Charles Spencer felt as though he had entered a Harry Potter-like parallel universe when he discovered the Grant Museum of Zoology
By Charles Spencer
9:58AM BST 11 Apr 2011
There are blessed moments of wonder in life when you seem to have relinquished the humdrum world of poor harassed Muggles and entered a Harry Potter-like parallel universe.
Paxman’s in Union Street, south London, a basement shop entirely devoted to the sale, repair and maintenance of French horns, offers one such experience. This splendid establishment would seem quite at home in JK Rowling’s Diagon Alley.
Even more weird and wonderful, however, is the Grant Museum of Zoology, which I have only just discovered and which seems to have arrived in Bloomsbury direct from Hogwarts. It is one of the most delightful, quirky and at times downright revolting collections I have ever encountered, a gigantic cabinet of curiosities housed in a high-ceilinged former medical library that is part of the UCL complex of buildings.
The museum, new to these atmospheric premises in University Street, was founded by Robert Edmond Grant in 1827.
He was appointed to the first chair of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy in Britain at the newly established University of London (later UCL) and was an early mentor of Charles Darwin. The museum began as he assembled teaching materials for his students, and many others have been added to the collection over the years.
The place is now packed to the gunwales with animal skeletons, stuffed wildlife and all kinds of scary-looking specimens in preserving jars. Some of them are not for the faint-hearted. Many feature creatures that have been bisected to reveal the brain and innards. Look at one side of a glass case and you will see a delightful tabby cat; look at the other and you will be treated to every detail of its inner workings.
There is also a display of parasitic worms, with the even more disconcerting information in the guidebook that tapeworms have been known to reach a length of 40 feet in the human gut.
The curators seem to relish black humour. As you enter you notice that a group of human skeletons are looking down at you from the high balcony that runs round the exhibition space. And a cluster of turtles have been diagonally arranged on a wall like the flying ducks on Hilda Ogden’s “muriel” in Coronation Street.
Look out, too, for what looks like a gigantic sweet jar filled with dozens of tiny moles, their noses and paws still pink as the day they were pickled.
This creepy but beautiful museum – the skeleton of a 17ft anaconda resembles an extraordinarily intricate sculpture and many of the exhibits bring the work of Damien Hirst to mind – would make a superb setting for a piece of site-specific theatre. The Punchdrunk company, recently awarded a whopping increase in its Arts Council grant, should check it out urgently. And anyone with a taste for the macabre, the bizarre or just an interest in natural history will be spellbound. God’s universe rarely seems stranger or more varied than it does here.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturecritics/charlesspencer/8442391/Mesmerised-by-the-macabre.html
Showing posts with label zoology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label zoology. Show all posts
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
The cave of bones: A story of solenodon survival
Tuesday, 1 June 2010By Rebecca Morelle Science reporter, BBC News, Sierra de Bahoruco, Dominican Republic
Conservationists are in the Dominican Republic attempting to save one of the world's most strange and ancient mammals - the Hispaniolan solenodon.
While trying to track down one of these creatures, The Last Survivors team is also trying to find out exactly how this animal has been able to survive for a remarkable 76 million years.
It is pitch black.
Splashes of light from our torches illuminate patches of the vast cavern we are standing in, every now and then highlighting bats as they swoop above.
Fine dust swirls, coating everything.
The last few remains of a human skeleton sit ominously close to the entrance - but that is not why the scientists are here.
It is the piles of tiny bones poking out, here and there, on the sediment and bat dropping caked floor that are attracting all the attention.
We are in a cave nestled in a cliff face in the Dominican Republic's tropical forests. It is reached by a startlingly steep ascent, then a deep drop into darkness.
Scientists think it could hold one of the keys to finding out how the Hispaniolan solenodon has been able to survive for so long, while nearly all other life around it has died out.
'Living fossil'
But before we get to the cave, we need to rewind a little.
Seventy-six million years, in fact. To the time when dinosaurs roamed the Earth.
This is when a hunk of land attached to the great landmass that today forms North America broke away, taking with it some insectivorous mammals - the ancestors of the solenodon.
These creatures might not have looked much different to the animal we are hoping to spot on this expedition.
Conservation palaeontologist Sam Turvey, from the Zoological Society of London who is working on The Last Survivors project and the Edge of Existence Programme, says: "There is this concept of the solenodon being a 'living fossil', because it does seem to have retained certain, potentially ancient, features."
One of these is the groove in its teeth, which allows it to inject venom into passing insect prey - a unique feature, among today's mammals.
Dino-disaster
This lump of land carrying these strange animals, would later, after a few more breaks and fractures, become the island of Hispaniola, which contains the Dominican Republic and Haiti.
But just 11 million years after it slowly began to drift away from the supercontinent, devastation hit nearby.
A colossal space rock, 10-15km across, smashed into the Earth at the northern edge of what is now the Yucatan Peninsula, wiping out the dinosaurs that had dominated the world until that point.
Dr Turvey says: "The Caribbean islands were much closer to the mainland then, and this would have been close to 'ground zero'."
In the immediate aftermath, the impact would have caused massive rises in temperature and giant tsumamis. Later, the planet would have been shrouded in darkness, casting a devastating shadow over any animal hoping to survive.
Yet, while the dinosaurs and much other prehistoric life perished, somehow - and theories abound that it might have been because it burrowed - the solenodon survived.
Skip forward a few more tens of millions of years, and the solenodon proves itself a champion survivor once again. First, by coping with the super-hot "greenhouse Earth" of the Eocene Period, then major changes in global ecosystems, and later, the Ice Age.
But stop the clock at 6,000 years ago, and suddenly the plucky mammal had to contend with one of the biggest threats to Caribbean fauna to date - humans.
Before humans arrived, there were about 25 land mammals on the island. But one by one they died out, leaving only the solenodon and a rodent called the The Last Survivors Hispaniolan hutia as the last mammals standing.
What had happened?
Dr Turvey says: "If you want to find the smoking gun responsible for these extinctions, you need to find out exactly when these animals actually disappeared."
And so, back to the cave.
Within just a few moments of entering the dusty tomb, hidden away in a dark corner, we stumble across a fossil treasure trove.
As the layers of dust are carefully swept away, tiny bones begin to emerge.
"A giant hutia… That's a pygmy sloth… Here's a spiny rat," exclaims Dr Turvey
All several thousand years old. And all now extinct.
Finds like this provide a window into the past: through carbon dating, the researchers can find out exactly when the different species died out.
And then they can see whether the extinctions can be linked to humans or other changes on the island.
No bones?
In his extensive trawls through caves like this one, Dr Turvey has noticed a strange anomaly - a lack of solenodon bones.
He has only found a couple of tiny fragments of ancient solenodons, despite months and months of searching. But fossil finds of now-extinct species have been much more common.
Dr Turvey says: "This raises a lot of important questions - and rightfully so.
"Why did these species die out while the solenodons survived? What were the key ecological differences between these species?"
In their more recent history, solenodons have faced greater threats still.
When Christopher Columbus arrived in Hispaniola in 1492, rats began to leap off his ships onto the island, causing havoc.
But, while others perished, the solenodon survived the rat onslaught.
Dr Turvey thinks the venomous beasts may have been so resilient thanks to what he describes as the "Goldilocks hypothesis".
Very small mammals, such as the now-extinct pygmy shrew, could have easily have become the victims of the black rats.
Whereas the solenodon, which is close to rabbit-sized, probably had fewer problems with rats thanks to its heftier bulk.
But while the solenodon is bigger, it is not too big, which according to Dr Turvey, means it probably escaped the attention of hungry humans.
He explains: "If you are hunting something for dinner, you're more likely to go for something like a sloth or a monkey."
So, he says, it is possible that solenodon is a sort of "halfway house" - not too small and not too big.
He adds: "Like in Goldilocks, they're just right."
Ultimate survivors
Whatever happened to make the solenodon the ultimate survivor, allowing it to hang on against all the odds, the researchers fear that more modern problems like deforestation and the threats from very recent introductions, such as mongoose and dogs, could put a stop to its 76-million-year story.
But researchers say that delving into the solenodon's history could help to ensure its future.
As we emerge from the darkness of the cave and begin to prepare for our next night-trek into the forest, where we will try to come face to face with one of these fanged furballs, Dr Turvey takes a last look back into the cave.
Trying to piece together the puzzle of what happened to Hispaniola's mammals in the past, he says, might just help us to figure out how to save these last survivors today.
See video and illustrations at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/science_and_environment/10147688.stm
(Submitted by Dawn Holloway)
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Alan Rodgers: conservator of the forests of East Africa
From The Times
April 25, 2009
April 25, 2009
W. Alan Rodgers was for nearly 30 years the driving force behind the protection of East Africa’s globally important forests. For although the region is famous for its magnificent wildlife and landscapes — readily conjuring up images of vast herds of game on the great plains around Mount Kilimanjaro — most of its rare animals and plants are found outside the national parks and game reserves, being restricted to the remaining fragments of forests on the mountains and near the coast. Alan Rodgers was instrumental in virtually every major initiative in recent years to conserve those forest patches, most of which have now been given formal protection.
In 1979 Rodgers — as he was affectionately known to his friends — was on a field trip with the anthropologist Katherine Homewood to survey a remote forest on the Udzungwa Mountains in southwest Tanzania when they heard an unusual monkey call which they recognised as a mangabey, a species not previously known to exist within hundreds of kilometres of the spot. It turned out to be a completely new species which was later named the Sanje Mangabey and was the first new primate found in East Africa for many years. Its discovery alerted biologists and conservationists to the potential importance of the forests on the chain of mountains known as the Eastern Arc in Tanzania.
Numerous biological expeditions to the Eastern Arc over the ensuing 30 years have found — and continue to find — a wealth of new species, including another new species of mangabey in the Southern Highlands and nearby Udzungwa Mountains in 2003. The forests on these isolated mountain blocks are now recognised to be the richest tropical ecosystem in Africa for rare plants and animals, with the Udzungwa forests being the most important. Rodgers was among the first to understand their significance, and he spent the remainder of his life vigorously lobbying various Tanzanian authorities and the conservation movement to protect these forests. His efforts were partly rewarded in 1992 with the creation of the Udzungwa Mountains National Park, the first new national park in Tanzania in decades, and the first that was not set up to protect large mammals.
William Alan Rodgers was born in Liverpool in 1944 and moved to Kenya as a child when his father took up a lectureship in Nairobi. Here Rodgers later read zoology and botany, followed by a master’s degree in conservation at Aberdeen. He then spent 11 years in the vast Selous Game Reserve in Tanzania as an ecologist for the Game Department, where he took part in anti-poaching patrols and conducted wildlife census counts in the aircraft that he piloted. He set up the Miombo Research Centre and produced a flurry of scientific papers on the ecology of Africa’s largest wilderness reserve, on topics ranging from lions, elephants and the ivory trade to the effects of fire on vegetation.
By 1976 Rodgers was recognised to be a world expert on miombo woodland ecology and was given a position as a lecturer at the Zoology Department of the University of Dar es Salaam. Here he eagerly shared his knowledge and inspired a generation of students, many of whom were later to join his informal army of conservationists in the common cause of protecting East Africa’s natural heritage. During this time Rodgers’s many initiatives included a permanent research station on the edge of the Ngorongoro Crater to discourage corrupt officials from getting involved in rhinocerus poaching. He further co-founded the Tanzania Forest Conservation Group in 1982 and led students on field trips to spearhead research into the remaining fragments of Coastal Forest, another overlooked ecosystem with large numbers of rare animals and plants. Rodgers oversaw the activities of the Tanzania Forest Conservation Group for the rest of his life, and it is today Tanzania’s foremost forest conservation organisation, with 45 staff supporting the management of more than 100,000hectares of forest.
