Mark Carwardine > Quotes

“In every remote corner of the world there are people like Carl Jones and Don Merton who have devoted their lives to saving threatened species. Very often, their determination is all that stands between an endangered species and extinction.
But why do they bother? Does it really matter if the Yangtze river dolphin, or the kakapo, or the northern white rhino, or any other species live on only in scientists' notebooks?
Well, yes, it does. Every animal and plant is an integral part of its environment: even Komodo dragons have a major role to play in maintaining the ecological stability of their delicate island homes. If they disappear, so could many other species. And conservation is very much in tune with our survival. Animals and plants provide us with life-saving drugs and food, they pollinate crops and provide important ingredients or many industrial processes. Ironically, it is often not the big and beautiful creatures, but the ugly and less dramatic ones, that we need most.
Even so, the loss of a few species may seem irrelevant compared to major environmental problems such as global warming or the destruction of the ozone layer. But while nature has considerable resilience, there is a limit to how far that resilience can be stretched. No one knows how close to the limit we are getting. The darker it gets, the faster we're driving.
There is one last reason for caring, and I believe that no other is necessary. It is certainly the reason why so many people have devoted their lives to protecting the likes of rhinos, parakeets, kakapos, and dolphins. And it is simply this: the world would be a poorer, darker, lonelier place without them.”
― Mark Carwardine, Last Chance to See

“Wildlife conservation is always a race against time. As zoologists and botanists explore new areas, scrabbling to record the mere existence of species before they become extinct, it’s like someone hurrying through a burning library desperately trying to jot down some of the tittles of books that will now never be read.”
― Mark Carwardine

“The fastest extinction in New Zealand – possibly in the entire world – was the Stephen’s Island wren, which lived on tiny Stephen’s Island, in Cook Strait. It was discovered in 1894, when a new lighthouse keeper arrived on the island for the first time. One of his cats caught a bird he didn’t recognise, so he sent the little body to a friend in Wellington, who happened to be a professional ornithologist. By the time the excited friend sent news back that it was a species new to science, the cat had caught another fifteen. And that was it – there were none left. Stephen’s Island wren officially became extinct later the same year. The cat had eaten the first and last of the species, and all the others in between. Its owner, the lighthouse keeper, was the only person ever to have seen one alive.”
― Mark Carwardine, Last Chance to See

“In every remote corner there are people like Carl Jones and Don Merton who have devoted their lives to saving them. Very often, their determination is all that stands between an endangered species and extinction.”
― Mark Carwardine, Last Chance to See

“There is something about dolphins.
It is difficult to put into words...”
― Mark Carwardine

“Don’t get me wrong – it’s not that I don’t like people. Some of my best friends are people. It’s just that chimpanzees share too many of our more unpleasant characteristics. They gang up on one another, indulge in office politics, beat up and bully weaker individuals, lie, gossip and bear grudges.”
― Mark Carwardine, Last Chance to See

“according to figures published by the New York City Health Department, for every person around the world bitten by a shark, 25 people are actually bitten by New Yorkers. So”
― Mark Carwardine, Last Chance to See

“It's one of those birds which very helpfully calls out its own name when it is flying. "Kea! Kea! Kea!" Birdwatchers love them for that. It would be great if the Pallas's grasshopper warbler would learn the same trick. Make warbler identification a lot easier.”
― Mark Carwardine

“describing any particular day in Manaus as staggeringly hot and humid is a little like describing one particular sloth as exceptionally upside down. It’s rarely anything else.”
― Mark Carwardine, Last Chance to See