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We've all been taught to see the '60s as a wild decade, a time of sexual and cultural revolution.

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But it was also a time when another revolution was happening,

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when our attitudes to animals and nature were completely transformed.

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As television took off, a new world of exotic creatures started to enter

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our lives, and a new respect and reverence began to grow.

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That relationship between man and animal completely changed.

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People were just ready to start thinking a little bit more widely about animals.

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Writers like Gavin Maxwell and Gerald Durrell helped us to appreciate and value animals.

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Pioneers such as Joy Adamson, and her life with lions, and Jane Goodall, with her

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research on primates, showed us that animals had something to teach us.

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We're not separate from the animal kingdom.

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We don't rule over it, but we're part of it. That was something new.

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Before the '60s, the British public knew very little about wildlife protection.

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Groups such as the World Wildlife Fund or campaigns to save the whale didn't exist.

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In fact, the very idea that animals might be endangered came as a big shock to us.

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That was a big wake-up call.

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Yes, it was a big change of attitude.

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As our interest in animals grew, so did our awareness

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of their surroundings and the natural world around us.

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And a new word began to be used - the environment, a word hardly recognised before the '60s.

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The idea of "the environment" as a way of talking about what surrounds you was novel.

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It is stunning, the transformation in attitudes.

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In fact it's one of the great untold stories of British social and cultural history.

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This is the untold story of how we fell in love with animals,

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of how we grew to understand our relationship with the natural world. This is the other story of the '60s,

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of When Britain Went Wild.

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The change in our attitudes to the natural world

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was long in the making, but the post-war years were key.

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At that time, few people were engaged with nature or wildlife.

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In fact, very little had changed since the colonial days,

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when protecting animals was all about preserving hunting stocks.

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But there was one man who would change all that.

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Peter Scott was the public face of a new movement and the driving force

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behind the first-ever mass membership wildlife group.

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He encouraged a love for, and a fascination with, the wild,

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which would inspire a generation into caring for animals.

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I think David Attenborough has said,

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if there was to be a patron saint of conservation in Britain,

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it would be Peter Scott. He was a remarkable man.

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Very difficult to find someone,

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certainly in this country,

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who was anywhere near as influential as Peter.

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Of course there were a lot of people behind the scenes,

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but in terms of public presentation, Peter was incomparable.

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Peter Scott was born into a family of an elite class of Englishmen from an earlier age.

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His father, Robert Scott, was a very British hero. Better known as Scott of the Antarctic,

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he had died in his attempt to be the first man to the South Pole when Peter was just two years old.

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Such a background of wealth and privilege was common among many of the early naturalists.

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Peter Scott enjoyed the great outdoors.

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Although we may now find this surprising, he was a passionate hunter.

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I think there's an instinct within us,

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which goes back to our forefathers who had to kill to eat,

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and I think it's still there.

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And I'm bound to say that I passed through a period,

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and I hate remembering it,

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but I don't want to cover it up because it's true.

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It was a time when I really took great delight

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in successfully killing.

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I... I... I...

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I hate to think it was so, but it was so.

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In our generation, that wasn't an odd thing to do.

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A lot of the people most interested in conservation and wildlife

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were in fact people who'd been brought up in the country

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and shooting was absolutely part of ordinary life.

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That route, although it does seem strange,

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is a route that many others have followed. It works for people.

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It's something which someone coming from a very different background,

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not as a hunter but perhaps as a city-dwelling nature lover, might find inexplicable.

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But the truth of the matter is that there are lots of hunters who have become conservationists.

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It was through hunting that Scott developed his keen interest in wildlife,

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but his conversion was a turning point in his life.

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He gave a very poignant account

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of his conversion.

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He describes in his book, The Eye Of The Wind, how he shot a goose

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and it was wounded - it broke its legs.

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It was out on the mudflats and nobody could get to it.

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It was there that morning and then it was there the same afternoon when they went back

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and it was there the next day.

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He decided that, you know,

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he didn't enjoy this and he didn't want to do this any more.

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So he switched from being primarily a hunter

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to studying their behaviour and eventually of course to conservation.

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Scott, the hunter-turned-conservationist,

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fell in love with the wetlands of the Severn Estuary and, in 1946,

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he set about creating a sanctuary for wild and endangered birds.