From 1984 until 1991 there followed a seven-year stint in India where Rodgers joined the Wildlife Institute of India. His energy produced another flurry of scientific papers on subjects ranging from snow leopards to sacred groves, together with his monumental work A Biogeographical Classification of India, which is now one of the most cited and used documents in the field of wildlife conservation in India. Rodgers was the key architect in developing “wildlife science” in India, and through his contribution the institute has subsequently produced a vast array of competent biologists who are now contributing to the cause of conservation across the globe. He pioneered a novel technique for preventing tiger attacks by encouraging people walking in forests to wear “face” masks on the back of their heads, as tigers are less likely to attack if they think you can see them. He also put together the Action Plan for Protected Areas Networks in a country with a far greater human population pressure than in East Africa. This experience was to emphasise to Rodgers the urgent need to formally protect as much habitat as possible before it was too late.
Rodgers returned to East Africa in 1992, on the eve of the Earth Summit in Rio and the UN Convention on Biodiversity, to set up a project financed by the Global Environment Facility to support the management of East African Biodiversity. As chief technical adviser for this initiative, Rodgers skilfully used his prominent position to increase the protection afforded to the most important remaining patches of forest. His two great causes, the Eastern Arc Forests and the Eastern African Coastal Forests, which were hardly known at the start of the 1980s, were included in the internationally recognised list of the world’s 34 biodiversity hotspots by the end of the millennium. After years of dormancy, many new forest reserves and nature reserves were gazetted through his efforts, as well as the Jozani National Park on Zanzibar Island.
Rodgers later served as the regional technical adviser to the UN Development Programme and Global Environment Facility initiatives in East Africa, where he sought to ensure that biodiversity conservation was advanced as part and parcel of the larger development agenda. He led an initiative to put together a manifesto for the environment to the Government of Tanzania in 1994, overcoming resistance from a number of government officials. His infectious enthusiasm held strong, despite his inevitable engagement with bureaucracy. He sought every opportunity to get people out into the field and do practical conservation. He was a mentor to many, who sought him out for his wisdom and encouragement, and who risked his ruthless editing of any documents that crossed his desk — wielding his red pen with pleasure to eliminate redundant prose and unsubstantiated claims.
As a person, Rodgers had more interest promoting and encouraging the right people to achieve action and results than personal recognition. It is therefore largely to his credit that a coherent and effective conservation movement exists in East Africa today, and that so much of the Eastern Arc and Coastal Forests are now protected. They still face enormous challenges and pressures from a growing population hungry for natural resources, but their situation would be far bleaker were it not for him.
Rodgers’s energy was not limited to conservation; he was also a fine rugby player, an enthusiastic actor, a keen fisherman and a generous and jolly host, who with a scratch of his grizzled beard would captivate his audiences with many a mischievous anecdote about his wild youthful years. He is survived by his first wife Bobbi Jacob and their daughter; his second wife Nicky Tortike and their two sons; and his partner Mercy Njoroge. His three children are now following his passion for East Africa and conservation.
Alan Rodgers, ecologist, botanist, zoologist and conservationist, was born on October 25, 1944. He died on March 31, 2009, aged 64.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article6163828.ece
Friday, April 24, 2009
Animals that resemble each other may be different species
Helena Aaberg, Information Office
University of Gothenburg
23.04.2009
Animals that seem identical may belong to completely different species. This is the conclusion of researchers at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, who have used DNA analyses to discover that one of our most common segmented worms is actually two types of worm. The result is one of many suggesting that the variety of species on the earth could be considerably larger than we thought.
"We could be talking about a large number of species that have existed undiscovered because they resemble other known species," says Professor Christer Erséus.
The segmented worms that were studied by Christer Erséus, doctoral student Daniel Gustavsson and their American colleague, are identical in appearance. From the very first time that they were described, they have been treated as the same species, and they are also found together in freshwater environments in North America, Sweden and the rest of Europe. But when the researchers examined the worms using advanced methods for DNA analysis, they discovered that they were in fact two different species. Both species of worm differ in one of the examined genes by 17 percent, which is twice as much as the equivalent difference between humans and chimpanzees.
The research results, which are being published in the journal Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, could have major consequences. For example, the worms are frequently used for laboratory testing around the world, to examine the effects of environmental toxins.
"Different species have different characteristics. If it emerged that these two species differ in terms of their tolerance towards certain toxins, then it could be difficult to make comparisons between different studies," says Christer Erséus.
And as this advanced DNA technology is tested increasingly within various animal groups, it could, according to Christer Erséus, mean that our perception of the earth's biodiversity may need to be revised.
"There could be ten times as many species in total, compared with what we previously thought," he says.
The new species of worm has not yet been given a name, since researchers have not yet decided which of the two will keep the old name, Lumbriculus variegatus.
For further information, please contact:
Christer Erséus, Professor at the Department of Zoology, University of Gothenburg
+46 (0)31-786 3645
+46 (0)703-576713
christer.erseus@zool.gu.se
Press contact
Krister Svahn
Public/Press Relations Officer
Faculty of Science, University of Gothenburg.
+46 (0)31 7864912
+46 (0)732 096339
krister.svahn@science.gu.se
www.science.gu.se
http://idw-online.de/pages/de/news311608
University of Gothenburg
23.04.2009
Animals that seem identical may belong to completely different species. This is the conclusion of researchers at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, who have used DNA analyses to discover that one of our most common segmented worms is actually two types of worm. The result is one of many suggesting that the variety of species on the earth could be considerably larger than we thought.
"We could be talking about a large number of species that have existed undiscovered because they resemble other known species," says Professor Christer Erséus.
The segmented worms that were studied by Christer Erséus, doctoral student Daniel Gustavsson and their American colleague, are identical in appearance. From the very first time that they were described, they have been treated as the same species, and they are also found together in freshwater environments in North America, Sweden and the rest of Europe. But when the researchers examined the worms using advanced methods for DNA analysis, they discovered that they were in fact two different species. Both species of worm differ in one of the examined genes by 17 percent, which is twice as much as the equivalent difference between humans and chimpanzees.
The research results, which are being published in the journal Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, could have major consequences. For example, the worms are frequently used for laboratory testing around the world, to examine the effects of environmental toxins.
"Different species have different characteristics. If it emerged that these two species differ in terms of their tolerance towards certain toxins, then it could be difficult to make comparisons between different studies," says Christer Erséus.
And as this advanced DNA technology is tested increasingly within various animal groups, it could, according to Christer Erséus, mean that our perception of the earth's biodiversity may need to be revised.
"There could be ten times as many species in total, compared with what we previously thought," he says.
The new species of worm has not yet been given a name, since researchers have not yet decided which of the two will keep the old name, Lumbriculus variegatus.
For further information, please contact:
Christer Erséus, Professor at the Department of Zoology, University of Gothenburg
+46 (0)31-786 3645
+46 (0)703-576713
christer.erseus@zool.gu.se
Press contact
Krister Svahn
Public/Press Relations Officer
Faculty of Science, University of Gothenburg.
+46 (0)31 7864912
+46 (0)732 096339
krister.svahn@science.gu.se
www.science.gu.se
http://idw-online.de/pages/de/news311608
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Curator on trail of sea monsters, serpents
By BEVERLEY WARE South Shore Bureau
Mon. Apr 20 - 5:13 AM
NORTHWEST COVE — Bloodshot eyes as big as saucers, a body coated in mossy hair, spinal protrusions along undulating bodies covered in scales 15 centimetres long. These are just some characteristics of the "denizens of the deep" spotted off the coast of Nova Scotia as recently as a few years ago.
Sea captains have seen them. Military men have seen them. And Andrew Hebda, curator of zoology with the Nova Scotia Museum, says there’s definitely something to these sightings of monsters and sea serpents.
The question is what?
Granted, he said, there’s no doubt some creatures were likely seen through the bottom of a rum bottle, "but the point is, they saw something."
In 2003, Wallace Cartwright was in his lobster boat off Alder Point, Cape Breton, when he saw a sea serpent about eight metres long. It was the diameter of an oil drum and he followed it until it dove down deep and disappeared.
Two hundred years earlier, a woman by the name of Mrs. W. Lee saw a 30-metre sea monster off the coast of Cape Breton. "Its back was dark green and it stood in the water in flexuous hillocks and went through it with infectious noise," says one account of her sighting.
Pretty enthralling stuff for Mr. Hebda, who is writing a book on these mysterious creatures of the deep.
He spoke at the community centre here on Sunday at an event hosted by the Athenaeum Society of Nova Scotia. "You’re in sea monster central in Nova Scotia," he told them.
In 1833, five fellows were out fishing off Mahone Bay when they reported seeing a monster some 180 metres from their boat. They provided good detail despite the rum they had drunk.
It was about 31 metres long. "We saw the head and neck of some denizen of the deep, precisely like those of a common snake, in the act of swimming, the head so far elevated and thrown forward by the curve of the neck as to enable to see the water under and beyond it."
There have been pockets of such sightings around the province, many of them quite similar despite the decades, if not centuries, that pass between them. And they tend to be in warmer waters, shipping channels and fishing grounds.
Many of them have been off the South Shore, as well as the Pictou area and Cape Breton.
Mr. Hebda is writing a book about sea monster sightings and has been inspired by the detailed accounts he’s collected. In 1975, Keith Ross was in his boat off Cape Sable Island with his son Rodney when a sight suddenly rose before them. "It had eyes as big around as saucers and bright red-looking. I mean, you could see the red in its eyes like they were bloodshot. It had its mouth wide open and there were two big tusks — I call them tusks — that hung down from its upper jaw."
Mr. Ross roared his boat away from the grey, snake-like body as it passed astern.
The Mi’kmaq first recorded similar serpents in petroglyphs found at Kejimkujik National Park. The first documented account was by Nicolas Denys of a merman spotted in Canso Harbour in 1656. The first reported sighting in Halifax Harbour was of an 18-metre serpent in 1825.
The fishermen’s world revolves around things they see every day. Mr. Hebda said when they see something unusual, they want to know what it is. Sometimes the answer is quite innocuous. Often the truth will never be known.
For instance, Mr. Cartwright may well have seen an oarfish, also known as the king of the herring, when he was working off Cape Breton six years ago. "Do we know everything that’s out there? No, no we don’t. Have we seen everything that’s out there? No, now we haven’t," but Mr. Hebda suspects there’s an explanation for pretty much every case — whether it’s a rare tropical fish brought north by warm currents or the distorted vision produced by the thick glass at the bottom of a bottle of spirits.
Mr. Ross hadn’t been drinking when he saw that tusked animal with the bloodshot eyes. But Mr Hebda said that’s also the year officials confirmed and photographed a walrus in the area.
"People see things, they try to figure out what they saw," he said.
"Yes, they did see something. What is it? Therein lies the challenge. It’s a voyage of exploration to see what it is."
( bware@herald.ca)
http://thechronicleherald.ca/Front/1117547.html
Mon. Apr 20 - 5:13 AM
NORTHWEST COVE — Bloodshot eyes as big as saucers, a body coated in mossy hair, spinal protrusions along undulating bodies covered in scales 15 centimetres long. These are just some characteristics of the "denizens of the deep" spotted off the coast of Nova Scotia as recently as a few years ago.
Sea captains have seen them. Military men have seen them. And Andrew Hebda, curator of zoology with the Nova Scotia Museum, says there’s definitely something to these sightings of monsters and sea serpents.
