To a speechless and by now partly apoplectic audience Lord Zuckerman laid about him right and left. The World Wildlife Fund was driven by a bandwagon of sentimental conservationists and steered by extremists, he jeered. So what if the rainforests of Sumatra are felled to the ground? Surely it’s because the people want to improve their standard of living – and who are we to stop them? ‘Let me conclude,’ spoke the man who styled himself ‘a veteran conservationist’, ‘what we are trying to do is extremely costly … These things need to be sorted out. Before they are, we cannot expect funds for the general purpose of breeding rare species in captivity. We need to remember’ – here Gerald Durrell might well have believed he had been singled out for a personal sideswipe from the eminent chairman – ‘that this country does not yet have any laws to prevent anyone, however ignorant, from starting a zoo … Conservationists should not play at God, idealism must be tempered with realism.’
To many of the delegates it seemed remarkable that the President of the Fauna Preservation Society should have so little enthusiasm for the preservation of fauna, and that the Secretary of the Zoological Society of London should have so little faith in zoos as an instrument for preserving species. Simon Hicks was sitting next to Gerald as Lord Zuckerman delivered his astonishing address. ‘I was very confused at what I heard,’ he recalled. ‘Here was the head of the national zoo and host of a world conference on the conservation of species saying there was nothing zoos could do for the conservation of species. Gerry had gone very red in the face out of frustration and anger, and I remember him saying: “You see! You see what I’ve been telling you! Why don’t those stupid buggers understand?”’ Peter Olney, Curator of Birds at London Zoo, was sitting on the other side of Gerald. ‘It was appalling,’ he recalled. ‘My face went red with embarrassment. Most of the staff were equally embarrassed. Lord Zuckerman was a difficult man with enormous arrogance. His attitude to the future of zoos and their bearing on conservation was utterly wrong. I spoke to him about this a few days later and he said: “Oh, do you think I went too far?” I said: “Yes. At the time, you did. That was not the time to say it.” And he said: “Well, I thought it had to be said and that I was the best person to say it.” Gerry, of course, was furious.’
Gerry was himself well aware that extinctions were a fact of life, and that perhaps 95 per cent of all the creatures that had existed since life began were now extinct. But previous waves of mass extinctions had been the consequence of astro-physical accidents or evolutionary change over long periods of time. The current wave was different, being almost exclusively biologically driven, with one life form (Homo sapiens) destroying the others in a relatively short period of time. ‘Extinctions in the wild state are part of evolution and will always happen,’ Gerald was to say. ‘But mankind is creating false extinctions caused by over-population. All species are being pushed to one side by the damage we are doing to their habitats. Mankind continues to act as if there is another world just around the corner which we can use when we have ruined this one. But there isn’t.’ Unlike all previous extinctions, however, the current one could be slowed, and theoretically even stopped. Not to even try to limit the damage was, in Gerald’s view, simply wicked.
The Luddite Lord Zuckerman was not the only critic of captive breeding of endangered animals. It was a formidably expensive business; and it was not entirely clear to what extent captive-bred animals could survive if they were reintroduced into the wild. There were even those who felt it was morally better for a species to become extinct in the wild than to be saved from extinction in captivity. When American conservationists asked the Japanese government for permission to remove the last six Japanese crested ibis left in the world from their stronghold on Sado Island so that their numbers could be increased by captive breeding abroad, the local people protested, stating that they preferred the extinction of the species ‘alive and free to the last bird’.
Simon Hicks, still new to the Jersey organisation, was initially puzzled as to the zoo’s actual role:
I began to realise that really Jersey Zoo wasn’t a zoo at all, and there came a time when I found I simply had to understand Gerry better, get a categorical statement as to what he was about. So I asked him two questions. One: if there weren’t any endangered species, would you think it necessary to have a zoo? Answer – no. Two: if it wasn’t absolutely necessary, would you feel any obligation to admit the public to your zoo? Answer – no. Those answers contained something extraordinary in the zoo world at that time: a clear statement to the effect that the zoo was not an end in itself but entirely a means to an end – that of fulfilling its role of pulling animals back from the edge.
Of course, Gerry was not a conventional thinker, still less a conventional organisation man. He never worked to a plan. What he would do would be to cut through all the dross. He’d suddenly say – ‘Why the f*** don’t we do such-and-such?’ It’s a sort of genius, this childlike clarity of thought, seeing what should be done, though not necessarily how.
‘I feel sympathy for the small and the ugly,’ Gerald once told a reporter in Indianapolis. ‘Since I’m big and ugly, I try to preserve the little ones.’ For Gerald, even snakes – the almost universal bane and horror of the human race – were as deserving of love and protection as any other creature. Fleur Cowles shared the widespread antipathy to snakes, and when Princess Anne arrived to open the new Gaherty Reptile Breeding Centre at the zoo in the autumn of 1976 she asked to be excused: ‘I said to the Princess, “Forgive me, but I can’t come into the snake house.” She replied, “That’s what you think,” and pushed me in.’ The Princess’s interest in the work of the Trust was more than routine. She was dedicated to what Gerald was doing, and formed a close personal bond with him over the years. ‘When the Princess Royal turned up,’ remembered Trust Council member Colin Jones, ‘she would spend the whole time conversing with Gerry, to the exclusion of other people around – something unusual with the Royals.’