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It became the Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust at Slimbridge in Gloucestershire.

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First of all, they lived in a little cottage.

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There was a little cottage on the estate there,

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the part that they bought.

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Then they built this spectacular low red-brick house,

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which had this enormous window looking out over the pond,

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with wild ducks coming in and landing practically in front of you, you know - "splash"!

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Scott was convinced that people would share his passion for wildlife, and Slimbridge was unique

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in letting them get close to the birds.

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It was another great thing about Peter Scott, that he realised that the environmental movement

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was about bringing people to see wildlife, to get excited by it, showing them the wonders

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and complexity of the natural world, and getting them enthused and passionate and engaged with it.

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I was very small when it was set up.

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It was all a lot barer.

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There was much less growth.

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The people were allowed everywhere.

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People were allowed into this pen as well.

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That was an interesting concept, that we had our meals overlooked by the public!

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If they would look in with binoculars, sometimes we'd look back at them with binoculars.

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It was a wonderful place to grow up.

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I mean, we had the freedom of the pens.

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We had the ability to roam anywhere

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and enjoy the birds. It was fantastic, and I remember going out

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with my little box camera, being so excited that I could get pictures of birds really, really close.

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The success of Slimbridge was helped by Scott's connections.

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He even asked the then Princess Elizabeth

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to bring some rare trumpeter swans back from Canada, which she did.

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But then he had always mixed in very influential circles.

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Right from a child, he was well-connected,

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because his mother was really quite a social person,

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and she knew all sorts of people in government and elsewhere.

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She introduced my father to all sorts of interesting people.

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Of course, he was already and Olympic skater and a yachtsman, and all the other things that he did.

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So his skills helped him to meet these people with his own confidence that he could do things.

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Peter Scott was able to draw on the family history, if you like,

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and reinvent that in terms of his passion for wildlife conservation

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at Slimbridge and all the rest of it.

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There was something so archetypally English, British,

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about what he was doing.

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And did it with such eloquence and such a commanding understanding of the natural world.

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And his love of it just communicated itself to people almost effortlessly.

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"Even if you don't belong to such an organisation..."

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This ability to communicate his passion had already been exploited on the radio,

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where Scott presented several popular wildlife programmes.

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But it was television which would make him a household name.

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It was producers at the newly-formed Natural History Unit in Bristol

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who would discover Scott's talent for the screen.

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We'll show his mask,

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a little turned-up bill...

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We went along to see him do this lecture.

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He stood up on the stage, he talked to the people - he had them in the palm of his hand.

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He had a big blackboard on the stage, and he sort of drew his ducks.

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And then he showed little bits of film, short squirts of film on a big screen there.

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And we went back home and said,

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"It's just television!"

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The programme Look was first broadcast in 1955,

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and would run for a further 26 years.

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And there you see my studio window on the left there,

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and just inside is where I am, sitting and talking to you now.

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This rare early recording shows how some of the first Look programmes

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were broadcast live from Peter Scott's house at Slimbridge.

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On the easel here is a picture I haven't really quite finished, actually.

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It's a picture I've been painting. And it shows some pintails,

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which are British ducks, flying across in front of this very window. I mean, that is roughly speaking,

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the view you have just been looking at, through the window, across the pond.

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Now let's see if we can find something a bit more

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typically British in the way of ducks out there on the pond.

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We would have Peter sitting down in his studio, what was effectively his studio.

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And he could be talking about the ducks the other side of the window,

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and he could turn and draw the duck for you.

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..part of the collection birds, and put them into this enclosure here.

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This was his secret weapon, really,

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the fact that he could talk intelligently

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about these beautiful birds,

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but also do drawings to make a particular point.

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- # You're gonna find me 
- Ba-ba-ba-ba

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- # Out in the country 
- Ba-ba-ba-ba... #

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It's difficult for a daughter to say, but I think that he was very charismatic.

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He was very articulate, so he explained things very clearly.

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Certainly, it was new, it was a different thing.

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Wildlife hadn't been shown in that way at all before.

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# Ba-ba-ba-ba, ba-ba-ba-ba... #

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I remember all the lights. There's much less lighting now,

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cos it was very hot, I remember, when the lights were on.