The question is what?
Granted, he said, there’s no doubt some creatures were likely seen through the bottom of a rum bottle, "but the point is, they saw something."
In 2003, Wallace Cartwright was in his lobster boat off Alder Point, Cape Breton, when he saw a sea serpent about eight metres long. It was the diameter of an oil drum and he followed it until it dove down deep and disappeared.
Two hundred years earlier, a woman by the name of Mrs. W. Lee saw a 30-metre sea monster off the coast of Cape Breton. "Its back was dark green and it stood in the water in flexuous hillocks and went through it with infectious noise," says one account of her sighting.
Pretty enthralling stuff for Mr. Hebda, who is writing a book on these mysterious creatures of the deep.
He spoke at the community centre here on Sunday at an event hosted by the Athenaeum Society of Nova Scotia. "You’re in sea monster central in Nova Scotia," he told them.
In 1833, five fellows were out fishing off Mahone Bay when they reported seeing a monster some 180 metres from their boat. They provided good detail despite the rum they had drunk.
It was about 31 metres long. "We saw the head and neck of some denizen of the deep, precisely like those of a common snake, in the act of swimming, the head so far elevated and thrown forward by the curve of the neck as to enable to see the water under and beyond it."
There have been pockets of such sightings around the province, many of them quite similar despite the decades, if not centuries, that pass between them. And they tend to be in warmer waters, shipping channels and fishing grounds.
Many of them have been off the South Shore, as well as the Pictou area and Cape Breton.
Mr. Hebda is writing a book about sea monster sightings and has been inspired by the detailed accounts he’s collected. In 1975, Keith Ross was in his boat off Cape Sable Island with his son Rodney when a sight suddenly rose before them. "It had eyes as big around as saucers and bright red-looking. I mean, you could see the red in its eyes like they were bloodshot. It had its mouth wide open and there were two big tusks — I call them tusks — that hung down from its upper jaw."
Mr. Ross roared his boat away from the grey, snake-like body as it passed astern.
The Mi’kmaq first recorded similar serpents in petroglyphs found at Kejimkujik National Park. The first documented account was by Nicolas Denys of a merman spotted in Canso Harbour in 1656. The first reported sighting in Halifax Harbour was of an 18-metre serpent in 1825.
The fishermen’s world revolves around things they see every day. Mr. Hebda said when they see something unusual, they want to know what it is. Sometimes the answer is quite innocuous. Often the truth will never be known.
For instance, Mr. Cartwright may well have seen an oarfish, also known as the king of the herring, when he was working off Cape Breton six years ago. "Do we know everything that’s out there? No, no we don’t. Have we seen everything that’s out there? No, now we haven’t," but Mr. Hebda suspects there’s an explanation for pretty much every case — whether it’s a rare tropical fish brought north by warm currents or the distorted vision produced by the thick glass at the bottom of a bottle of spirits.
Mr. Ross hadn’t been drinking when he saw that tusked animal with the bloodshot eyes. But Mr Hebda said that’s also the year officials confirmed and photographed a walrus in the area.
"People see things, they try to figure out what they saw," he said.
"Yes, they did see something. What is it? Therein lies the challenge. It’s a voyage of exploration to see what it is."
( bware@herald.ca)
http://thechronicleherald.ca/Front/1117547.html
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Gerald Durrell's Jersey wildlife conservation trust celebrates 50th anniversary
Fifty years since the opening of Gerald Durrell's wildlife conservation trust, his legacy forges on. Jessamy Calkin celebrates the work of the pioneering naturalist and author.
Last Updated: 11:43AM BST 10 Apr 2009
In a small art gallery in central London, an incongruous and eminent collection of people have gathered for an unusual event: the display and auction of fabric pictures and ceramic art by the artist and actress Lalla Ward. The occasion is the 50th anniversary of the opening of Gerald Durrell's wildlife trust in Jersey, and the mixed bag of attendees – who include Sir David Attenborough, Brian Eno, Edward Fox, Sir Peter Hall and Redmond O'Hanlon – are invited to bid for the work anonymously.
All proceeds go to Durrell's work in Galapagos, and a particular aim is to save the Floreana mockingbird, the bird that inspired Darwin's epiphany, and now one of the world's most endangered species. It is a silent auction, and Richard Dawkins, the evolutionary biologist, author and husband of Lalla Ward, exhorts us to place a secret bid in a cardboard box. Stephen Fry, on location in Borneo, has already placed bids on seven items. Don't let the Floreana mockingbird go the same way as the dodo, Dawkins says.
I have been invited here by Dr Lee Durrell, Gerald's widow, to observe what she calls 'something really Durrelly'. As well as being an author – he wrote 37 books – and animal collector, Gerald Durrell was a pioneer in captive breeding. 'Our objectives are firstly to provide a safe sanctuary for species and then to build up a colony of them,' he declared. 'Once you have created your colony surplus, animals can be sent to organisations all over the world until the creatures are safely established under controlled conditions. Then you can start on the final problem: taking your surplus animals and returning them to the wild, reintroducing the species to areas where it has become extinct.'
Among the guests are 34-year-old Nick Breeze, Durrell's great-nephew and one of the very few remaining direct descendants of the family. His grandmother was Margaret – or Margo as she was known in Durrell's most famous book, My Family and Other Animals, the flighty older sister – and Nick grew up with her in her house in Bournemouth. It was his father, Gerry Breeze (named after Gerald), who helped build the cages and worked at the zoo in its early days, where he was in charge of the reptile house. Before the Jersey zoo was acquired, Durrell kept his animals in Margo's garden. It was Gerry's job to feed and clean the animals every day while 'Uncle Gerald' was off trying to find them a permanent home.
In a telling comment 30 years ago, Durrell informed the trust's former secretary, Simon Hicks, that it wouldn't be necessary to have a zoo if there weren't any endangered species, and furthermore that he wouldn't admit the public at all were it not essential.
These days the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust, as it is now known (commonly called Durrell; before, it was the Jersey Wildlife Preservation Trust, commonly called 'the Zoo'), is a model of its kind. Set in 32 acres of the Trinity area of Jersey, it is a beautiful, verdant oasis and the island's main tourist attraction.
Apart from 130 species of animals, birds and reptiles, there is an education and training centre and all kinds of research going on behind the scenes: for example, to combat the fungus that is attacking amphibians and causing a global crisis, they have created a bio-secure environment to breed a clean population.
This is also the HQ that coordinates Durrell's international conservation work – more than 40 projects in 17 countries. The captive breeding has been an unqualified success: since the zoo opened, more than 13,000 animals have been born here. Durrell has saved several species from extinction, and they have also reintroduced species into their original habitats and other habitats, and worked towards protecting those habitats.
This is one zoo where you don't feel guilty looking at the animals, because the animals don't look out of place. There is no repetitive behaviour born of stress, no pacing around. They all look busy, they have stuff to do: the orang-utans have worked out that if they poke twigs into certain logs, they can get honey out; the aye-ayes, looking like furry leprechauns, fiddle with bamboo sticks, ferreting out mealworms with their long fingers. There are black macaques with their lovely hairstyles and long, wise faces; there are enclosures for lemurs and tamarins; there are aviaries and a fruit bat tunnel.
In the gorilla enclosure, the patriarch Ya Kwanza lounges around with his favourite wife, Bahasha; unfortunately Bahasha has developed a thing for another female, and there are no babies forthcoming at the moment. When Jon Stark, the gorilla keeper, tells us about the death of Ya Pili, a charismatic little female, and how it damaged the dynamic of the whole group, it sounds as if he is talking about a member of his own family. (In 1968 a five-year-old boy called Levan Merritt fell into the gorilla enclosure where he lay unconscious with Jambo, the original patriarch of the Jersey gorillas, standing over him, guarding him from the others until the keepers could get him out. It changed people's attitudes to gorillas and made world headlines.)
The primates are endlessly fascinating, but this is not a people-pleasing zoo. Durrell used to say he felt 'sympathy for the small and ugly; since I'm big and ugly I try to preserve the little ones.' He tended to select animals that were close to extinction, or those that could best be helped.
Charlotte Bernard, a volunteer who has been at the zoo for more than 15 years (they have a devoted army of about 100 volunteers), takes my daughter and me on a tour. And so we see the wrinkled hornbill, the agile frog and the hottentot teals (little brown jobs) and the ferruginous duck; we learn how the flamingoes, born white, turn pinker as they age, and about the two who escaped and lived on the beach; about the round island boa and the abnormal breeding habits of the mountain chicken, which is actually a frog from Montserrat, and how a surgeon came in from the local hospital to perform a caesarean on Gina the orang-utan because their anatomy so closely resembles that of a human.
It wasn't always like this. In the early days it was more conventionally zoo-like: there was Leo the lion and Peter the cheetah; there was Cholmondeley the chimp and Delilah the porcupine and Trumpy, the grey-winged trumpeter, whose chief job was to settle in new animals. 'He looks, to be frank, like a badly made chicken,' wrote Durrell in Menagerie Manor. 'As soon as
we got a new creature, Trumpy managed to hear of it, and would come bouncing along, cackling to himself, to settle it in. He would then spend 24 hours standing by the cage (or preferably in it if he could) until he thought the new arrival was firmly established, whereupon he would bounce back to his special beat in the mammal house.'
'We tend not to use the word "zoo" because of its negative connotations,' says Lee Durrell, an elegant woman with a faint trace of a Tennessee accent. She lives in the flat in the manor house. A zoologist who specialises in animal communication, she is executor of the Durrell estate and honorary director of the trust; her role now is chiefly as ambassador, chairman of the governance committee and fundraiser for the cause, for the trust needs millions of pounds to make some major improvements and continue its work. In 1989 tourism in Jersey was at its peak, before low-cost flights made it as cheap to go to Italy or Corsica. Then, Durrell had 340,000 members, now it is less than half that.
Gerald Durrell died 14 years ago, but his wife thinks he would be very pleased to see how his zoo has turned out. 'In the early days it was pretty much hand to mouth, chickenwire and old crates, so it looked like a menagerie,' she says. 'We've really tried to keep an energy about it. When you fly over the island you look down and see a big patch of green, because all our trees are so mature now.'
Walking around the aviary, Lee's favourite place, we come across the pink pigeon, a classic Durrell success story. It is a distant relation of the dodo, the symbol of the trust, which was extinct by 1681, its Mauritian habitat eaten by goats, its eggs eaten by pigs, its number killed by dogs and cats. On a trip to Mauritius to save the pink pigeon in 1976, Durrell reflected, 'I was filled with great sadness that this was one of 33 individuals that survived; the shipwrecked remains of their species, eking out a precarious existence on their cryptomeria raft. So, at one time, must a tiny group of Dodos, the last of their harmless, waddling kind, have faced the final onslaught of pigs, dogs, cats, monkeys and man, and disappeared for ever, since there was no one to care and no one to offer them a breeding sanctuary, safe from their enemies.'
Gerald Durrell barely went to school and never passed any sort of exam, but he won nine international awards for leadership in conservation. Sir David Attenborough has referred to him as having the zoological equivalent of green fingers. 'He certainly was very good at handling animals and divining ways in which to make them happy,' Attenborough says. 'He had an intuition about animals. It's difficult to define what green fingers mean but some people instinctively know whether a plant wants a little more water or a little less water, or more shade or wind – and it comes from an absorption in looking at things and never tiring of looking at them, and therefore noticing things which people who are only paying more cursory attention don't see. That applies to animals even more than plants. There are some people in the zoological world who can't keep animals, and it isn't a lack of love, it's just that they don't have the perception or understanding to find out what that animal may require to make it happier.'