By now penury and periodic financial crises were a thing of the past. ‘The whole thing started to take off from 1975,’ recalled Robin Rumboll, Honorary Trust Treasurer during those dynamic years, ‘with effective fund-raising and the designing of visitor-friendly amenities at the zoo. We thus got away from the annual problem of boom and bust and started to build up an endowment fund, and the zoo itself was soon to become the premier tourist attraction on the island, earning £1 million per year.’
The Trust had been a founder member of the Captive Breeding Specialist Group of the IUCN Survival Services Commission, and in 1980 would host the second meeting of the group, comprising leading conservation scientists and zoo directors from around the world. ‘We have now won world recognition for our work,’ Gerald was proud to announce. ‘The zoo now leads the field in captive breeding programmes, and many other conservation groups to look to our zoological team for advice.’
The zoo was the headquarters and showcase of the Trust, as well as a sanctuary and reservoir for endangered animals. The latest breeding groups included species that were in extremis, such as Edward’s pheasant (probably already extinct in the wild), the Jamaican boa (almost extinct in the wild), the Rodrigues fruit bat (130 left), the golden lion tamarin of Brazil (350 left) and many more. As the zoo’s breeding successes increased, it became clear that the time had come to move to stage two of the process: the establishment of in situ breeding colonies in the species’ home countries. It also became clear that since next to no one in those countries had the expertise to undertake this task, a training centre would have to be established in Jersey – Gerald was to describe it as a ‘mini-university’ – where students from abroad could learn the practice of conservation zoo husbandry and the techniques of captive breeding. Gerald had in mind a large, specially designed complex, but though funding for the building and for the students’ scholarships was raised from sources in America and Britain, he had reservations about imposing such an intrusive structure in the zoo grounds.
Once again ‘Dur
rell’s luck’ came to the rescue. Twice a week a local woman by the name of Mrs Boizard came to clean Gerald’s flat, and her daughter Betty, who had worked at the Trust since leaving school and was now in charge of the zoo accounts department, often came to have a brief chat with her. One day Mrs Boizard casually remarked: ‘I see Leonard du Feu has put his house on the market.’ ‘Betty looked incredulous, as well she might,’ Gerald was to record. ‘Leonard du Feu was a neighbour we prized beyond rubies. His Jersey property had been in his family for ever (something like five hundred years) and his fields, as they say, marched with ours. His house lay two minutes’ walk from the manor, and was really three houses in one, with a small worker’s cottage, a huge coolroom and massive granite outbuildings. We had never, in our wildest dreams, imagined that Leonard would sell the family house. Breathlessly, Betty descended to the office and gave the news.’
Here was their training centre, ready-made and close at hand – an ancient Jersey granite property by the name of Les Noyers. John Hartley immediately rang Gerald in Memphis, and Gerald instructed him to contact Leonard du Feu at once. On 30 November 1979, after much huffing and puffing on the part of the States of Jersey, who had strict laws about the uses to which properties (particularly agricultural properties) could be put on the island, Les Noyers became the Trust’s. ‘To say we were delighted would be wholly inadequate,’ wrote Gerald. ‘Instead of the massive concrete block we were contemplating for our training centre, we had an elegantly beautiful old Jersey farmhouse with massive outbuildings and eight acres of land. So, as soon as the property was ours, we started renovations.’
Before long Les Noyers had been transformed into a spanking new international college of specialist education, complete with student dormitories and living quarters, a lecture theatre, a small museum, a graphics and photography area, a darkroom and video suite, and the elegant Sir William Collins Memorial Library, for before his death in 1976 Gerald’s publisher had generously given the Trust a copy of every zoological and natural history book that Collins had ever published, and the promise that it would receive every one published in the future.
The first training officer in charge of the centre was Dr David Waugh, selected from a multitude of applicants not only for his Ph.D in biology but for his ability to deal with people from all over the world with tact and sympathy. His first task was to draw up, with what Gerald called ‘rigid flexibility’, a programme for a diploma training course that had never been taught before. The first trainee – Yousoof Mungroo, who was later to become the first director of the first national park in Mauritius – arrived before Les Noyers was ready, and had to live in the reptile house. Today nearly a thousand students from a hundred countries have been trained in Jersey. These are the men and women who constitute, as someone neatly put it, ‘Gerald Durrell’s Army’. ‘I had never thought to see this, our mini-university, come into being during my lifetime,’ Gerald was to write, ‘but it seemed no time at all before I was playing croquet on the back lawn of Les Noyers with students from Brazil, Mexico, Liberia, India and China, and that they kindly allowed me to win was in no way the only reason I felt proud. This mix of people from all nations has worked out very well indeed, I think because our trainees share a common purpose, which is saving endangered species.’