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And us children used to sit in the background.

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It was always a big event, lot and lots of wires.

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Yeah, I do remember.

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George, the golden eagle is fairly secure.

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It's still a rare bird, but it's fairly secure in Scotland.

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Peter Scott took to television like one of his ducks to water.

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And Look enjoyed unrivalled success with an ever-increasing audience.

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And perhaps I should explain that these are only the highlights that you've seen of a very much longer...

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Peter was a lovely man. He was very easy to work with, certainly.

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But everything had to go his way.

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If there was any kind of problem, and things weren't going nicely,

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he would be inclined to stamp his feet

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and have a little bit of a tantrum.

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But always in the interest of the job that you were involved in.

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And his job, as he saw it, was to persuade people

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that wildlife needed to be protected.

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Well, if we decide that we have got a responsibility

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to prevent animals from becoming extinct, what can we do about it?

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Well, in extreme cases we can, and I think we should,

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take into captivity a proportion of the population

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into some zoo, park or reserve,

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and try and breed them there and build up the stock.

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Now, here at the Wildfowl Trust, we have done that with several species.

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We have particularly had some success with the nene,

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or Hawaiian goose.

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Long before it became widely acknowledged,

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Peter Scott recognised the importance of conserving wildlife.

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He was also aware that engaging the public in this battle was crucial.

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Scott was one of a handful of people who realised that television

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would become one of the most important tools

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in persuading people to care about animals.

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TV CAMERA BEEPS AND FILM SPOOLS

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'Keep it quiet, please. Stand by.'

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In the mid-'50s, television was a completely new medium, but it was one

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which lent itself to engaging the British in a love of wildlife.

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There were two kinds of television programmes.

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The first and original kind of animal programme

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was one in which animals are brought from the London Zoo

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in the middle of the night, stuck on a table,

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and a man from London Zoo said, "This is..." whatever it was.

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And this poor creature sitting there, blinking in the sunlight,

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before it was stuffed back into a sack and taken away.

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We're going to show you some of our special favourites from the zoo. The first being Peter, a chimpanzee.

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The next one we're showing you is a cockatoo named Old Bill.

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- COCKATOO:
- Come and shake hands! 
- Come and shake hands.

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I watched avidly. It was exciting. You saw animals

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you'd never seen before,

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it might bite the person who was handling it,

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or escape or pee down his front or those sort of things.

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So it was live television.

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Well, I've got a handful here! And hello, how are you?

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And then there was a couple called Armand and Michaela Denis.

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The title of our first chapter today is Search For Gertie.

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- You had better explain who Gertie is.
- Oh, yes.

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Travellers' Tales, with Michaela and Armand Denis, was a big departure

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from studio-based programmes and hugely popular in the '50s.

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..no idea where this photograph had been taken,

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or if this animal was still alive.

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Then one day, an old Tanganyika settler started talking to me

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about a rhinocerous he knew,

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in the old Amboseli Game Reserve.

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Armand and Michaela had been filming in East Africa for a long time.

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They actually put together a feature film.

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And in order to get publicity for the feature film, they also took

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the outtakes and made a 30-minute trailer which gave it publicity.

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And the BBC put it on and it was sensational.

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TRUMPETING

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Everybody went, "Gosh, look! Elephants, ooh!"

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Fabulous. And so those were the two things.

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But it didn't have the immediacy that the zoo programmes had.

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And hello, how are you?

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The problem with the zoo programmes

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was that they showed animals out of their ecological context.

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And I thought, "Wouldn't it be great

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"if we combined the two qualities of those things?"

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The live show of the animal that's on the table, but also a film.

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So I cooked up an idea that someone from the zoo and I should go together

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to catch animals for London Zoo, which is what zoos did in the 1950s.

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This is the story of a search for a dragon.

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The island on which it lives lies in Indonesia.

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We were going to try and film and collect some of the other interesting creatures,

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which we hoped to find on our way.

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Lizards of all sorts were very common around the village.

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And one of the commonest, and in many ways the loveliest, I saw in this small tree.

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It is a Tokay gecko.

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And here he is in the studio.

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He's about, er...

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..nine inches long.

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Quite a big gecko, as geckos go.

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And quite a fierce one.

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He lives on frogs,

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mice, lizards, and even young birds.

