doing in my forest?'

As I watched, the baby slowly, methodically, began ambling towards me. I squatted down, just as I would if a young child approached me. 

To my delight and amazement, the baby gorilla plopped himself down beside me on the forest floor, his leg just brushing my own. Then, he reached for my hand and took it in his own, while looking up into my eyes.

I was so overcome, I burst into tears. It was an utterly magical moment, one of absolute connection between two species.

It pains me beyond belief that one of those species - my own - is rapidly driving the other to extinction. It is highly likely that, if I have children, they will never have the chance to encounter these powerful but gentle creatures because we humans will have destroyed every last one.

The presenter claimed he was so overcome looking into the eyes of a baby mountain gorilla that he was reduced to tears. He said: 'It was an utterly magical moment, one of absolute connection between two species'

There are only a few thousand mountain gorillas left in the world. And they are just one of the species that has been driven to extinction - or very close to it - in the past four decades.

Conservationists and wildlife-watchers like me have been warning for years that if we carry on behaving as we have been, many of our most important and awe-inspiring species will be lost.

Now a new report by the World Wildlife Fund has confirmed our worst fears: wildlife populations have declined with terrifying rapidity since 1970, thanks almost entirely to human activity.

The average decline among the 3,038 species studied is a horrifying 52 per cent, and among freshwater species, which depend on clean water to survive, it is 76 per cent.

No, you didn't misread that — more than half the wild animals in the world, and three-quarters of its river life, have disappeared in the past four-and-a-half decades.

There are just a few thousand mountain gorillas left in the world as a result of intense poaching

There have been five great extinctions during the history of the planet, when huge numbers of species were wiped out.

But these were caused by cataclysmic natural events such as vast meteorites, or the hellish volcanic eruptions that swathed the planet in toxic black clouds and made the oceans boil.

We are now heading for a sixth mass extinction — and this one is not only our fault, but is even more cataclysmic.

Species are becoming extinct at a faster rate than they did after the meteorite strike that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, thanks to humans hunting them and destroying their habitat.

Despite their depleted numbers, Japan, Norway and Iceland are currently pushing to overturn a ban on hunting humpback whales

The report is so depressing that it's tempting to resign ourselves to the inevitable. But we must not do this. We have a chance to fight back, to turn the tide before it is too late for creatures such as the mountain gorilla, and thousands of other species. If we do not take action, we have a bleak future ahead of us.

What makes our planet special is the incredible variety of species that live on it. If we don't do everything we can to save them from terminal decline, we will be left with a natural world that is vastly less diverse.

In tandem, the handful of species which can thrive alongside us will be incredibly successful. Rats and cockroaches — as well as the chickens and cows that we farm — will increase dramatically in number.

It will be a tragedy beyond compare.

A century ago there were 100,000 tigers in the wild but today that number is closer to 3,000. The TV presenter said: 'I find it unthinkable that we should allow them to be massacred, their magnificence gone for ever'

I am incredibly lucky that, in my job as a wildlife presenter, I get to spend my life up close to exotic, astonishing animals. I have been charged by a grumpy hippo and an angry elephant, chased by a polar bear, accidentally trodden on a caiman (a species of small crocodile) and been stalked by a Bengal tiger, one of my most exhilarating moments.

After days of tracking tigers and spotting tantalising signs of them — paw prints on the ground, claw marks on trees, and droppings — but no actual tiger, we were heading home when I suddenly spotted through the trees the distinctive burnt-orange hues of a young male.

Moments later, he began to charge towards our Jeep at a terrifying speed. Just metres from our vehicle, he turned away. He had merely intended to frighten us off his territory.

The majesty and beauty of that glorious animal are almost impossible to put into words. But because tigers are being hunted and their habitat destroyed, their numbers have been decimated from 100,000 only a century ago to just 3,000 today.

I find it unthinkable that we should allow them to be massacred, their magnificence gone for ever.

Backshall met Lonesome George (above), the last remaining giant tortoise on Earth, before his death in June 2012

Sharks are also being hunted to extinction because people think they are mindless predators that don't need or deserve protection. But I have spent hundreds of hours underwater with them, swimming alongside supposedly evil man-eaters such as great whites off the coast of Mexico without receiving so much as a scratch.

I have dived with sperm whales and had a female sperm whale swim up to me with her calf, introducing it to me with maternal pride.

To see this great leviathan exhibit such tender emotion, just like us, was overwhelming.

I have also swum alongside male humpback whales as they chased after a female in order to mate with them, in what is known as a 'heat run'.

There are only a few thousand humpback whales in the world, yet Japan, Norway and Iceland are pressing for the ban on hunting them to be lifted so they can be slaughtered again. Such barbarism is beyond my comprehension.

The naturalist recently visited Borneo, ten years after first going to the island. He claims much of the rainforest, home to endangered orang-utangs, has now made way for palm oil plantations (Pictured, four-year-old orang-utang who was caught in a village in West Kallimantan, Borneo, after her mother was killed by poachers)

It's not just hunting but the destruction of habitat that's been catastrophic for many species. Back in the Nineties, I went to the island of Borneo and flew for hours over uninterrupted rainforest, home to a multitude of amazing species.

Just ten years later, I flew over Borneo again. This time I could see nothing but palm oil plantations, with only a few pockets of rainforest remaining.

The rainforest resounds with the most amazing cacophony of sounds from thousands of species: there is birdsong, the calls of frogs, the whoop of gibbons, the occasional clatter of orang-utangs in the canopy.

Palm oil plantations are silent. The only species that thrives there is the rat. To see the devastation driven by the lucrative logging and palm oil industries at first hand was heartbreaking.

I have already witnessed the end of one species. A few years ago, on the Galapagos Islands, I had the privilege of working with Lonesome George, the last remaining giant tortoise on Earth.

He died two years ago, and his kind is now extinct.

In the next ten years, we will witness many more extinctions unless we act now to save these amazing creatures, and with them the biodiversity of the planet.

Steve Backshall dives with a Great White Shark in Mexico - he stresses that sharks are not mindless predators and deserve just as much protection as other animals threatened by extinction

Backshall is urging people to take action and said: 'If we love our planet, we must protect it, and that means supporting bans on hunting whales, tigers and other endangered species'

Everything is interconnected: lose one link from the food chain, and the reverberations will be felt all the way up.

Even 'uncuddly' species are vital to human survival. Some of the finest modern medicines are derived from toxins from amphibians, snakes and sea creatures: if we don't save them, they cannot save us.

Even closer to home we are losing species. Thousands of our favourite birds are slaughtered every year when they migrate here from Africa, and are shot down by hunters over Malta and Sicily, where there are no laws to protect them.

Hundreds of millions more are killed by domestic cats, of which there are eight million in Britain. We could halve the number of bird fatalities, and save many species, simply by keeping cats in at night.

As the late French explorer and conservationist Jacques Cousteau once said: 'People protect what they love.'

If we love our planet, we must protect it, and that means supporting bans on hunting whales, tigers and other endangered species.

But first, we have to believe this is an important cause, that wild animals in all their many shapes and sizes have as much right to roam this planet as we do.

It starts with seeing that the natural world has value beyond the balance sheet, and a worth that cannot ever be calculated.