The International Training Centre for Breeding and Conservation of Endangered Species was probably Gerald Durrell’s greatest achievement. It is still virtually unique, and has spread the Jersey message and Jersey knowhow around the world. As Desmond Morris was to comment:
There are scores of conservationists and whatnot who sit around pontificating learnedly about this and that. What Gerry did was train local people to do it for themselves in their own countries. Without this you’re lost. In many unstable countries, the moment there’s a political upheaval, everything falls apart, animals are hunted down, killed and eaten. So you have to have a bedrock of conservation practice, a new attitude inculcated. Setting about doing this was Gerry’s great achievement.
Every year over fifty new trainees arrive for courses lasting three months (three weeks in the case of the short Summer School programme), during which they learn the theory of conservation biology, the role of zoos in biodiversity conservation, the biological principles of the proper care and maintenance of animals kept in captivity, the genetic and demographic management of ex situ and in situ populations, the strategies for habitat protection and reintroduction of captive-bred animals; undertake practical working experience with endangered animals in the mammals, birds and herpetology departments of Jersey Zoo; and conduct research related to the species they will try to save when they return home. Well trained and highly motivated, the graduates of Les Noyers represent an extraordinary international conservation network. Their fondness for Gerald Durrell and his organisation is palpable.
As a result of the vision of a man who had virtually no formal education whatsoever, Jersey Zoo and Trust had undergone an evolution from menagerie to zoo park to survival centre to international conservation headquarters and training centre of excellence. But Gerald’s vision could never have become a reality without his closest colleagues – including both his wives and ‘the boys’ (as he insisted on calling his senior staff). These totally dedicated disciples remained steadfastly devoted to the place, the cause and above all the man. Gerald, in his turn, trusted them totally, for they had been selected to some degree in their maker’s image, as committed, talented, congenial and unconventional aides who, like their mentor, could think laterally and stand problems on their heads. ‘I trust them as much for their faults as their virtues,’ he explained to David Hughes. ‘I place absolute faith in them. If I died tomorrow there would be no fear of collapse through lack of directional impetus. They might regret the loss of a fund-raiser, even of a father figure, but they would know just which way to go.’ Gerald ran the show like a benign patriarch, but he always had an ear for whatever his staff had to say. To this end it was the usual practice for ‘the boys’ to come up to the flat for a beer around five o’clock. ‘They run the place marvellously when I’m away,’ Gerald was to say. ‘But as soon as I get back, they say to themselves: “There’s that poor old bugger sitting up there, he’ll feel unloved and unwanted if we don’t give him something to do.” So they tell me about all their problems.’
John Hartley – relaxed, humorous, a born diplomat – had been Trust Secretary for a number of years before becoming Gerald’s personal assistant in 1976, and knew the man inside out. ‘Gerry was brilliant as an ideas person,’ he was to recall. ‘You know – absolute vision. But he had a total need of the people who were going to say, “Oh, that’s a bloody good idea, I’d better try and make it happen.” Gerry wasn’t an executive; he never ran this place, whatever that means. He was the thinker and where he led we followed – and he was such a remarkable and enchanting man we’d follow him to the ends of the earth. He was magical. You’d come away from an evening with him with a smile on your face. You knew you had been in the presence of somebody who was different to the rest of us – a presence, larger than life, effervescent, terribly funny, a free spirit, a free mind that could go anywhere – and usually did. He did think a lot. Up in the flat he’d spend long periods of time sitting at the kitchen table with a notepad, mulling things over, thinking things through. What a great adventure it was to be with him. What a saga we’d all got involved in.’
Jeremy Mallinson – tall, fair and slim, briskly energetic and bubbling with enthusiasm – had been at the zoo almost as long as Gerald had, and as Zoological Director he was responsible for the day-to-day running of the zoo. Gerald had always regarded taking Jeremy on as a typical case of ‘Durrell’s Luck’. Jeremy for his part was conscious of a debt of gratitude to ‘Mr D’ (as he called his friend and mentor in the early days), who had guided his formative years and fulfilled his life. ‘Gerry was a great listener,’ he recalled. ‘He had these lovely blue eyes; they’d fix you, you knew exactly what he was thinking. He was incredibly su
pportive of people he trusted, no matter what their background was. Even if you made mistakes he’d see you grew out of them. He was an incredibly good chooser of people. He had a tremendous insight into people. He never bothered to quantify it. Basically he was a rather shy, private man, but with someone he liked, or in company where he felt at ease, he could be a very warm person. He would embrace you and mean it. He would even kiss me on both cheeks – very Continental. He was very critical of inhibitions. “If you love someone,” he’d say, “tell them you love them.” Although he and I were totally different in every possible way, Gerry so inspired me with his philosophy and his dedication that I learned just about everything from him. He inspired all sorts of people all over the world.’
Because Gerald so often railed against the human race and the destruction it inflicted on the planet and the natural world, some people thought he was a misanthrope. In fact it was the nature of the human species he complained about, not humans as individuals. ‘We have this awful insular habit,’ he had complained to David Hughes, ‘of talking about the animal kingdom patronisingly as though it were an inferior form of life on a very remote planet – but we are in the animal kingdom, we’re a bloody mammal. And the whole educational system supports this appalling divorce, as do politics, social custom, even science – it’s all geared to this frightening idea of man being God, instead of the worldwide Frankenstein he has really become.’
Gerald Durrell Page 64