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Yes, I mean it's a mercy that nobody ever sees those programmes any more.

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I wouldn't mind if the BBC lost them!

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They're pretty crude programmes.

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I mean, there are sequences in it

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which are attempts at decent natural history filming.

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'After less than two hours, which we thought wasn't bad going,

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'we came at last to the village,

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'one enormous house, over a hundred yards long,

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'in which all the villagers live.'

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It's very hard for us now actually to imagine

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just how incredible it would have been to be one of the first viewers of something like Zoo Quest.

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A programme like that, where people who have never travelled

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outside the United Kingdom,

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who maybe have never travelled outside their own town, you know.

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They might have lived in Bradford all their lives.

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'As I walked past them,

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'I discovered that this temple was sacred to the cave's inhabitants.

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'Millions of millions of bats.'

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And a programme like Zoo Quest, which brings you face-to-face with things like a Komodo dragon...

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There was the dragon. This was tremendously exciting for us.

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Something that you could never envisage seeing otherwise.

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It's impossible to overestimate the impact of something like that, because it really brings

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the great variety of the planet into your living room.

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Before the '50s, it would have been inconceivable.

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So it had an enormous impact in awakening people

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to the huge variety of wildlife around the world.

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But also, of bringing to people's attention

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the extent to which it was endangered and under threat,

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and so on. So I think those first wildlife shows,

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in the '50s and '60s, were absolutely crucial

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in stimulating people's environmental interests.

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As the public's appetite to see wild animals on the screen grew,

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so did the ambition of the film-makers,

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as they explored more and more of the natural world.

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Hans and Lotte Hass gave the audience a taste

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of their exotic underwater adventures.

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'One of our tasks was to get photographs in true colour

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'of the many varieties of coral fish in the Red Sea.

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'Quite a task.'

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There was this Austrian couple with a dream life.

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I mean, this wonderful schooner,

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sailing the south sea.

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The Xarifa, it was called.

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And there was a most beautiful blonde girl in a tight white swimming suit,

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who was continually diving over the side and swimming down, grappling with a monster from the deep.

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And Hans with his beard, "Lotte is going to do this," and so on.

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Riveting. I mean, I couldn't wait until the next week.

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They were before Cousteau appeared on television.

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And they, as far as the British television viewer was concerned,

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that was the first time you'd seen under the waves.

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That was the first time you'd seen a coral, that was the first time you'd seen a shark underwater.

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Wow! I mean, amazing.

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Here's one waterproof case

315
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which I developed for an ordinary twin-lens reflex camera.

316
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And that's my camera. It's smaller and handier for the shots I like to take.

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Hans and Lotte Hass

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were like the Fanny and Johnnie Cradock

319
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of the underwater world, really.

320
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It was almost as much watching the pair of them interact,

321
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watching the human species was as interesting as watching the underwater films.

322
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But, of course, they brought underwater films

323
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to everybody's front room for the first time ever.

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'This is my special friend, the puffer fish.

325
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'Wherever I dive, it's not long before it joins me.'

326
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I worked with Hans for 18 months on Diving to Adventure.

327
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He wasn't great on his writing.

328
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And Johnny Morris, who I was working with at that time,

329
00:22:51,640 --> 00:22:54,520
we got Johnny in to do some rewriting on his material.

330
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You have to get him into focus, and think about all the other...

331
00:22:59,400 --> 00:23:06,480
Hans absolutely loved to bring God into it. He would be in with a very beautiful underwater scene,

332
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and he would like to say,

333
00:23:08,120 --> 00:23:11,280
"Here, in this underwater scene with this beautiful coral,

334
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"we feel very close to God." You see?

335
00:23:14,040 --> 00:23:17,960
And we were not so keen on this.

336
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And Johnny would rewrite some of his stuff.

337
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But he was great, Hans, a really good guy.

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Although television at this time was in its infancy, the appetite for wildlife programmes was strong.

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The British public was discovering it had a fascination for animals.

340
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But it had yet to find a way of taking this beyond the screen.

341
00:23:45,720 --> 00:23:51,160
# ..never break, never break never break, never break

342
00:23:51,160 --> 00:23:53,920
# This heart of stone

343
00:23:53,920 --> 00:23:55,800
# Oh, no, no, you'll never break... #

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Relatively few people were committed to an interest in wildlife.