Attenborough was a great fan of Durrell's very early books – The Overloaded Ark and The Bafut Beagles – but notes that 'he tended to humanise things, his descriptions were anthropomorphic very often.' I think this is where Durrell's charm lay, this anthropomorphism – he writes of a long black and yellow striped snake 'like an animated school tie'; of hippos in Zambia 'running off on tiptoe like a fat woman in a tight skirt running for a bus'; of a herd of European bison 'like woolly express trains'.
What has made Durrell most famous, of course, is his 1956 book, My Family and Other Animals, which has to date sold five million copies worldwide. Never out of print, the book tells the story of his idyllic childhood in Corfu, where the family moved in 1935, when he was 10. 'Our arrival was like being born for the first time,' he said years later. His tales of growing up in paradise – with his dog Roger, his tutor and mentor Theo Stephanides, his friends the rose beetle man and Yani the shepherd, and his menagerie: Achilles the tortoise, Quasimodo the pigeon, who liked to march to waltzes, the puppies Widdle and Puke, Old Plop the ancient terrapin – and of the snow-white villa and the strawberry-pink villa and the daffodil-yellow villa, of parties that began at lunchtime and ended after a midnight bathe at three in the morning, are probably his most vivid legacy.
Durrell's book appeals to all ages and virtually all markets; it can be read any number of times and still feels sprightly and funny and new. 'His style is like fresh, crisp lettuce,' said his brother Lawrence, who went on to become a celebrated author himself. Durrell wrote the book 20 years after they left Corfu, aided by an extraordinary memory; he had the gift of total recall. 'It's almost vulgar,' he told the writer David Hughes, 'the way I remember photographically in the colours of a glossy magazine.'
Gerald Durrell had wanted his own zoo since the age of six. Zoo was his first word, which he uttered in Bihar province, India, where he was born in 1925. His father, Lawrence, was a civil engineer who died of a suspected cerebral haemorrhage when Gerald was three. His mother, Louisa, who was left the equivalent of £500,000 in Lawrence's will, brought Gerald and his sister Margo, five years older, back to England to be educated (his older brothers, Larry, 16, and Leslie, 11, were already at school there), and the family moved to Bournemouth. Gerald went briefly to school, which he absolutely hated, and his mother took him out, aged nine, and he never went back.
Louisa was eccentric and independent and ran a slightly chaotic household. 'I just loved the whole craziness of it,' said Nancy (Larry's first wife), in Douglas Botting's gripping biography of Durrell. 'Mother used to drink a lot of gin at that time, and she used to retire to bed when Gerry went to bed – Gerry wouldn't go to bed without her, he was afraid of being on his own, I think – and she'd take her gin bottle up with her. So then we all used to retire up there… she had a large double bed, and an enormous silver tea tray and we'd carry on the evening sitting on the bed, drinking gin and tea and chatting, while Gerry was asleep in his own bed in the same room. It was all very cosy.' 'It's curious,' Gerald related later, 'something one didn't realise at the time – but my mother allowed us to be.'
The family moved to Corfu at the urging of Lawrence, who thought of England as 'that mean, shabby little island'. When Gerald arrived he found 'creatures I had never seen or imagined before,' he told David Hughes. 'I'd never thought of such fecundity: this garden overloaded with plants, every stone I turned over had 20 different creatures under it, and there were huge blue furry bumblebees flying round my head and praying mantises staring at me even more astonished than I was, and for me it was like being pushed off the Bournemouth cliffs into heaven. From then onwards, just like that, I was home.'
Under the guidance of Theo Stephanides, his life's path was set. When the family reluctantly left the island four years later, with war threatening, they took with them three dogs, two toads, two tortoises, six canaries, four goldfinches, two greenfinches, a linnet, two magpies, a seagull, a pigeon and an owl. As Gerald was to relate in My Family and Other Animals, the Swiss official glanced at their passports and wrote on a form, 'One travelling circus and staff'. 'What a thing to write,' his mother said. 'Really, some people are peculiar.'
The family moved to a flat off Kensington High Street, London, and 14-year-old Gerald got a job as a junior assistant in a pet shop, where he looked after the reptiles and the aquarium. When they then moved to the Bournemouth suburb of Charminster, Gerald was past the age of compulsory education, and went to work on a farm until the end of the war. (In 1942 he was called up but failed the medical due to sinus trouble.) Thanks to a hopeful letter and an enterprising official, he was offered the
job of student keeper at Whipsnade zoo, where he was to remain for more than a year. At this point Durrell realised he wanted to see the animals in the wild, but having no experience, failed to join any collecting trips. At 21 he came into his inheritance and decided to use it to finance his own collecting trip – to the Cameroons.
It was trial by fire but he adored it. He contracted malaria and everything else going ('He had had jiggers in his toes, ants in his pants, lice in his hair, bugs in his bed and rats in his tent,' Botting wrote) but arrived home after seven months abroad with nearly 200 creatures. His sister, Margo, wrote in The Daily Telegraph about Gerald's arrival at her house, rather ominously carrying a sack and a large wooden box: ' "Just a few monkeys," Gerry called out airily. "I hope there's nothing dangerous in that sack, dear?" Mother inquired, kissing her youngest tenderly. "It's a 6ft python, but harmless," Gerald replied." ' The trip was a big success, Gerald sold the animals to English zoos and set off on a second expedition to the Cameroons the following year, where he encountered the Fon of Bafut, and nearly died after being bitten by a burrowing viper.
On his return to England he visited Manchester zoo and met Jacquie Wolfenden, the 19-year-old daughter of a hotelier; they were married two years later and moved into the upstairs flat in Margo's house. Broke and under pressure from Jacquie, Durrell wrote The Overloaded Ark about his trip to the Cameroons on his brother-in-law's portable typewriter, lying on the floor, smoking. He found that he hated writing but that he had an incredible memory.
Faber bought the book for £25 but Durrell then acquired an agent, Spencer Curtis Brown, who sold the rights to America for £500, and in July 1953 the book was published to extremely good reviews. 'My younger brother has scored tremendous success with his first book,' Lawrence wrote to his friend Henry Miller, 'and he is making a deal of money. How marvellous to have one's career fixed at 25 or so and to be able to pay one's way.'
In autumn 1954 The Bafut Beagles came out, and the book became a Christmas bestseller. The following summer Gerald started writing My Family and Other Animals, and found that it poured out of him. He wrote it in just six weeks, sitting up in bed in his sister's house, with a constant stream of visitors. 'He has successfully re-created the family with the devastatingly faithful eye of a 13-year-old,' Larry remarked.
By 1955 Gerald had written six books and a pattern had been established – he would go off on trips, collecting animals to sell to zoos, and then write about them, which would pretty much provide his income for the rest of his life. He started looking for a zoo of his own – 'for breeding of those forms of animal life which are on the borders of extinction and which without help of this sort cannot survive' – and planned to write about its birth.
In July 1957 he returned from his fifth collecting trip with 200 reptiles, 50 birds and a nine-month-old chimp called Cholmondeley St John. They were all installed in cages in Margo's garden; her son, Gerry, was detailed to look after them, and Cholmondeley was handed over to Mother, who dressed him in hand knits and treated him like a toddler. Durrell started looking for potential sites in Bournemouth, then Jacquie suggested the Channel Islands, and Durrell's publisher introduced them to Major Hugh Fraser, who took them to his family home, Les Augres Manor, which they promptly leased and turned into what would become the Jersey Wildlife Preservation Trust.
The zoo opened at Easter in 1959, and by the fourth day they were up to 6,000 visitors a day. Jeremy Mallinson came to work there at the age of 22, when the zoo had been open for two days.
'A job became available when someone broke their ankle chasing a crane, and I joined in the bird section,' says Mallinson, who worked six and a half days a week for £8.50 ('I had Thursday afternoons off to play hockey'). 'Gerald pointed out that
when I joined I didn't know the difference between a hippo and a hearth-rug, but I was there for 42 years.'
'He treats animals as if he had given birth to them,' Durrell was to say, and he made Mallinson his deputy in 1963; he became director of the trust after Durrell died. Mallinson looked after the cheetahs. Durrell's mother moved into the manor and nurtured some of the more delicate specimens. A tiny woolly monkey called Topsy, which Gerald had rescued half-dead from a dealer's shop, was entrusted into her care. Topsy needed to cling but was nervous of humans so was given a teddy bear. 'Soon she was too big for the teddy bear and was transferred to an amiable guinea pig with a vacuous expression. At night she slept on top of the unfortunate animal looking like an outsize jockey perched on a Shetland pony.'
Chimps escaped; Claudius the tapir laid waste a field of gladioli; Pedro, one of the spectacled bears, ran off; and one day Gerald and a new recruit, John Hartley, got trapped in the coils of a reticulated python called Pythagoras. Hartley, who left school on a Friday and started work at the zoo the following Monday, aged 18, remembers meeting Durrell as, 'the best thing that ever happened to me'.
In the early days Durrell wasn't around that much. 'We used to see him in short spells, then he'd be off, filming or writing at his house in France,' Hartley says. 'He had to earn a living somehow, he had no income from the zoo. Then one day he appeared when I was scrubbing out a pond and invited me to come to west Africa with him to make a television series for the BBC. It was a proper old-fashioned expedition.' Hartley went on more than 40 expeditions, and has now retired.
Although shy, Durrell was a very funny man, and a great raconteur. 'He was full of jokes, all the time, and terrific fun to be with,' Attenborough says. He inspired devotion in everyone who met him. Doreen Evans, who became his assistant and went on several collecting trips with him, remembers her job interview, in which he suggested with a completely straight face, 'Would you be prepared, if need be, to breastfeed a baby hedgehog?'
'He was a volatile character but he was an absolute genius,' Lee says. He was also an alcoholic, and prone to depression, railing against what mankind was doing to the world. His mother had also suffered depressive bouts where alcohol became her refuge, and Lawrence too had this gene, getting to the point where he couldn't function without alcohol. In the late 1960s Gerald had a breakdown, exacerbated by the death of his mother. He received treatment at the Priory in early 1969. Peter Grose, his agent, remembers getting up at eight one morning to find him drinking a vast brandy mixed with a pint of milk for breakfast, and then opening the first bottle of claret at around 11.
In May 1972 Gerald addressed a conference on breeding endangered species in captivity at which he spoke passionately about the need for captive breeding, and also voiced his wish that one day the trust could provide a training basis for zoological students and staff from around the world. This was to materialise seven years later, when the neighbouring property was bought by the trust and turned into an international college of specialist education. The first trainee went on to become the first director of the first national park in Mauritius, and 2,000 students from 125 countries have now attended the centre, which was officially opened by the Princess Royal, an enthusiastic patron of the trust, in 1984. Its graduates have become known as Gerald Durrell's Army.
In March 1976 Durrell flew to Mauritius with John Hartley to catch some specimens of the highly endangered Mauritian kestrel and pink pigeon. In 1984 he signed an accord with the Mauritian government to begin a breeding programme for a number of critically endangered species, including the pink pigeon, which became one of his first successful reintroductions. The pink pigeon is now officially no longer critically endangered (nor is the kestrel, once the world's most endangered bird).
Returning to Jersey from his 1976 trip, Durrell found his wife, Jacquie, packing to leave; their relationship had been rocky for a while, exacerbated by alcohol and Durrell's obsession with his zoo, which Jacquie resented. The following year he met Lee McGeorge, then a 27-year-old zoology graduate from Memphis, who had recently spent two years in Madagascar studying ecology and the social behaviour of lemurs. They were married in 1979, once Durrell's divorce was through, and Jeremy Mallinson was their best man. 'I am one of Lee's disciples,' he says. 'She was a little bit of heaven coming into his life. I'm sure she gave him at least another 10 years of life.'
