Hallo, tender-hearted viewers, and welcome to Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants. On today’s program we present part one of a two-part series featuring eight-year old Olivia Binfield, a little girl with a big heart.

Although just a child, Olivia dedicates herself to protecting and preserving our animal friends. For example, in 2011 she appeared on the popular British TV show, “Britain’s Got Talent,” reciting her poem “Endangered Animals.” Olivia presented the poem with Lucy, her boa constrictor friend, draped lovingly around her neck. Here is Olivia’s recitation of “Endangered Animals.”

Come on, Don’t you have a heart?
You don’t want these animals to depart.
Forget the X Factor and the top 10 singing chart.
Look at the most endangered animals and the Poison darts (frogs).
The Amur leopard, Siberian tiger and Polar bear.
They’re so gorgeous, it’s just not fair!
If I say their Latin names, will you listen more?
Oh Louis (Walsh), please don’t say this is a bore!
Varanus komodoensis: Komodo Dragon, by the way.
Why does man have to take them all away?
Why does he hunt and poach?
Man, you are such a fool!
Snakes skinned alive for handbags?
That is just not cool.
Please listen to my passion, although it may not be in fashion.
I cannot sing it, you might laugh.
I cannot dance, you would say that I was daft.
But I am seven and I want these animals to last.

How did you get into writing poetry? Did you read poems?

I did read a couple of poems and my grandpa is a poet and he’s a really good artist. We just have the same feeling for poetry.

Why did Olivia decide to compose this poem?

When I went on "Britain’s Got Talent," I decided to write a poem to show that we shouldn’t harm animals. And animals are cute. They deserve looking after. "Britain’s Got Talent" is watched by many people. And if I could spread the word, the best way to do it would be on "Britain’s Got Talent." And I can show thousands and millions of people who watch it.

When and how did you first become interested in animals?

I became interested in animals when I was very young, and I have always loved them ever since then.

Can you tell us about Lucy, your pet Boa Constrictor.

Well, Lucy is really friendly and she would never harm any human. And I’ve had her for a while. And when the sun shines on her scales, it turns purple and different colors. And it’s really beautiful. She is really nice. And I sometimes play with her. She is really elegant, and she often tears up little branches that we put in the tank.

Why did you choose Lucy out of all your pets?

Lucy is really clever. And she's really brave. And she won’t run off or anything. She's very calm.

What other pets do you have?

I have three dogs. One's a mommy and she has two puppies. The mommy and the girl dog are chocolate and the boy dog is yellow. And then I’ve got a rabbit called Aslan, and we have two horses, Bonnie and Boo.

Do you see any ways that they show that they love you?

Yes, because I do have these books, and they tell me about dog language. And when they lick you, it means they love you.

Aslan really loves being picked up and snuggling in your arms. And when he goes in your arms, he’s really quiet. And he loves being hand-fed. And Bonny and Boo will neigh and swish their tails and they eat their hay on your arm. And it's really cute.

Olivia next showed us her room, which is filled with toys and books about animals.

This is the hooved animals and dog area. Over here, we have the bears and monkeys and that is the trees. This is reptiles, birds and amphibians. And this is the cats. This down here is my water area and this is other animals.

Can you tell us about your photos as well?

That’s me on my birthday and I was kissing a tortoise. This is when I went to Durrell (Wildlife Park, UK). This was one of the bats I stroked. This down here is one of the Aye-ayes I saw near a cove here. And this was the type of Poison Dart frog that I held. These are some lions and these are some monkeys that we saw hopping around the enclosures.

Here is a little tiger I got when I went to a wild place and I named it after one of the tigers I saw. He’s called Bruno. The tiger Bruno is one of the most comfortable ones. He actually laid by us. And he didn’t growl or anything. He was really tame, pretty much. But he was still wild. And he was really cute. And he was one of the oldest tigers there in the place.

Olivia is deeply concerned about the thoughtless and cruel ways in which humans often treat our animal co-inhabitants.

Well, there’re lots of ways we harm animals. We cut down trees which are important for animals that live in trees. Sometimes we poach for sport and lots of people kill them for medicine like tiger bones and tiger wine and fur. People kill them for fur, like tiger skins and coats, and sometimes even people use them for carpets, which really isn’t nice.

Because of her compassion for animals, Olivia decided on her own at age three not to eat meat.

Some of the teachers tried to make me eat meat, but I said "Nope.”

I remember that we went for a drive, and she saw the lambs in the field. And then she put two and two together that the food was from animals. And so she said, "I'm never eating animals, no animals." And she wanted to know all the names of the animals, the cow and the beef, so that she would never eat any of them. I support her totally because it’s what she wants and it’s what she believes in, so I’m absolutely behind her.