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Societies didn't have big memberships. The RSPB was a relatively small society.

346
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The British Trust for Ornithology was practically a handful of people, with very few members.

347
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And it grew exponentially really, and I think largely because of television.

348
00:24:16,320 --> 00:24:20,360
I believe those early television programmes opened people's eyes

349
00:24:20,360 --> 00:24:24,400
to something they were already programmed for and hadn't realised.

350
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As well as television, there were films being screened in cinemas

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which started to challenge people's perceptions.

352
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In 1966, the film of Joy Adamson's book, Born Free, became a blockbuster.

353
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It told the story of how a British couple living in Africa

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brought up a lion, eventually releasing it back into the wild.

355
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The film starred Virginia McKenna and her husband, Bill Travers.

356
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Based on a true story, it was unique in the near-documentary way the actors had to work with the animals.

357
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It challenged the idea that a wild animal was something to be feared.

358
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I think people's attitude towards wild animals, particularly lions,

359
00:25:07,960 --> 00:25:12,440
of course, in this case, was changed by the story of 'Born Free'.

360
00:25:12,440 --> 00:25:16,280
The relationship of two people with a wild lioness,

361
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it was like a fantasy, and yet it wasn't a fantasy.

362
00:25:19,960 --> 00:25:25,720
It was absolutely, probably one of the most truthfully-written stories,

363
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I think, ever told,

364
00:25:27,080 --> 00:25:30,720
about relationships between man and wild animal.

365
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And I think it was so uplifting for people.

366
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It opened so many doors for them.

367
00:25:36,480 --> 00:25:38,120
We had these stereotypes.

368
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We had the fierce wild animal and the human that's terribly afraid of it.

369
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And this knocked away all those misconceptions.

370
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'Soon her characteristic curiosity prevailed, and she enjoyed herself tremendously.'

371
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In a scene such as this,

372
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where Virginia and Bill even swim with the lion,

373
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audiences were presented with a completely new concept.

374
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For Virginia, the close relationship she had to build with the lions to make the film was a revelation.

375
00:26:07,800 --> 00:26:13,080
There was just something about us being able to swim in the ocean with a lioness between us, you know...

376
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was incredible. Absolutely incredible.

377
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The making of Born Free had a lasting impact on Bill and Virginia.

378
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Our life was completely changed from that moment onwards.

379
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From that moment when we stepped onboard the boat in London

380
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to sail to Mombasa with our children to make the film,

381
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and we were pacing the deck reading books about lions,

382
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because we didn't really know anything at all,

383
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from that very moment, our life had changed forever.

384
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Joy Adamson's work revealed how close we could get to wild animals.

385
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There'd be another pioneering woman in the '60s,

386
00:26:51,480 --> 00:26:53,240
who would take this even further.

387
00:26:53,240 --> 00:26:54,280
Jane Goodall,

388
00:26:54,280 --> 00:26:58,560
a British researcher, spent years studying primates in the African jungle.

389
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She opened a window onto their lives, which showed how much we have in common with them.

390
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It gripped the public.

391
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# For your love

392
00:27:09,080 --> 00:27:13,480
# I'd give you everything and more and that's for sure

393
00:27:13,480 --> 00:27:14,520
# For your love

394
00:27:14,520 --> 00:27:18,960
# I'd bring you diamond rings and things right to your door... #

395
00:27:18,960 --> 00:27:22,000
Jane Goodall is totally unique.

396
00:27:22,000 --> 00:27:25,760
Here was this slight, pretty English girl,

397
00:27:25,760 --> 00:27:29,360
going off into the jungle, as it were,

398
00:27:29,360 --> 00:27:32,440
you know, absolutely on her own.

399
00:27:34,200 --> 00:27:36,640
And I seem to recall that

400
00:27:36,640 --> 00:27:42,360
she was the first scientist going to do this kind of research work

401
00:27:42,360 --> 00:27:44,280
that gave her study animals names.

402
00:27:45,480 --> 00:27:49,880
Before, they were just called by numbers or letters, or something.

403
00:27:49,880 --> 00:27:51,320
But she gave them names.

404
00:27:52,360 --> 00:27:56,200
So they were individuals with characters and personalities,

405
00:27:56,200 --> 00:28:00,680
and of course that's what brought all of us into the story.

406
00:28:00,680 --> 00:28:05,680
I think the Goodall and the Adamson effect was to make people realise

407
00:28:05,680 --> 00:28:11,040
that the boundaries between human and animal were much more blurred.

408
00:28:11,040 --> 00:28:14,640
I don't think people had really appreciated the extent to which

409
00:28:14,640 --> 00:28:17,360
we were effectively part of the same kingdom, if you like.

410
00:28:17,360 --> 00:28:20,280
And that you could have this relationship with an animal

411
00:28:20,280 --> 00:28:22,360
which wasn't master-and-servant,

412
00:28:22,360 --> 00:28:27,200
but it was that you're both participants in the natural world.

413
00:28:27,200 --> 00:28:30,280
So, Joy Adamson raising the lion cub,

414
00:28:30,280 --> 00:28:35,520
or Jane Goodall actually striking up almost relationships

415
00:28:35,520 --> 00:28:39,040
with individual primates, it kind of...

416
00:28:39,040 --> 00:28:41,400
It brings home to people the extent to which

417
00:28:41,400 --> 00:28:43,840
we are not separate from the animal kingdom.

418
00:28:43,840 --> 00:28:46,160
We don't rule over it, but we're part of it.

419
00:28:46,160 --> 00:28:48,120
That was something new, that sense.

420
00:28:48,120 --> 00:28:51,600
Their huge tails

421
00:28:51,600 --> 00:28:54,520
hung down like bell ropes.

422
00:28:54,520 --> 00:28:58,920
The idea that animals and humans might be equal partners in the natural world,

423
00:28:58,920 --> 00:29:06,400
was also being explored in a new wave of literature, in stories which would influence a whole generation.

424
00:29:18,240 --> 00:29:23,000
Gerald Durrell's books about animals were bestsellers across the world,

425
00:29:23,000 --> 00:29:26,920
and even became part of the school curriculum in Britain.

426
00:29:26,920 --> 00:29:30,320
He wrote his most famous book in 1956.

427
00:29:30,320 --> 00:29:35,080
My Family And Other Animals describes his childhood on the island of Corfu,

428
00:29:35,080 --> 00:29:38,200
and his adventures with a whole host of wildlife.

429
00:29:42,760 --> 00:29:45,440
"Some 20 feet away from me,

430
00:29:45,440 --> 00:29:50,120
"the sea seemed to part with a gentle swish and gurgle.

431
00:29:50,120 --> 00:29:51,760
"A gleaming back appeared,

432
00:29:51,760 --> 00:29:57,320
"gave a deep, satisfied sigh and sank below the surface again.

433
00:29:59,040 --> 00:30:01,720
"I had hardly time to recognise it as a porpoise,

434
00:30:01,720 --> 00:30:05,960
"before I found I was right in the midst of them.

435
00:30:08,920 --> 00:30:13,360
"They rose all around me, sighing luxuriously,

436
00:30:13,360 --> 00:30:17,640
"their black backs shining as they humped in the moonlight."

437
00:30:31,440 --> 00:30:35,840
He made animals so accessible to people.

438
00:30:35,840 --> 00:30:37,880
He was able somehow to get people,

439
00:30:37,880 --> 00:30:41,280
and their personalities and feelings and emotions,

440
00:30:41,280 --> 00:30:43,160
to connect with those of the animal,

441
00:30:43,160 --> 00:30:45,280
if you can say animals have such things.

442
00:30:45,280 --> 00:30:48,640
Some people said, "Oh, Gerry's writing's just anthropomorphic.

443
00:30:48,640 --> 00:30:51,880
"He just gave human qualities to the animals he wrote about."

444
00:30:51,880 --> 00:30:53,040
But he really didn't.

445
00:30:53,040 --> 00:30:55,680
If you read it very closely, it's not sentimental.

446
00:30:55,680 --> 00:31:01,560
It's just making the animals understood, and bringing out

447
00:31:01,560 --> 00:31:04,360
sort of a connectivity between people and animals.

448
00:31:04,360 --> 00:31:08,440
I think that's why Gerry's writings have been so influential.

449
00:31:08,440 --> 00:31:11,760
There are so many people I meet today in the conservation world,

450
00:31:11,760 --> 00:31:14,040
and what they're doing today, they tell me,

451
00:31:14,040 --> 00:31:17,120
they owe to their first reading of Gerald Durrell's books,

452
00:31:17,120 --> 00:31:19,400
particularly My Family And Other Animals.

453
00:31:19,400 --> 00:31:23,280
It's not them and us, humans and animals.

454
00:31:23,280 --> 00:31:27,880
The animals are given human characteristics, they're given personalities.

455
00:31:27,880 --> 00:31:32,640
There, they are humanised in a way that makes them enormously appealing, and makes

456
00:31:32,640 --> 00:31:38,440
them cute and cuddly and amusing, and all those kinds of things, that lead us to sympathise with them.

457
00:31:38,440 --> 00:31:41,520
HE BRAYS LOUDLY

458
00:31:52,600 --> 00:31:55,360
DISTANT, SIMILAR BRAYING

459
00:31:58,000 --> 00:32:00,400
Gerry was huge fun to be with.

460
00:32:00,400 --> 00:32:02,200
I mean, he was...

461
00:32:04,560 --> 00:32:07,400
..full of humour, full of jokes.

462
00:32:07,400 --> 00:32:10,200
And he loved animals.

463
00:32:11,320 --> 00:32:17,720
Many people's views of wild animals come from the pages of books they discovered early in life.

464
00:32:24,960 --> 00:32:30,520
Besides Durrell, there was another author writing at this time whose books influenced millions.

465
00:32:32,040 --> 00:32:38,120
Gavin Maxwell became world famous for his semi-autobiographical book, Ring Of Bright Water.

466
00:32:38,120 --> 00:32:45,200
Published in 1960, it told the story of his adventures living with a wild otter.

467
00:32:45,200 --> 00:32:49,320
It would later be made into a film, once again starring Virginia McKenna.

468
00:32:51,320 --> 00:32:54,640
Ring Of Bright Water

469
00:32:54,640 --> 00:32:56,960
was complex, erm...

470
00:32:58,880 --> 00:33:01,160
..written by a complex man...

471
00:33:03,160 --> 00:33:07,200
..who had many dark periods in his life.

472
00:33:07,200 --> 00:33:11,360
And not all the stories of the otters are that joyful.

473
00:33:11,360 --> 00:33:13,120
And yet,

474
00:33:13,120 --> 00:33:16,080
it is this...

475
00:33:16,080 --> 00:33:22,680
this joyfulness, it's the rapport that he had with his animals,

476
00:33:22,680 --> 00:33:26,600
the affection he felt for them...

477
00:33:26,600 --> 00:33:32,880
his extraordinary gift of description of nature.

478
00:33:33,840 --> 00:33:38,480
The magic of his creative writing.

479
00:33:38,480 --> 00:33:41,080
It's all about involving us, isn't it?

480
00:33:41,080 --> 00:33:44,880
Allowing us to reach out and experience the things with the writer.

481
00:33:44,880 --> 00:33:49,560
It's gathering us in so that we share these experiences.

482
00:33:49,560 --> 00:33:51,960
And he was a master of that.

483
00:33:59,920 --> 00:34:02,160
"He became for me the central figure

484
00:34:02,160 --> 00:34:06,040
"among the host of wild creatures with which I was surrounded.

485
00:34:06,040 --> 00:34:08,280
"The waterfall, the burn,

486
00:34:08,280 --> 00:34:11,360
"the white beaches and the islands.

487
00:34:11,360 --> 00:34:14,760
"His form became the familiar foreground to them all.

488
00:34:14,760 --> 00:34:18,040
"Or perhaps foreground is not the right word.

489
00:34:18,040 --> 00:34:22,320
"For at Camusfearna, he seemed so absolute a part of his surroundings,

490
00:34:22,320 --> 00:34:26,440
"that I wondered how they could ever have seemed to me complete

491
00:34:26,440 --> 00:34:27,960
"before his arrival."