For her part, Lee had taken a while to be convinced. 'She married me for my zoo,' Durrell was fond of saying, but he took great delight in showing her his world, and she was swiftly caught up in his life and work. With Lee he went on to write several books, including The Amateur Naturalist, which outsold everything he had ever written, and together they made five television series, including Durrell in Russia, where they visited 20 conservation reserves, which were flourishing before the collapse of the USSR. Durrell found this inspiring but he was becoming increasingly desperate about life. 'The world is being destroyed at the speed of an Exocet missile, and we are riding a bicycle,' he said of his work at the trust. 'I feel despair 24 hours a day.' In those days it cost £2 million a year to keep the trust going, and they were constantly plagued by financial worries (they still are).
By the early 1990s Durrell's health was in swift decline. He had suffered several grand mal seizures, probably alcohol-related, and had developed a pain in his abdomen that wouldn't go away. In January 1994 he was diagnosed with liver cancer and given a few months to live unless he had a transplant.
In March a liver became available. He was flown from Jersey to King's College Hospital in south London, sipping whisky on his way to fortify his spirits. The operation was deemed a success, but his pancreas was in a mess and he was plagued by infections, and by November 1994 he had been in hospital for eight months without a break.
At this point, Lee made a breakthrough. 'I so profoundly wanted to be part of Gerry's dream and take it forward,' she told Botting, 'that I married without romantic love. I was not worthy of Gerry's enormous love because I did not return it – not at first – though at least I was honest with him from the beginning. But when Gerry really became ill, I began to feel strongly protective towards him, and then, when I realised what I could lose, I began to realise what I had, and I finally fell in love with my husband.'
In January 1995, shortly after Durrell's 70th birthday, Mallinson went to see him in hospital. 'He was sitting up in bed, quite twinkly, and asked, "How long have you worked for me, Jeremy?" "Thirty-five years," I replied. "I'm so pleased I only took you on a temporary basis," he said.' Three days later Durrell died of septicaemia. Lee and Jeremy Mallinson were with him. 'He was my mentor,' Mallinson says simply.
The following June Sir David Attenborough addressed Durrell's memorial celebration at the Natural History Museum. In an address entitled 'The Renegade who was Right', Attenborough said, 'The extraordinary thing (which is perhaps the mark of genius) was that everything he said – and then typically did – seems now to be so obvious, so logical and so much part of everyday conservation language, that we easily forget how radical, revolutionary and downright opinionated his statements seemed at the time.'
Lalla Ward's auction raised £24,000 for Durrell's work in Galapagos. Back in Jersey, the trust had its own way of celebrating 50 years. On March 26 Lee hosted a small party for the 'old boys' – Mallinson, Hartley, Quentin Bloxham, Shep Mallet – and the staff. Attenborough was the guest of honour at a special fundraising dinner. Everyone in Jersey helped out, even the local Co-op, for Durrell is part of their heritage, they are proud of it. And 200 children – members of the Dodo Club, the junior membership – arranged themselves in the grounds to spell out the campaign slogan, which was then photographed from the air, written in children: it's time.
It is indeed time. As Gerald Durrell pointed out, 'You can't build a tortoise. You can't build a bird. That's what we've got to remember – if we destroy it, we can't recreate it.'
In March 2010 Lee Durrell will accompany a wildlife adventure ‘To Aldabra and Beyond’, on board the MS Island Sky. The expedition begins in the remote eponymous Indian Ocean archipelago and en route for Mozambique and Tanzania, the ship will visit Madagascar for a behind the scenes look at the foundation’s invaluable work on the world’s fourth largest island. Arranged by The Ultimate Travel Company, this unique two week voyage aims to raise £20,000 for the Durrell Foundation.
The Ultimate Travel Company is offering Telegraph readers an exclusive opportunity to join this extraordinary journey at a saving of £500 per person.
For more information telephone 020 7386 4646 or visit www.theultimatetravelcompany.co.uk
For more information about the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust, visit durrell.org.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/conservation/5130889/Gerald-Durrells-Jersey-wildlife-conservation-trust-celebrates-50th-anniversary.html
Last Updated: 11:43AM BST 10 Apr 2009In a small art gallery in central London, an incongruous and eminent collection of people have gathered for an unusual event: the display and auction of fabric pictures and ceramic art by the artist and actress Lalla Ward. The occasion is the 50th anniversary of the opening of Gerald Durrell's wildlife trust in Jersey, and the mixed bag of attendees – who include Sir David Attenborough, Brian Eno, Edward Fox, Sir Peter Hall and Redmond O'Hanlon – are invited to bid for the work anonymously.
All proceeds go to Durrell's work in Galapagos, and a particular aim is to save the Floreana mockingbird, the bird that inspired Darwin's epiphany, and now one of the world's most endangered species. It is a silent auction, and Richard Dawkins, the evolutionary biologist, author and husband of Lalla Ward, exhorts us to place a secret bid in a cardboard box. Stephen Fry, on location in Borneo, has already placed bids on seven items. Don't let the Floreana mockingbird go the same way as the dodo, Dawkins says.
I have been invited here by Dr Lee Durrell, Gerald's widow, to observe what she calls 'something really Durrelly'. As well as being an author – he wrote 37 books – and animal collector, Gerald Durrell was a pioneer in captive breeding. 'Our objectives are firstly to provide a safe sanctuary for species and then to build up a colony of them,' he declared. 'Once you have created your colony surplus, animals can be sent to organisations all over the world until the creatures are safely established under controlled conditions. Then you can start on the final problem: taking your surplus animals and returning them to the wild, reintroducing the species to areas where it has become extinct.'
Among the guests are 34-year-old Nick Breeze, Durrell's great-nephew and one of the very few remaining direct descendants of the family. His grandmother was Margaret – or Margo as she was known in Durrell's most famous book, My Family and Other Animals, the flighty older sister – and Nick grew up with her in her house in Bournemouth. It was his father, Gerry Breeze (named after Gerald), who helped build the cages and worked at the zoo in its early days, where he was in charge of the reptile house. Before the Jersey zoo was acquired, Durrell kept his animals in Margo's garden. It was Gerry's job to feed and clean the animals every day while 'Uncle Gerald' was off trying to find them a permanent home.
In a telling comment 30 years ago, Durrell informed the trust's former secretary, Simon Hicks, that it wouldn't be necessary to have a zoo if there weren't any endangered species, and furthermore that he wouldn't admit the public at all were it not essential.
These days the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust, as it is now known (commonly called Durrell; before, it was the Jersey Wildlife Preservation Trust, commonly called 'the Zoo'), is a model of its kind. Set in 32 acres of the Trinity area of Jersey, it is a beautiful, verdant oasis and the island's main tourist attraction.
Apart from 130 species of animals, birds and reptiles, there is an education and training centre and all kinds of research going on behind the scenes: for example, to combat the fungus that is attacking amphibians and causing a global crisis, they have created a bio-secure environment to breed a clean population.
This is also the HQ that coordinates Durrell's international conservation work – more than 40 projects in 17 countries. The captive breeding has been an unqualified success: since the zoo opened, more than 13,000 animals have been born here. Durrell has saved several species from extinction, and they have also reintroduced species into their original habitats and other habitats, and worked towards protecting those habitats.
This is one zoo where you don't feel guilty looking at the animals, because the animals don't look out of place. There is no repetitive behaviour born of stress, no pacing around. They all look busy, they have stuff to do: the orang-utans have worked out that if they poke twigs into certain logs, they can get honey out; the aye-ayes, looking like furry leprechauns, fiddle with bamboo sticks, ferreting out mealworms with their long fingers. There are black macaques with their lovely hairstyles and long, wise faces; there are enclosures for lemurs and tamarins; there are aviaries and a fruit bat tunnel.
In the gorilla enclosure, the patriarch Ya Kwanza lounges around with his favourite wife, Bahasha; unfortunately Bahasha has developed a thing for another female, and there are no babies forthcoming at the moment. When Jon Stark, the gorilla keeper, tells us about the death of Ya Pili, a charismatic little female, and how it damaged the dynamic of the whole group, it sounds as if he is talking about a member of his own family. (In 1968 a five-year-old boy called Levan Merritt fell into the gorilla enclosure where he lay unconscious with Jambo, the original patriarch of the Jersey gorillas, standing over him, guarding him from the others until the keepers could get him out. It changed people's attitudes to gorillas and made world headlines.)
The primates are endlessly fascinating, but this is not a people-pleasing zoo. Durrell used to say he felt 'sympathy for the small and ugly; since I'm big and ugly I try to preserve the little ones.' He tended to select animals that were close to extinction, or those that could best be helped.
Charlotte Bernard, a volunteer who has been at the zoo for more than 15 years (they have a devoted army of about 100 volunteers), takes my daughter and me on a tour. And so we see the wrinkled hornbill, the agile frog and the hottentot teals (little brown jobs) and the ferruginous duck; we learn how the flamingoes, born white, turn pinker as they age, and about the two who escaped and lived on the beach; about the round island boa and the abnormal breeding habits of the mountain chicken, which is actually a frog from Montserrat, and how a surgeon came in from the local hospital to perform a caesarean on Gina the orang-utan because their anatomy so closely resembles that of a human.
It wasn't always like this. In the early days it was more conventionally zoo-like: there was Leo the lion and Peter the cheetah; there was Cholmondeley the chimp and Delilah the porcupine and Trumpy, the grey-winged trumpeter, whose chief job was to settle in new animals. 'He looks, to be frank, like a badly made chicken,' wrote Durrell in Menagerie Manor. 'As soon as
we got a new creature, Trumpy managed to hear of it, and would come bouncing along, cackling to himself, to settle it in. He would then spend 24 hours standing by the cage (or preferably in it if he could) until he thought the new arrival was firmly established, whereupon he would bounce back to his special beat in the mammal house.'
'We tend not to use the word "zoo" because of its negative connotations,' says Lee Durrell, an elegant woman with a faint trace of a Tennessee accent. She lives in the flat in the manor house. A zoologist who specialises in animal communication, she is executor of the Durrell estate and honorary director of the trust; her role now is chiefly as ambassador, chairman of the governance committee and fundraiser for the cause, for the trust needs millions of pounds to make some major improvements and continue its work. In 1989 tourism in Jersey was at its peak, before low-cost flights made it as cheap to go to Italy or Corsica. Then, Durrell had 340,000 members, now it is less than half that.
Gerald Durrell died 14 years ago, but his wife thinks he would be very pleased to see how his zoo has turned out. 'In the early days it was pretty much hand to mouth, chickenwire and old crates, so it looked like a menagerie,' she says. 'We've really tried to keep an energy about it. When you fly over the island you look down and see a big patch of green, because all our trees are so mature now.'
Walking around the aviary, Lee's favourite place, we come across the pink pigeon, a classic Durrell success story. It is a distant relation of the dodo, the symbol of the trust, which was extinct by 1681, its Mauritian habitat eaten by goats, its eggs eaten by pigs, its number killed by dogs and cats. On a trip to Mauritius to save the pink pigeon in 1976, Durrell reflected, 'I was filled with great sadness that this was one of 33 individuals that survived; the shipwrecked remains of their species, eking out a precarious existence on their cryptomeria raft. So, at one time, must a tiny group of Dodos, the last of their harmless, waddling kind, have faced the final onslaught of pigs, dogs, cats, monkeys and man, and disappeared for ever, since there was no one to care and no one to offer them a breeding sanctuary, safe from their enemies.'
