From early childhood in Jersey I’ve kind of known I was lucky to have Gerald Durrell’s Captive Breeding Programme on the island, but it wasn’t until I went to the horrors of inner city zoos on the mainland that I realised the extent to which that place does things differently. Their focus has always been on the wild populations, on campaigning to educate people and preserve habitats, on reintroducing and bolstering numbers in the wild. Some of their resident creatures have come from less thoughtful zoos, and wouldn’t last in the wild anymore. They have a good quality of life here. And maybe the huge ancient reality of these few captive creatures, coupled with the wealth of information on boards about what we are doing to them in the wild… maybe it’ll help inspire more Durrels to find more ways to turn populations around.
Max is a natural scientist, and was so when he was 8, so I’ve always had that direct line to the natural world. Coming to the Jersey Wildlife Preservation Trust as a child, helped my compassion and my geography. Even at ten I could show you obscure islands near Mauritius on a map with greater ease than states in America. A BBC Radio Jersey presenter was talking about Sumatran rhinos the other day and was rhyming “Sumatran” with “boomerang” instead of “apartment”. I wondered how she could do that living on this island. I knew where Sumatra was before I knew where New Zealand was.
It also helped me start to see early how we are wiping other species out, and how it is often preventable. The dodo is the symbol of the place, because they were friendly creatures and we quickly wiped them out. We didn’t really know it. I’m sure we thought they were infinite. Someone ate the last Dodo without a clue it was the last. Now we will never see another. Maybe it’s a mercy… Christmas Dodo, battery Dodo etc…
They’ve restocked a great deal of endangered creatures since I was a kid. Others it is a losing battle with habitat destruction for agriculture and violent poaching working together. But for now, the pink pigeons, the aye-ayes, ring tailed lemurs, Rodrigues fruitbats… strange and varied success stories. We are so ignorant though as a species that for every conservationist there are three people saying “But they eat the crops,” or whatever. “They steal babies,” “Why are they more important than us?” etc
Gerald died decades ago now, but his legacy is very much alive and many species too because of it. Mostly we know him from his nostalgic childhood memories on Corfu, televised frequently with My Family and Other Animals. I was happy to share this “zoo” with Will and his family. They got it. We had a lovely day. And saw some incredible creatures.
AlBarclay 