It was one year after Chernobyl that artists Enrico Bandelli and Gianni Oliveti presented an exhibition of their works inspired by our precious and so terribly threatened natural world.

Thirty years later, after a period of considerable dilution of their urgent artistic message, Bandelli’s and Oliveti’s works seem more relevant than ever, especially since we now live in a time when over a million species are threatened with extinction.

A local library in the Gavinana suburb of Florence has presented those paintings from thirty years ago in one of their halls, appropriately titled ‘sala del paradiso’.

It’s truly sad that there are very few grounds for optimism in a situation which is getting worse and worse.

Here is a selection of images of polluted seas, hunted animals, trapped birds, dying plants and so many other prophetic warnings regarding our planet.

Perhaps the only way forwards now is to heed to international respected British Naturalist David Attenborough when, with today an Earth population of 7,472,985,269,  he remarks: