On 8 June Gerald received word that he had been nominated for one of the most outstanding awards for achievement that had come his way. This was the United Nations Environmental Programme ‘Global 500’ Award, the recipients of which were included on the UN Roll of Honour for Environmental Achievement. ‘For the last thirty years,’ ran the citation, ‘Mr Durrell has been one of the world’s leading conservationists. In his books and television films he has promoted the conservation of wildlife globally. The Jersey Wildlife Preservation Trust which he founded is noted for its exemplary work in captive breeding of endangered species.’
On 6 July came the twenty-fifth anniversary of the founding of the Trust. ‘We are having a marquee in the grounds,’ Gerald wrote to the McGeorges that morning, ‘and everybody is going to bring a picnic. I have just finished roasting a turkey and wild rice and we are having the Lieutenant Governor Sir William Pillar and his Lady, also the actress Hannah Gordon, who played the part of my mother in the BBC series My Family and Other Animals. She and the Governor are going to read extracts while an orchestra plays bits from Saint-Saens’ Carnival of the Animals, so we are just hoping to God it doesn’t rain. Needless to say the fridge is groaning under the weight of champagne and the only thing to spoil our enjoyment is the fact that you are not here to share it with us.’
Gerald had every reason to look back over those twenty-five years with satisfaction and pride. The long struggle was now coming to fruition. That summer, in his review of the achievements of the previous year, he reported: ‘You could say that 1987 was an ordinary year for the Trust: two more accords with governments, eight new capital developments, trainees from 22 countries, an island saved, 500 animals bred, four endangered species in the process of reintroduction to the wild, hours of national and international TV time and visitors to the zoo up again!’
But there was no room for complacency. Though captive breeding was now accepted as a significant conservation tool, and though conservation and environmental concern had moved a lot higher on the agendas of many governments around the world, the global situation remained grave. When the Trust’s patron, Princess Anne, visited Jersey in December, she officially ‘sank’ a time capsule beneath the site of the Trust’s first interpretative centre (the Princess Royal Pavilion). Among its contents was a letter from Gerald Durrell addressed to future generations of mankind. The simple, direct letter was both an article of faith and a plea to the planet’s custodians in the years to come, a kind of last will and testament:
To Whom it may Concern
Many of us, though not all, recognise the following things:
1. All political and religious differences that at present slow down, entangle and strangle progress in the world will have to be solved in a civilised manner
2. All other life forms have as much right to exist as we have and that indeed without the bulk of them we would perish
3. Overpopulation is a menace that must be addressed by all countries; if allowed to continue it is a Gadarene syndrome which will cause nothing but doom
4. Ecosystems are intricate and vulnerable; once misused, disfigured or greedily exploited they will vanish to our detriment. Used wisely they provide boundless treasure. Used unwisely they create misery, starvation and death to the human race and to a myriad other lifeforms
5. It is stupid to destroy things such as rainforests, especially because in these great webs of life may be embedded secrets of incalculable value to the human race
6. The world is to us what the Garden of Eden was supposed to be to Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve were banished, but we are banishing ourselves from Eden. The difference is that Adam and Eve had somewhere else to go. We have nowhere else to go.
We hope that by the time you read this you will have at least partially curtailed our reckless greed and stupidity. If we have not, at least some of us have tried …
We hope that you will be grateful for having been born into such a magical world.
Gerald Durrell
Two days after the interment of the time capsule Gerald was awarded an honorary Doctor of Science degree – his second doctorate to date – from the University of Durham. ‘In what he has achieved,’ ran the citation, ‘and in his plans for what is yet to come, we can see the fruit of knowledge, compassion and sheer toughness and determination. It all gives us a hope.’
A visit to the small Central American country of Belize in January 1989 gave a rare and gratifying glimpse of hope. Miraculously, Belize still possessed three-quarters of its natural vegetation (mostly rich tropical forest) and most of its coral reefs (second only in length to Australia’s Great Barrier Reef). Moreover the entire population, of less than 180,000, from government officials to jungle-dwelling villagers, realised that their future lay in the wise and careful use of their natural resources – fish-rich seas, fertile lowlands, dense green jungles. Laws were being enacted to protect the reef and the mangrove-fringed coastline. A huge tract of jungle had been set aside as the world’s only jaguar reserve. An ambitious conservation programme, called Programme for Belize, was planning to set aside a quarter of a million acres of tropical forest, part as an undisturbed ‘core’ area for wildlife, part to be used in agro-forestry, selective timbering and honey and chicle production. But it was the Belize Zoo and Tropical Education Centre (whose Director, Sharon Matola, had been inspired to pursue her career after reading Gerald’s books when young) which most impressed the Durrells. The animals were in splendid condition – and were breeding. The staff were brimming with enthusiasm, and were anxious to share their knowledge and love of the animals in their care.
24 May 1989 was Gerald and Lee’s tenth wedding anniversary. Gerald arranged the biggest and most generous possible bash in commemoration of the marriage that had saved his life. ‘I think it should be a good party,’ he wrote to the wildlife artist David Shepherd. ‘I have ordered some orangeade and a bottle of champagne with extra-large bubbles so that it will stretch to forty-odd people or so.’ The venue was to be the huge Victorian orangerie cum conservatory and surrounding gardens at Trinity Manor, one of the grand houses of Jersey, just down the road from the zoo. All the guests were to have flowers and champagne in their rooms in the best hotels on the island. There would be crystal chandeliers and silver cutlery borrowed from Government House to add a touch of elegance to the anniversary dinner, a jungle of potted plants and garlands of flowers to add an air of tropical magic in the orangerie, and piano music to add a mood of romance to the occasion.
Gerald went to great lengths and no end of expense to find gifts for Lee that matched the splendour of the occasion, including four live tarantulas, a nineteenth-century necklace of Bohemian garnet, a magnificent Noah’s ark complete with nearly a hundred animal figures carved in wood in Bavaria in the early 1800s, and two life-size metal baboons from Zimbabwe. ‘Among Lee’s gifts to me,’ Gerald reported to friends, ‘was a lovely painting by her uncle, who is a most talented artist, a marvellous silver and glass honeypot in the shape of a giant bee, and a fabulous chair in which I am going to sit in state in the greenhouse that we are going to construct down in France.’
On 24 November 1989 the Durrell Institute for Conservation and Ecology (DICE) came into being at the University of Kent at Canterbury under the tutelage of its founder-director Dr Ian Swingland. Dedicated to drawing on all known resources and disciplines to prevent species extinction and maintain bio-systems, it was believed to be the world’s first full-blown academic institution concerned with the establishment of the science of conservation biology. The next day Gerald received yet another honorary doctorate, this time, appropriately, from the University of Kent.
Though it cost £2 million a year to keep the Trust and zoo going, by the end of the eighties the Trust’s finances were so buoyant that the Jersey States Treasury suggested it was perhaps a good time to cancel their original loan. In 1989 the Trust’s funds became even healthier when, in an unprecedented act of generosity and support, the sum of £1 million was donated towar
ds the running costs of the International Training Centre by the Whitley Animal Protection Trust at the behest of one of its youngest Trustees, Edward Whitley, whose great-uncle Herbert, the wealthy and eccentric founder of Paignton Zoo, had bankrolled Gerald’s second Cameroons expedition back in 1949 by agreeing to buy half the animals he brought home and any others that the London Zoo turned down.
Whitley was a young banker with aspirations to be a writer when he first came to Jersey to interview Gerald for an article, inspired by his great-uncle, about eccentric zoo-owners. He had avidly read all Gerald’s books when he was a boy, and his first encounter with the man himself was a shock: ‘With his white beard, mane of white hair and brilliant blue eyes, he looked like a cross between a country-and-western singer and an Old Testament prophet. Stouter and shorter than I had expected, he lowered himself with some difficulty into an armchair. “My hips gave out on me,” he groaned. “I’m now walking on artificial ones.”’ Whitley recalled that he was given ‘a rather predictable kind of interview’, and he thought little more about it. It was only when he wrote to Gerald to say how much he and his literary agent wife Araminta had enjoyed their meeting that things began to happen.
Gerald, it transpired, was obsessed by the name Araminta, and he replied by return: ‘When your beautiful lady walked into the room, I was so taken with her looks that I did not register her name, which, if I read your writing correctly, is Araminta – a lovely old-fashioned name which I am very fond of.’ So magical was the name to him that during his filming expedition in Australia in 1962 he had invented an imaginary girlfriend with the name of Araminta Jones, and he had later called his car Araminta. When he was wooing Lee he had created a fantasy rival for his affections, an octogenarian knitting instructress called Araminta Grubble, with whom he planned to elope to Baffin Land.
‘From then on our friendship flourished,’ Edward Whitley recalled, ‘and he took me under his wing … Within six months I had left my job and become a writer – with endless phone calls and letters of support from Gerry, who became a valued friend.’
When Whitley returned to Jersey in 1989 Gerald took him on a tour of the zoo and Training Centre. He was greatly impressed by what he saw, but was disturbed to learn that the Training Centre was losing the Trust a good deal of money, and might even have to close. ‘Using my experience as a banker,’ he was to record, ‘I wrote a business plan which successfully raised sufficient funding.’ The million pounds was the happy outcome. Gerald, Lee and their colleagues were beside themselves with joy at the news, and Gerald wrote excitedly to the bright young man who had masterminded this unexpected turn of fortune: ‘We are really over the moon about this. I never thought that the Training Centre would come about in my lifetime and here I am now seeing it underwritten. You really are a splendid man – not nearly as attractive as your wife Araminta, but with a beguiling charm of your own. I cannot thank you enough and I look forward to you and Araminta coming over so that I can show my gratitude by poisoning you with one of my specially cooked meals.’ Not long afterwards Whitley set off on a round-the-world assignment to see how the graduates of the International Training Centre in ten different countries were faring on their return to the sometimes harsh reality of hands-on conservation work in their native lands, later writing a full-length account of what he found in his book Gerald Durrell’s Army.
After what had become a regular rendezvous in Memphis for Christmas, the summer was spent at the Mazet, which was undergoing substantial improvements both inside and out, paid for by the funds that had come flooding in from the Amateur Naturalist and Durrell in Russia projects. A new terrace had been constructed, a new swimming pool, a plant-filled conservatory, and a fabulous new study overlooking the pool and the hills beyond, which Gerald christened Delphi – ‘whence oracles issue’. Gerald had brought down some of his favourite furniture, and Lee’s sister Hat came to advise on replanting the garden. ‘I admit that we lead what by normal standards may be considered a very schizophrenic existence,’ Gerald wrote to the McGeorges, ‘but how lucky we are. We have your beautiful home to go to, full of love, good food and free Scotch. We have Jersey, where our “family” of boys and girls welcome us with warmth, and then we have the Mas Michel, where we can relax and work and mingle with each other in the sun. Over all, we love what we do, in spite of the fact that we frequently wring our hands and moan with despair.’
While ‘mingling in the sun’ with Hat and Lee, Gerald took the opportunity to pen his long-promised ode in praise of Araminta Whitley. If nothing else, it showed that at sixty-five he had lost none of his sensual delight in the contemplation of the female sex, a pleasure he was never to abjure: even on his deathbed he was to carry on flirting.
Of all the places I have bin ta
I have seen some luscious dames.
Blonde, beguiling redheads yummy,
Chocolate skins with jewels in tummy,
Skins like sexy yellow silk,
Skins like roses, skins like milk,
Bosom, buttock, legs a-twinkle,
Girls who have not got a wrinkle.
Girls beguiling, smiles so winning,
Girls who like a bit of sinning.
But in all the places that I’ve bin ta
None compare with Araminta.
In the late autumn of 1990 Gerald and Lee returned to Madagascar in search of the aye-aye and other endangered animals. This was to be Gerald’s last major foray into the wilds, and it was very nearly to prove a jungle too far.
Up-country Madagascar is not a place for the faint of heart or feeble of frame at the best of times. There was no doubting Gerald’s heart for this endeavour, but his body was to let him down; eventually the pain in his arthritic hips became so trying that there were times when he had to be left behind in camp while his companions plunged into the forest on the kind of adventures he once led from the front.
The aim of the expedition was to obtain breeding stocks of two lemurs (the aye-aye and the gentle lemur), the giant jumping rat and the flat-tailed tortoise (or kapidolo), all of which were in desperate straits as the destruction of natural habitats in Madagascar continued apace. The aye-aye, a shy, nocturnal creature, was perhaps the most remarkable of these species, and its plight the most acute, for it was unpopular with the local population. Slash-and-burn agriculture had reduced its natural habitat to such an extent that it was forced to forage among agricultural crops such as coconut and sugar cane, and thus threatened the local subsistence economies. As if this wasn’t enough, many Malagasy believed that, with its round staring eyes, huge teeth, and long, antenna-like fingers, the aye-aye possessed magical powers and was a harbinger of death, so for this reason also the poor creature was looked upon with disfavour.
The plan was to search three specific areas of the island. For the first few weeks Gerald and Lee, John Hartley and Quentin Bloxam, accompanied by a Channel Television film crew, would search for aye-aye in the Mananara region on the east coast of the island. Hartley and Bloxam would then head west to Morondava to set up a camp and search for the rat and the tortoise, while Gerald and Lee would visit Lake Alaotra, the biggest lake on the island, to search for gentle lemur, later joining up with the others near Morondava.
So the party set off from Antananarivo, the capital, more familiarly known as Tana, following the coast northwards, with the roads becoming progressively worse. Gerald was in considerable pain from his arthritic hips, and by the time they reached Mananara (‘a one-horse town without the horse’) he was unable to walk. But his spirits were lifted when Quentin Bloxam returned from a night-time reconnaissance one morning bursting with excitement. ‘Aye-aye,’ he bubbled. ‘Aye-aye everywhere. They were all dashing about in the trees. It was the most … well, I can’t begin to describe. It was the most fabulous … we … it was just incredible. I mean to say … Aye-aye all over the place.’
Quentin had observed what was probably an aye-aye mating orgy. A camp was set up nearby at Antanambaobe, and before very long the fir
st aye-aye was brought in – an individual dubbed ‘Verity’ who strictly speaking belonged to Gerald’s old friend in Madagascar, Professor (‘Pas de problème’) Albignac, who had masterminded the Man and Biosphere Reserve around which they were to work.
‘In the gloom it came across the branches towards me,’ Gerald was to record of his first encounter with an aye-aye,
its round, hypnotic eyes blazing, its spoon-like ears turning to and fro independently like radar dishes, its white whiskers twitching and moving like sensors; its black hands, with their thin, attenuated fingers, the third seeming prodigiously elongated, tapping delicately on the branches as it moved along, like those of a pianist playing a complicated piece by Chopin. It looked like a Walt Disney witch’s black cat with a touch of ET thrown in for good measure. If ever a flying saucer came from Mars, you felt that this is what would emerge from it. It was Lewis Carroll’s Jabberwocky come to life, wiffling through its tulgey wood.
It lowered itself on to my shoulder, gazed into my face with its huge, hypnotic eyes and ran slender fingers through my beard and hair as gently as any barber. In its underslung jaw, I could see giant chisel-like teeth, teeth which grow constantly, and I sat quite still. It uttered a small, snorting noise like ‘humph’ and descended to my lap. Here, it inspected my walking-stick. Its black fingers played along its length as if the stick were a flute. Then it leant forward and, with alarming accuracy, almost bisected my stick with two bites from its enormous teeth. To its obvious chagrin, it found no beetle larvae there and so it returned to my shoulder. Again, it combed my beard and hair, gentle as baby breeze.
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