Gerald Durrell barely went to school and never passed any sort of exam, but he won nine international awards for leadership in conservation. Sir David Attenborough has referred to him as having the zoological equivalent of green fingers. 'He certainly was very good at handling animals and divining ways in which to make them happy,' Attenborough says. 'He had an intuition about animals. It's difficult to define what green fingers mean but some people instinctively know whether a plant wants a little more water or a little less water, or more shade or wind – and it comes from an absorption in looking at things and never tiring of looking at them, and therefore noticing things which people who are only paying more cursory attention don't see. That applies to animals even more than plants. There are some people in the zoological world who can't keep animals, and it isn't a lack of love, it's just that they don't have the perception or understanding to find out what that animal may require to make it happier.'
Attenborough was a great fan of Durrell's very early books – The Overloaded Ark and The Bafut Beagles – but notes that 'he tended to humanise things, his descriptions were anthropomorphic very often.' I think this is where Durrell's charm lay, this anthropomorphism – he writes of a long black and yellow striped snake 'like an animated school tie'; of hippos in Zambia 'running off on tiptoe like a fat woman in a tight skirt running for a bus'; of a herd of European bison 'like woolly express trains'.
What has made Durrell most famous, of course, is his 1956 book, My Family and Other Animals, which has to date sold five million copies worldwide. Never out of print, the book tells the story of his idyllic childhood in Corfu, where the family moved in 1935, when he was 10. 'Our arrival was like being born for the first time,' he said years later. His tales of growing up in paradise – with his dog Roger, his tutor and mentor Theo Stephanides, his friends the rose beetle man and Yani the shepherd, and his menagerie: Achilles the tortoise, Quasimodo the pigeon, who liked to march to waltzes, the puppies Widdle and Puke, Old Plop the ancient terrapin – and of the snow-white villa and the strawberry-pink villa and the daffodil-yellow villa, of parties that began at lunchtime and ended after a midnight bathe at three in the morning, are probably his most vivid legacy.
Durrell's book appeals to all ages and virtually all markets; it can be read any number of times and still feels sprightly and funny and new. 'His style is like fresh, crisp lettuce,' said his brother Lawrence, who went on to become a celebrated author himself. Durrell wrote the book 20 years after they left Corfu, aided by an extraordinary memory; he had the gift of total recall. 'It's almost vulgar,' he told the writer David Hughes, 'the way I remember photographically in the colours of a glossy magazine.'
Gerald Durrell had wanted his own zoo since the age of six. Zoo was his first word, which he uttered in Bihar province, India, where he was born in 1925. His father, Lawrence, was a civil engineer who died of a suspected cerebral haemorrhage when Gerald was three. His mother, Louisa, who was left the equivalent of £500,000 in Lawrence's will, brought Gerald and his sister Margo, five years older, back to England to be educated (his older brothers, Larry, 16, and Leslie, 11, were already at school there), and the family moved to Bournemouth. Gerald went briefly to school, which he absolutely hated, and his mother took him out, aged nine, and he never went back.
Louisa was eccentric and independent and ran a slightly chaotic household. 'I just loved the whole craziness of it,' said Nancy (Larry's first wife), in Douglas Botting's gripping biography of Durrell. 'Mother used to drink a lot of gin at that time, and she used to retire to bed when Gerry went to bed – Gerry wouldn't go to bed without her, he was afraid of being on his own, I think – and she'd take her gin bottle up with her. So then we all used to retire up there… she had a large double bed, and an enormous silver tea tray and we'd carry on the evening sitting on the bed, drinking gin and tea and chatting, while Gerry was asleep in his own bed in the same room. It was all very cosy.' 'It's curious,' Gerald related later, 'something one didn't realise at the time – but my mother allowed us to be.'
The family moved to Corfu at the urging of Lawrence, who thought of England as 'that mean, shabby little island'. When Gerald arrived he found 'creatures I had never seen or imagined before,' he told David Hughes. 'I'd never thought of such fecundity: this garden overloaded with plants, every stone I turned over had 20 different creatures under it, and there were huge blue furry bumblebees flying round my head and praying mantises staring at me even more astonished than I was, and for me it was like being pushed off the Bournemouth cliffs into heaven. From then onwards, just like that, I was home.'
Under the guidance of Theo Stephanides, his life's path was set. When the family reluctantly left the island four years later, with war threatening, they took with them three dogs, two toads, two tortoises, six canaries, four goldfinches, two greenfinches, a linnet, two magpies, a seagull, a pigeon and an owl. As Gerald was to relate in My Family and Other Animals, the Swiss official glanced at their passports and wrote on a form, 'One travelling circus and staff'. 'What a thing to write,' his mother said. 'Really, some people are peculiar.'
The family moved to a flat off Kensington High Street, London, and 14-year-old Gerald got a job as a junior assistant in a pet shop, where he looked after the reptiles and the aquarium. When they then moved to the Bournemouth suburb of Charminster, Gerald was past the age of compulsory education, and went to work on a farm until the end of the war. (In 1942 he was called up but failed the medical due to sinus trouble.) Thanks to a hopeful letter and an enterprising official, he was offered the
job of student keeper at Whipsnade zoo, where he was to remain for more than a year. At this point Durrell realised he wanted to see the animals in the wild, but having no experience, failed to join any collecting trips. At 21 he came into his inheritance and decided to use it to finance his own collecting trip – to the Cameroons.
It was trial by fire but he adored it. He contracted malaria and everything else going ('He had had jiggers in his toes, ants in his pants, lice in his hair, bugs in his bed and rats in his tent,' Botting wrote) but arrived home after seven months abroad with nearly 200 creatures. His sister, Margo, wrote in The Daily Telegraph about Gerald's arrival at her house, rather ominously carrying a sack and a large wooden box: ' "Just a few monkeys," Gerry called out airily. "I hope there's nothing dangerous in that sack, dear?" Mother inquired, kissing her youngest tenderly. "It's a 6ft python, but harmless," Gerald replied." ' The trip was a big success, Gerald sold the animals to English zoos and set off on a second expedition to the Cameroons the following year, where he encountered the Fon of Bafut, and nearly died after being bitten by a burrowing viper.
On his return to England he visited Manchester zoo and met Jacquie Wolfenden, the 19-year-old daughter of a hotelier; they were married two years later and moved into the upstairs flat in Margo's house. Broke and under pressure from Jacquie, Durrell wrote The Overloaded Ark about his trip to the Cameroons on his brother-in-law's portable typewriter, lying on the floor, smoking. He found that he hated writing but that he had an incredible memory.
Faber bought the book for £25 but Durrell then acquired an agent, Spencer Curtis Brown, who sold the rights to America for £500, and in July 1953 the book was published to extremely good reviews. 'My younger brother has scored tremendous success with his first book,' Lawrence wrote to his friend Henry Miller, 'and he is making a deal of money. How marvellous to have one's career fixed at 25 or so and to be able to pay one's way.'
In autumn 1954 The Bafut Beagles came out, and the book became a Christmas bestseller. The following summer Gerald started writing My Family and Other Animals, and found that it poured out of him. He wrote it in just six weeks, sitting up in bed in his sister's house, with a constant stream of visitors. 'He has successfully re-created the family with the devastatingly faithful eye of a 13-year-old,' Larry remarked.
By 1955 Gerald had written six books and a pattern had been established – he would go off on trips, collecting animals to sell to zoos, and then write about them, which would pretty much provide his income for the rest of his life. He started looking for a zoo of his own – 'for breeding of those forms of animal life which are on the borders of extinction and which without help of this sort cannot survive' – and planned to write about its birth.
In July 1957 he returned from his fifth collecting trip with 200 reptiles, 50 birds and a nine-month-old chimp called Cholmondeley St John. They were all installed in cages in Margo's garden; her son, Gerry, was detailed to look after them, and Cholmondeley was handed over to Mother, who dressed him in hand knits and treated him like a toddler. Durrell started looking for potential sites in Bournemouth, then Jacquie suggested the Channel Islands, and Durrell's publisher introduced them to Major Hugh Fraser, who took them to his family home, Les Augres Manor, which they promptly leased and turned into what would become the Jersey Wildlife Preservation Trust.
The zoo opened at Easter in 1959, and by the fourth day they were up to 6,000 visitors a day. Jeremy Mallinson came to work there at the age of 22, when the zoo had been open for two days.
'A job became available when someone broke their ankle chasing a crane, and I joined in the bird section,' says Mallinson, who worked six and a half days a week for £8.50 ('I had Thursday afternoons off to play hockey'). 'Gerald pointed out that
when I joined I didn't know the difference between a hippo and a hearth-rug, but I was there for 42 years.'
'He treats animals as if he had given birth to them,' Durrell was to say, and he made Mallinson his deputy in 1963; he became director of the trust after Durrell died. Mallinson looked after the cheetahs. Durrell's mother moved into the manor and nurtured some of the more delicate specimens. A tiny woolly monkey called Topsy, which Gerald had rescued half-dead from a dealer's shop, was entrusted into her care. Topsy needed to cling but was nervous of humans so was given a teddy bear. 'Soon she was too big for the teddy bear and was transferred to an amiable guinea pig with a vacuous expression. At night she slept on top of the unfortunate animal looking like an outsize jockey perched on a Shetland pony.'
Chimps escaped; Claudius the tapir laid waste a field of gladioli; Pedro, one of the spectacled bears, ran off; and one day Gerald and a new recruit, John Hartley, got trapped in the coils of a reticulated python called Pythagoras. Hartley, who left school on a Friday and started work at the zoo the following Monday, aged 18, remembers meeting Durrell as, 'the best thing that ever happened to me'.
In the early days Durrell wasn't around that much. 'We used to see him in short spells, then he'd be off, filming or writing at his house in France,' Hartley says. 'He had to earn a living somehow, he had no income from the zoo. Then one day he appeared when I was scrubbing out a pond and invited me to come to west Africa with him to make a television series for the BBC. It was a proper old-fashioned expedition.' Hartley went on more than 40 expeditions, and has now retired.
Although shy, Durrell was a very funny man, and a great raconteur. 'He was full of jokes, all the time, and terrific fun to be with,' Attenborough says. He inspired devotion in everyone who met him. Doreen Evans, who became his assistant and went on several collecting trips with him, remembers her job interview, in which he suggested with a completely straight face, 'Would you be prepared, if need be, to breastfeed a baby hedgehog?'
'He was a volatile character but he was an absolute genius,' Lee says. He was also an alcoholic, and prone to depression, railing against what mankind was doing to the world. His mother had also suffered depressive bouts where alcohol became her refuge, and Lawrence too had this gene, getting to the point where he couldn't function without alcohol. In the late 1960s Gerald had a breakdown, exacerbated by the death of his mother. He received treatment at the Priory in early 1969. Peter Grose, his agent, remembers getting up at eight one morning to find him drinking a vast brandy mixed with a pint of milk for breakfast, and then opening the first bottle of claret at around 11.
In May 1972 Gerald addressed a conference on breeding endangered species in captivity at which he spoke passionately about the need for captive breeding, and also voiced his wish that one day the trust could provide a training basis for zoological students and staff from around the world. This was to materialise seven years later, when the neighbouring property was bought by the trust and turned into an international college of specialist education. The first trainee went on to become the first director of the first national park in Mauritius, and 2,000 students from 125 countries have now attended the centre, which was officially opened by the Princess Royal, an enthusiastic patron of the trust, in 1984. Its graduates have become known as Gerald Durrell's Army.