And was it easy to get the school in alignment with it?

Yes, the school has been fine. They were a little bit (hesitant) to begin with. I think they thought she was just being fussy. But now they know what she’s like and they all want to hear her stories.

Ms. Binfield fully supports her daughter’s efforts to help preserve and protect our animal co-inhabitants.

I just remember loving animals and thinking you could always rely on them and you can’t rely on people, and that animals are always there for you and love you no matter what. If you're having a bad day, they don't mind. They’re always there for you. So I think I just love all animals. And I'd love to help them.

How do you encourage and support her passion?

Whatever she wants to do in the holidays, if she wants to go and see a certain animal or something, we go and do it. I am constantly buying books. She has hundreds and hundreds of books, information books, and very heavy encyclopedias. She just sits and reads all of them, all the time. So I’m constantly buying books in that way, and all the wildlife things that we can, that she wants to join.

Let’s now hear one more fine poem by Olivia, entitled “Going, going, gone.”

You may say I’m only seven,
But I don’t want the animals to go to Heaven
Before they’ve had a decent life.
I don’t want them to be cut up with a butcher’s knife.
You may say I’m rather small,
But what I believe in my heart is big and tall.
Endangered animals need to be saved.
Those who hunt and kill them are depraved.
Michael (McIntyre), I hear you do a funny pitch.
But it’s no joke when the Red lemur ends in a ditch.
David (Hasselhoff), I hear you're from the big USA,
So help us to keep greedy poachers away.
Forget Baywatch, let's animal watch, eh?
Beautiful peace-loving vegetarian Amanda (Holden),
You share this trait with the Giant panda.
The Black rhino has lived for a million years.
Why kill it for its horns?
That’s just superstitious fears.
The African wild dog, The Pygmy hog,
The Hamilton frog, The Hispid hare,
The Polar bear, The Common skate,
Who are we to decide their fate?

How does Olivia encourage other children to treat animals with respect? To find out as well as hear another of her poems, please join us again tomorrow on Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants, as we present the concluding part of our interview with the delightful, dedicated, young animal advocate, Olivia Binfield.

For more information on Olivia Binfield, please visit www.OliviaBinfield.co.uk
or follow her on Facebook. Read her tweets at www.Twitter.com/OliviaBinfield

Thank you for presence today on our program. May all beings on Earth be forever free, respected and allowed to live in dignity.

Hallo, affectionate viewers, and welcome to today’s Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants, featuring the second and final part of our interview with eight year old British animal advocate Olivia Binfield. Olivia began dedicating her life to the protection and preservation of our animal friends at the age of three when she stopped eating meat after learning animals are killed to produce it.

She was always interested in animals. Even when she was a baby, she would just flip the pages with the animals more than any other pages. So from very young, I think, I noticed. And she wasn’t interested in any normal toys, dolls, anything else like that. She just wanted animals.

In 2011, she appeared on the popular British TV show, “Britain’s Got Talent,” and recited her poem “Endangered Animals.”

What made you and Olivia decide that she would present her poem about saving animals on "Britain’s Got Talent"?

Because all the time she’s been saying she wants to tell people and help people, and then we saw an email about it. And Olivia had this idea, and we wrote it down. And they asked us to come. I didn't think anything would come of it, but it did.

She must have gained a great deal of publicity and fame from her performance. How has this affected her?

I don’t think it's affected her at all, because her passion is not for wanting to be public or anything else, or be famous. It's for the animals. And when she went on the show, she wasn’t nervous. I was, but she wasn’t. And anything we’ve done has always been about the animals, not about Olivia. So she just sort of takes it in her stride.

Here is an excerpt of Olivia’s poem on tigers, a species that has nearly disappeared from our world.

Eyes, red like fire. Exquisitely designed skin.
We cannot let the beautiful tiger end up in the bin.
Watch him glide gracefully above the green jungle floor.
Yet only 3,000 left in the wild, there should be more.
Greedy poachers breaking the law,
Ridiculous beliefs by humanity all must be shown the door.
We must not let the creature disappear.
For that is my most dreaded fear.

Olivia’s passion for saving endangered animals is well known. So much so that David Shepherd, a renowned British wildlife artist and founder of the David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation, invited her to become an official ambassador for his TigerTime project which safeguards tigers by helping to prosecute poachers and encouraging the public to always shun medicines with tiger parts in them.

David Shepherd is a very famous artist. And he draws pictures of elephants and lots of different animals. And basically he paints lots of pictures. David Shepherd took me to his place and he gave me a paint brush. And I helped him to paint one of his pictures, which was really good. And I did some drawings. And he gave me that certificate. To help do his thing about saving the tiger, I went with this huge, soft toy tiger to get some photos of that, because it was going to go into an auction. And the picture I helped do with him also went in an auction, to help raise some money for the tigers.

Olivia’s love for animals knows no bounds. She’s even fond of bats.

Fruit bats, like this one here. I went through this enclosure with this man who knew about bats. He’d been showing some other people around and he showed me around. He went into the enclosure with some little bats. And there were bats (everywhere). There were some on the ceiling, and a few on the sides. And there was one on the side who was really playful. And I stroked him. And he pulled my hair. And he used his sharp claws for clinging on. And nearby, there was a little bat center where they looked after injured bats.

Olivia loves to read. And what are her favorite kinds of books? Ones about animals, of course!

And I’ve got some really nice books here. And this one here, "Spirit of the Wild," was a book I got for Christmas, by Steve Bloom, and it's got lots of lovely pictures with a little writing, to show that animals are our true friends and that we should look after them. And I’ve also got lots of different books like this one.

And at the end is an "Animal A to Z," which shows you different types of animals. And I’ve got a book here, which I should get. It's a little nice one. Here it is. I have to be careful when I take it down because it's next to a lion. And it's called “Caring Animal.” It's to save Earth's disappearing animals. It’s got a map on the front, where is it? It’s a map which shows where they come from. Bactrian Camel is the brown which is scattered a bit around here. The Polar Bear is purple.

And that is the Bengal Tiger, which is orange. Here and there's the yellow, which is for the Asian Elephant.

So these animals are endangered. What does that mean?

Endangered means that they are disappearing. And it’s all about endangered animals, which are on the brink of extinction, dying forever. These are some Leatherback Turtles, which are the largest species of turtle. And this is where they are trying to protect the turtles’ eggs. They come back every year to the area of the beach to lay their eggs. So, turtles sometimes get tangled up in nets, and pollution like oil spills and stuff, that gets into the sea.

And sometimes they eat plastic bags, and it gets caught in their throat. And sometimes, boats and jet skis crash into them. And sometimes people get beaches and they put hotels on them, and if that was a beach where they were born, it means they don’t have anywhere to lay their eggs. And some people catch the turtles and eat them and sell their eggs for food. The ice is melting because of global warming, which is a big threat for the Polar Bears and also, their thick furs are sometimes used as coats.

Whales are really big. And sometimes they're caught by whaling, people who go out on boats and just kill them. There was this guy who was a whale hunter. And they told him to stop doing it, and he did. And he told other people, and they all stopped. The Orangutan, from the jungles in Borneo, their forests are being cut down for farming land. So every year, they cut down more and more of the rainforest, meaning there is hardly any home left for the Orangutan.

Olivia is a true animal advocate, often speaking to other children about our animal friends and encouraging her peers to take good care of them.

She does shows for children or students. She’s done a few where they show the different animals, pass them around and explain them so that people can understand a bit more about the animals. And I think it's quite good because they tend to listen more to a child than they do to an adult. So, I think it’s quite good. I think she'd like to have her own little show where she could be on TV and show all the animals and explain it.

Does she inspire a lot of other children?

Yes, I think so. She makes them think about things that they probably haven’t thought about before.

What do you think lies in her future?

I’m sure it's with animals. And I’m sure she'll do a lot, hopefully, to save them and to make people more aware of what we can all do to make the world a better place for the animals. It's made me very proud that she’s got such passion, and such honesty and the innocence about it. It's lovely and made me very proud.

Olivia has some suggestions for other children who may want to help animals.

You can, at school, ask your teacher about the organizations that are trying to save Polar Bears, and you can find out more about them. You can share that with others, or organizations and write a letter, and maybe even give them a donation to help.

Many thanks, Olivia Binfield, for your dedicated efforts to safeguard the lives and well-being of our animal co-inhabitants. You provide a marvelous example for us all. We pray that your diligent work continues to motivate other young people to follow in your noble footsteps, and may your projects for the animals enjoy lasting success. We also share your vision for a world where all animals are always treated with love and respect.

For more information on Olivia Binfield, please visit www.OliviaBinfield.co.uk
or follow her on Facebook. Read her tweets at www.Twitter.com/OliviaBinfield

Thank you for viewing today’s edition of Animal World: Our Co-Inhabitants. May all beings soon enjoy happiness and harmony on a peaceful, vegan planet.