In March 1976 Durrell flew to Mauritius with John Hartley to catch some specimens of the highly endangered Mauritian kestrel and pink pigeon. In 1984 he signed an accord with the Mauritian government to begin a breeding programme for a number of critically endangered species, including the pink pigeon, which became one of his first successful reintroductions. The pink pigeon is now officially no longer critically endangered (nor is the kestrel, once the world's most endangered bird).
Returning to Jersey from his 1976 trip, Durrell found his wife, Jacquie, packing to leave; their relationship had been rocky for a while, exacerbated by alcohol and Durrell's obsession with his zoo, which Jacquie resented. The following year he met Lee McGeorge, then a 27-year-old zoology graduate from Memphis, who had recently spent two years in Madagascar studying ecology and the social behaviour of lemurs. They were married in 1979, once Durrell's divorce was through, and Jeremy Mallinson was their best man. 'I am one of Lee's disciples,' he says. 'She was a little bit of heaven coming into his life. I'm sure she gave him at least another 10 years of life.'
For her part, Lee had taken a while to be convinced. 'She married me for my zoo,' Durrell was fond of saying, but he took great delight in showing her his world, and she was swiftly caught up in his life and work. With Lee he went on to write several books, including The Amateur Naturalist, which outsold everything he had ever written, and together they made five television series, including Durrell in Russia, where they visited 20 conservation reserves, which were flourishing before the collapse of the USSR. Durrell found this inspiring but he was becoming increasingly desperate about life. 'The world is being destroyed at the speed of an Exocet missile, and we are riding a bicycle,' he said of his work at the trust. 'I feel despair 24 hours a day.' In those days it cost £2 million a year to keep the trust going, and they were constantly plagued by financial worries (they still are).
By the early 1990s Durrell's health was in swift decline. He had suffered several grand mal seizures, probably alcohol-related, and had developed a pain in his abdomen that wouldn't go away. In January 1994 he was diagnosed with liver cancer and given a few months to live unless he had a transplant.
In March a liver became available. He was flown from Jersey to King's College Hospital in south London, sipping whisky on his way to fortify his spirits. The operation was deemed a success, but his pancreas was in a mess and he was plagued by infections, and by November 1994 he had been in hospital for eight months without a break.
At this point, Lee made a breakthrough. 'I so profoundly wanted to be part of Gerry's dream and take it forward,' she told Botting, 'that I married without romantic love. I was not worthy of Gerry's enormous love because I did not return it – not at first – though at least I was honest with him from the beginning. But when Gerry really became ill, I began to feel strongly protective towards him, and then, when I realised what I could lose, I began to realise what I had, and I finally fell in love with my husband.'
In January 1995, shortly after Durrell's 70th birthday, Mallinson went to see him in hospital. 'He was sitting up in bed, quite twinkly, and asked, "How long have you worked for me, Jeremy?" "Thirty-five years," I replied. "I'm so pleased I only took you on a temporary basis," he said.' Three days later Durrell died of septicaemia. Lee and Jeremy Mallinson were with him. 'He was my mentor,' Mallinson says simply.
The following June Sir David Attenborough addressed Durrell's memorial celebration at the Natural History Museum. In an address entitled 'The Renegade who was Right', Attenborough said, 'The extraordinary thing (which is perhaps the mark of genius) was that everything he said – and then typically did – seems now to be so obvious, so logical and so much part of everyday conservation language, that we easily forget how radical, revolutionary and downright opinionated his statements seemed at the time.'
Lalla Ward's auction raised £24,000 for Durrell's work in Galapagos. Back in Jersey, the trust had its own way of celebrating 50 years. On March 26 Lee hosted a small party for the 'old boys' – Mallinson, Hartley, Quentin Bloxham, Shep Mallet – and the staff. Attenborough was the guest of honour at a special fundraising dinner. Everyone in Jersey helped out, even the local Co-op, for Durrell is part of their heritage, they are proud of it. And 200 children – members of the Dodo Club, the junior membership – arranged themselves in the grounds to spell out the campaign slogan, which was then photographed from the air, written in children: it's time.
It is indeed time. As Gerald Durrell pointed out, 'You can't build a tortoise. You can't build a bird. That's what we've got to remember – if we destroy it, we can't recreate it.'
In March 2010 Lee Durrell will accompany a wildlife adventure ‘To Aldabra and Beyond’, on board the MS Island Sky. The expedition begins in the remote eponymous Indian Ocean archipelago and en route for Mozambique and Tanzania, the ship will visit Madagascar for a behind the scenes look at the foundation’s invaluable work on the world’s fourth largest island. Arranged by The Ultimate Travel Company, this unique two week voyage aims to raise £20,000 for the Durrell Foundation.
The Ultimate Travel Company is offering Telegraph readers an exclusive opportunity to join this extraordinary journey at a saving of £500 per person.
For more information telephone 020 7386 4646 or visit www.theultimatetravelcompany.co.uk
For more information about the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust, visit durrell.org.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/conservation/5130889/Gerald-Durrells-Jersey-wildlife-conservation-trust-celebrates-50th-anniversary.html
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Will Europe at last unite to combat thousands of alien invaders?
Photo: André Künzelmann/UFZ
Europe's borders have been breached by thousands of plants and animal species from other parts of the world: from the American mink to the New Zealand flatworm. The invaders feed on, hybridise with, parasitise and out-compete native species. They also introduce diseases, alter the balance within ecosystems, modify landscapes and impact upon agriculture, forestry and fisheries. Preliminary estimates indicate that the monetary cost of these invasive alien species in Europe amounts to at least €10 billion per year, yet for 90% of species almost nothing is known of their impacts.
Recent evidence that Europe may be home to 11,000 alien species has spurred the European Commission to release its first ever Communication on invasive species. The European Environment Commissioner, Stavros Dimas, noted at the launch of the Communication that "the ecological, economic and social consequences of the spread of invasive species for EU countries are serious and need a harmonised response".
The Communication, which is currently open for consultation, proposes the development of a European Strategy on Invasive Species. It outlines three potential ways forward, each representing a different level of legislative cost and complexity. The first, and least complex, involves making better use of existing legislation; the second would adapt existing legislation to address invasive species, while the third, and most complex, would develop a dedicated legal instrument. But is this the best way forward?
A recent paper published in the journal Science1 suggests legislation is only part of the answer and that what Europe lacks is appropriate governance and institutional coordination across Member States to tackle the problem of invasions effectively.
"Currently, responsibility for invasive species management sits within too many different European Institutions. These are organisations such as the European Environment Agency (EEA), European and Mediterranean Plant Protection Organisation (EPPO), European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) that rarely communicate with each other and where the topic of invasions is only one of many areas of activity" says Philip Hulme lead author of the paper.
"This system is not effective. For example EPPO and EFSA have not seen eye to eye when it comes to assessing the risks to Europe of different alien species, while funding for research and management is often prioritised separately by the different Directorates-General in Brussels. The political, cultural and geographic complexity of Europe makes a single coordinating body a necessity"
The authors of the paper, who recently edited the Handbook of Alien Species in Europe2, recommend the European Parliament and Council give serious consideration to the establishment of a single body to bring together invasive species related resources and activities currently dispersed amongst the various European institutions. This body, which they call the European Centre for Invasive Species Management (ECISM), would have a mission to identify, assess and communicate current and emerging threats to the economy and environment posed by invasive species. ECISM would coordinate activities across Member States, building a Europe-wide surveillance system which could monitor emerging threats, support rapid response and raise public awareness around the issues of invasive species.
The idea is sound, but such a Centre would face considerable challenges. For example, the major policy driver of a single EU market for goods and people favours the spread of invasive species, the number of alien species introductions continues to increase year on year, and public awareness of the impact of those species is little more than 2%.
Unfortunately, these factors make the formation of such a body all the more challenging and only time will tell if Europe is able to meet that challenge.
###
1. Hulme PE, Pyšek P, Nentwig W & Vilà M. (2009) Will threat of biological invasions unite the European Union? Science 324, 40-41.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/324/5923/40
2. DAISIE (2009) Handbook of Alien Species in Europe. Springer, Dordrecht. ISBN 978-1-4020-8279-5
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-04/haog-wea040209.php
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Brief encounters of the animal kind: Isabella Rossellini's Green Porno
Isabella Rossellini has found her calling, as the director and presenter of Green Porno, a series of beautifully hand-crafted short films about the sex lives of animals
There are certain things you don't expect to hear Isabella Rossellini say. Things like, "I have sex several times a day. Any opportunity. Any female." Or, "To have babies, I need to mate with another hermaphrodite in the 69 position." Or, "When needed, I can have an erection six feet long." But there are plenty of delightfully unexpected things about Green Porno, Rossellini's series of short films about the sex lives of animals, the second batch of which has just gone live on the Sundance Channel's website.
The first season, made last year, marked Rossellini's debut as a director. She had collaborated with Guy Maddin on My Dad Is 100 Years Old, a tribute to her film-maker father and fellow nature enthusiast Roberto, but she had always struggled over projects of her own that would stretch to television, let alone feature-length. When she learned that Sundance was fishing for attention-grabbing short content suitable for digital platforms, it proved the perfect outlet for her brief directorial attention span, as well as an opportunity to explore her longstanding love of zoology. "And when I thought 'capture people's attention,'" she says on a behind-the-scenes clip available at the project's microsite, one word came to mind. "Sex."
And so Green Porno was hatched. In each of these very short shorts – none lasts longer than three minutes and up to two-thirds of the running time is taken up with credits – Rossellini expounds with relish upon the mating habits of a particular species. Assuming the first person (or first creepy-crawly), she plays the male, garbed in a series of gloriously expressive handmade costumes in the bold colours and shapes suited to smaller screens; if the distribution model is hi-tech, the aesthetic approach, courtesy of Brooklyn-based artist-turned-production designer Andy Myers, is decidedly handcrafted. Byers' costumes are made mostly from paper, eschewing digital effects for hands-on craft. Think Michel Gondry meets David Attenborough in the Blue Peter studio after dark.
Rossellini takes the biology seriously. "When I write the script," she notes, "first I do the research, the scientific research, then I try to simplify it as much as I can and make it funny. Then I have to imagine how it can translate in this sort of theatre that we do here with puppetry and me dressed up as the animal ... It's funny but it's a little sick too. And also very informative."
In the first series, Rossellini enthusiastically portrayed, among other things, a bee bleeding to death after leaving its penis inside its mate (as they do), a mantis having its head rather frighteningly chewed off in flagrante delicto ("I keep copulating. Nothing stops me. I keep going! Sex!") and a snail clamped to its partner, dart-like appendages jabbing away ("I use them to inflict pain on my partners before mating – it turns me on. I love to be hurt too. Sadomasochism excites me"). The run ended with a strangely endearing shot of her severed head playing host to gestating maggots.
In the new batch, the theme has shifted underwater and the scale is no longer restricted to the miniature. Lessons are offered on the hydrodynamic shortcomings of a hefty whale penis, self-cloning among starfish and the extraordinary length, relative to its body, of the barnacle's nob. You haven't really lived until you've seen the look on Rossellini's face as a 20-foot handmade penis snakes its way from her clavicle to the other side of the room.
In fact, her charmingly sexy performance is integral to these shorts' successful character, whether she's strolling through a forest of eight-foot-tall, frilled, barbed and spiralling phalli or noting how important it is that her vagina's shape is "species-specific, so that I'm not screwed by a bear". What other actor could bring both coquettish charm and unbridled glee to the declaration "We are sequential hermaphrodites!" – delivered while wearing a limpet shell at a rakish angle?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2009/apr/01/isabella-rossellini-green-porno-sundance
There are certain things you don't expect to hear Isabella Rossellini say. Things like, "I have sex several times a day. Any opportunity. Any female." Or, "To have babies, I need to mate with another hermaphrodite in the 69 position." Or, "When needed, I can have an erection six feet long." But there are plenty of delightfully unexpected things about Green Porno, Rossellini's series of short films about the sex lives of animals, the second batch of which has just gone live on the Sundance Channel's website.
The first season, made last year, marked Rossellini's debut as a director. She had collaborated with Guy Maddin on My Dad Is 100 Years Old, a tribute to her film-maker father and fellow nature enthusiast Roberto, but she had always struggled over projects of her own that would stretch to television, let alone feature-length. When she learned that Sundance was fishing for attention-grabbing short content suitable for digital platforms, it proved the perfect outlet for her brief directorial attention span, as well as an opportunity to explore her longstanding love of zoology. "And when I thought 'capture people's attention,'" she says on a behind-the-scenes clip available at the project's microsite, one word came to mind. "Sex."
And so Green Porno was hatched. In each of these very short shorts – none lasts longer than three minutes and up to two-thirds of the running time is taken up with credits – Rossellini expounds with relish upon the mating habits of a particular species. Assuming the first person (or first creepy-crawly), she plays the male, garbed in a series of gloriously expressive handmade costumes in the bold colours and shapes suited to smaller screens; if the distribution model is hi-tech, the aesthetic approach, courtesy of Brooklyn-based artist-turned-production designer Andy Myers, is decidedly handcrafted. Byers' costumes are made mostly from paper, eschewing digital effects for hands-on craft. Think Michel Gondry meets David Attenborough in the Blue Peter studio after dark.
Rossellini takes the biology seriously. "When I write the script," she notes, "first I do the research, the scientific research, then I try to simplify it as much as I can and make it funny. Then I have to imagine how it can translate in this sort of theatre that we do here with puppetry and me dressed up as the animal ... It's funny but it's a little sick too. And also very informative."
In the first series, Rossellini enthusiastically portrayed, among other things, a bee bleeding to death after leaving its penis inside its mate (as they do), a mantis having its head rather frighteningly chewed off in flagrante delicto ("I keep copulating. Nothing stops me. I keep going! Sex!") and a snail clamped to its partner, dart-like appendages jabbing away ("I use them to inflict pain on my partners before mating – it turns me on. I love to be hurt too. Sadomasochism excites me"). The run ended with a strangely endearing shot of her severed head playing host to gestating maggots.
In the new batch, the theme has shifted underwater and the scale is no longer restricted to the miniature. Lessons are offered on the hydrodynamic shortcomings of a hefty whale penis, self-cloning among starfish and the extraordinary length, relative to its body, of the barnacle's nob. You haven't really lived until you've seen the look on Rossellini's face as a 20-foot handmade penis snakes its way from her clavicle to the other side of the room.
In fact, her charmingly sexy performance is integral to these shorts' successful character, whether she's strolling through a forest of eight-foot-tall, frilled, barbed and spiralling phalli or noting how important it is that her vagina's shape is "species-specific, so that I'm not screwed by a bear". What other actor could bring both coquettish charm and unbridled glee to the declaration "We are sequential hermaphrodites!" – delivered while wearing a limpet shell at a rakish angle?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2009/apr/01/isabella-rossellini-green-porno-sundance
Monday, March 30, 2009
Marlin Perkins left an enduring legacy as teacher of the animal world
By Tim O'Neil
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
03/29/2009
Marlin Perkins swam with sea lions, grappled with an anaconda and bore the harsh effects of an Indian elephant's tusk, all to teach us about the world of animals.
Perkins, a former director of the St. Louis Zoo, was famous three decades ago on a national television show called "Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom." He brought us stories of animals filmed in their exotic, far-flung habitats and told about them in the patient voice of a dedicated teacher. He was a pioneer in television nature shows and an ardent spokesman for conservation and protection of endangered animals.
Back in St. Louis, folks were proud to have as their zoo chief the "Wild Kingdom" man with the mustache and toothy grin.
Perkins died in 1986 at age 81 at his home in Clayton. He was St. Louis Zoo director from April 1962 until this week in 1970 but stayed as director emeritus. He hosted "Wild Kingdom" from 1962 to 1985.
Perkins was born March 28, 1905, in Carthage, in far southwestern Missouri, and studied zoology at the University of Missouri at Columbia, where one of his pet snakes escaped and flustered the landlady.
He left after two years for the zoo, where he was curator of reptiles for 10 years until 1938. He became curator of the zoo in Buffalo, N.Y., and later was director of the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago, where he and his animal charges broke into TV.
He returned to St. Louis in 1962, the year "Wild Kingdom" began showing his tales of animals and conservation.
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/stlouiscitycounty/story/1B406FB4090F73938625758600809F60?OpenDocument
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
03/29/2009
Marlin Perkins swam with sea lions, grappled with an anaconda and bore the harsh effects of an Indian elephant's tusk, all to teach us about the world of animals.
Perkins, a former director of the St. Louis Zoo, was famous three decades ago on a national television show called "Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom." He brought us stories of animals filmed in their exotic, far-flung habitats and told about them in the patient voice of a dedicated teacher. He was a pioneer in television nature shows and an ardent spokesman for conservation and protection of endangered animals.
Back in St. Louis, folks were proud to have as their zoo chief the "Wild Kingdom" man with the mustache and toothy grin.
Perkins died in 1986 at age 81 at his home in Clayton. He was St. Louis Zoo director from April 1962 until this week in 1970 but stayed as director emeritus. He hosted "Wild Kingdom" from 1962 to 1985.
Perkins was born March 28, 1905, in Carthage, in far southwestern Missouri, and studied zoology at the University of Missouri at Columbia, where one of his pet snakes escaped and flustered the landlady.
He left after two years for the zoo, where he was curator of reptiles for 10 years until 1938. He became curator of the zoo in Buffalo, N.Y., and later was director of the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago, where he and his animal charges broke into TV.
He returned to St. Louis in 1962, the year "Wild Kingdom" began showing his tales of animals and conservation.
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/stlouiscitycounty/story/1B406FB4090F73938625758600809F60?OpenDocument
My Best Teacher - David Bellamy
Features | Published in TES Magazine on 27 March, 2009 | By: Paula Barnett
This national treasure’s love of botany and zoology was nurtured by a teacher with a twinkle in his eye
I thought I had a career in ballet, but by the time I was 14 I was the size I am now. My parents had always wanted me to be a medic, so when my proposed dancing career had tumbled away, I decided to study botany, zoology, chemistry and physics.
An enormously respected man dressed in tweed with spectacles, Mr Hutchings, was my A-level botany and zoology teacher at Sutton Grammar School for Boys. He was strict, but always with a twinkle in his eye. We were a little clan in sixth form science and I was lucky to have such a good teacher with a fantastic sense of humour.
Mr Hutchings was the proud owner of a set of slides and once when he left the room, we prepared a new addition to his collection. Its label bore a rude title about Mr Hutchings, but instead of exploding at us, he studied its preparation carefully and then complimented us for being such good slide makers.
The teachers at Sutton were set apart from us: I was called Bellamy and in return he was Mr Hutchings or Sir, yet we became great friends.
After A-levels, we decided to take Mr Hutchings to London Zoo for the day as a way of saying thank you. At one point, he was standing next to a Bactrian camel and explaining lots of facts when it began to salivate on the top of his head. We didn’t laugh but helped him clean up and then to complete the day, took him to see Oklahoma!
When I was about 14, I accidentally blew off the front of my friend’s house. We had been making fireworks using explosives from a doodlebug that had landed intact near my house. We were the best firework makers in town, but this particular time we got the formula wrong. I woke up on the floor and I could see all my neighbours looking in as there was no window anymore, not even a frame. I made the local papers and when I got back to school swathed in bandages, I was dragged up in front of everyone and castigated for being an idiot.
On the way down, as I passed the teachers, I heard Mr Coult, my chemistry teacher, whisper: “Bellamy, well done. You will make a scientist yet.”
If Mr Hutchings inspired my love of botany, my dad developed it. Running the local Boots chemist, people were always coming in for advice and I learnt which medicines were made from which herbs. It all linked together, and although originally studying to be a medic, I found it an easy jump to botany once I left school.
One of the most amazing things in my life was when I opened my first nature reserve. It was a long time ago now, but I remember an old Victorian primary school in Liverpool with a playground where they had planted raised beds. I chose the smallest little girl to cut the ribbon with me and as we walked across hand in hand she looked at me. “David Bellamy,” she said, “you see the trees and the plants, we put them there, but the butterflies and birds came along by themselves.”
A botanist, broadcaster, author and environmental campaigner, David Bellamy OBE has written more than 40 books and 80 scientific papers and has presented about 400 TV programmes. He was talking to Paula Barnett.
http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6010899
This national treasure’s love of botany and zoology was nurtured by a teacher with a twinkle in his eye
I thought I had a career in ballet, but by the time I was 14 I was the size I am now. My parents had always wanted me to be a medic, so when my proposed dancing career had tumbled away, I decided to study botany, zoology, chemistry and physics.
An enormously respected man dressed in tweed with spectacles, Mr Hutchings, was my A-level botany and zoology teacher at Sutton Grammar School for Boys. He was strict, but always with a twinkle in his eye. We were a little clan in sixth form science and I was lucky to have such a good teacher with a fantastic sense of humour.
Mr Hutchings was the proud owner of a set of slides and once when he left the room, we prepared a new addition to his collection. Its label bore a rude title about Mr Hutchings, but instead of exploding at us, he studied its preparation carefully and then complimented us for being such good slide makers.
The teachers at Sutton were set apart from us: I was called Bellamy and in return he was Mr Hutchings or Sir, yet we became great friends.
After A-levels, we decided to take Mr Hutchings to London Zoo for the day as a way of saying thank you. At one point, he was standing next to a Bactrian camel and explaining lots of facts when it began to salivate on the top of his head. We didn’t laugh but helped him clean up and then to complete the day, took him to see Oklahoma!
When I was about 14, I accidentally blew off the front of my friend’s house. We had been making fireworks using explosives from a doodlebug that had landed intact near my house. We were the best firework makers in town, but this particular time we got the formula wrong. I woke up on the floor and I could see all my neighbours looking in as there was no window anymore, not even a frame. I made the local papers and when I got back to school swathed in bandages, I was dragged up in front of everyone and castigated for being an idiot.
On the way down, as I passed the teachers, I heard Mr Coult, my chemistry teacher, whisper: “Bellamy, well done. You will make a scientist yet.”
If Mr Hutchings inspired my love of botany, my dad developed it. Running the local Boots chemist, people were always coming in for advice and I learnt which medicines were made from which herbs. It all linked together, and although originally studying to be a medic, I found it an easy jump to botany once I left school.
One of the most amazing things in my life was when I opened my first nature reserve. It was a long time ago now, but I remember an old Victorian primary school in Liverpool with a playground where they had planted raised beds. I chose the smallest little girl to cut the ribbon with me and as we walked across hand in hand she looked at me. “David Bellamy,” she said, “you see the trees and the plants, we put them there, but the butterflies and birds came along by themselves.”
A botanist, broadcaster, author and environmental campaigner, David Bellamy OBE has written more than 40 books and 80 scientific papers and has presented about 400 TV programmes. He was talking to Paula Barnett.
http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6010899
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