492
00:34:30,200 --> 00:34:32,360
I think it was his ability to capture

493
00:34:32,360 --> 00:34:34,400
not just a sense of place

494
00:34:34,400 --> 00:34:38,600
and of this sort of seemingly idyllic lifestyle,

495
00:34:38,600 --> 00:34:43,280
but it was the personal connection with basically wild animals.

496
00:34:46,080 --> 00:34:51,400
That idea that he could capture so lyrically that relationship

497
00:34:51,400 --> 00:34:56,000
between man and beast was something I found hugely attractive.

498
00:35:02,640 --> 00:35:08,280
I think Ring Of Bright Water was a component

499
00:35:08,280 --> 00:35:13,600
of the way that we started to think about wild animals differently,

500
00:35:13,600 --> 00:35:17,040
because it was the personal relationship,

501
00:35:17,040 --> 00:35:20,400
like it was with the Adamsons and Elsa, it was Gavin with Mij.

502
00:35:21,760 --> 00:35:27,720
And the possibility that these extraordinary relationships can happen.

503
00:35:33,440 --> 00:35:35,720
I think what's crucial about these books,

504
00:35:35,720 --> 00:35:37,920
the Gerald Durrell or the Gavin Maxwell,

505
00:35:37,920 --> 00:35:39,440
is that they appeal to people

506
00:35:39,440 --> 00:35:41,920
who, of course, don't live in the countryside.

507
00:35:44,440 --> 00:35:51,240
They represent a kind of escapism, back to the land, back to the vanished England of hedgerows

508
00:35:51,240 --> 00:35:54,160
and otters and all of this kind of thing.

509
00:35:54,160 --> 00:35:59,520
They conjure up a world that most people, of course, wouldn't encounter in their daily lives.

510
00:36:01,680 --> 00:36:06,080
So environmentalism has always had this kind of escapist aspect to it,

511
00:36:06,080 --> 00:36:09,840
and I think books like these are able to bring in a mass audience,

512
00:36:09,840 --> 00:36:12,880
they're not written for a tiny group of true believers,

513
00:36:12,880 --> 00:36:15,600
they're written and they convert a mass audience

514
00:36:15,600 --> 00:36:19,440
by not being preachy, and I think that's what made them so effective.

515
00:36:21,120 --> 00:36:24,680
But for Gerald Durrell, his books were only part of the story.

516
00:36:24,680 --> 00:36:27,360
They became a means to an end.

517
00:36:27,360 --> 00:36:34,040
As his fame increased, he used his influence and money to try and change the very concept of the zoo.

518
00:36:44,800 --> 00:36:49,120
We would shudder today at the sight of distressed animals behind bars,

519
00:36:49,120 --> 00:36:54,920
but before the '60s, people didn't appreciate that wild animals might be suffering.

520
00:36:54,920 --> 00:36:58,200
Zoos hadn't changed much since Victorian days.

521
00:37:03,480 --> 00:37:09,800
At the time, most zoos really were just menageries, and their attitude

522
00:37:09,800 --> 00:37:13,000
was just something we can't really fathom today.

523
00:37:13,000 --> 00:37:16,400
No real respect for animals.

524
00:37:16,400 --> 00:37:22,080
Another hangover from Victorian times, still evident in the '50s, was an obsession with collecting

525
00:37:22,080 --> 00:37:28,400
and cataloguing specimens, as David Attenborough encountered during his Zoo Quest days.

526
00:37:28,400 --> 00:37:31,680
The London Zoo was founded in the early 19th century,

527
00:37:31,680 --> 00:37:35,640
and it wasn't founded as a zoo, it was founded as a Zoological Society.

528
00:37:35,640 --> 00:37:38,800
And its primary aim was not necessarily to keep animals

529
00:37:38,800 --> 00:37:43,120
to show people, it was to assemble specimens

530
00:37:43,120 --> 00:37:46,840
of all the animals that you could find,

531
00:37:47,080 --> 00:37:51,400
so it was still a hangover from the 19th-century cataloguing days.

532
00:37:51,400 --> 00:37:55,760
So that it led to things that you would think absurd now.

533
00:37:55,760 --> 00:37:59,960
There was a thing called the Small Mammal House, which was the size of,

534
00:37:59,960 --> 00:38:02,080
I don't know, a large greenhouse.

535
00:38:03,600 --> 00:38:08,120
And the cages were all exactly the same size, this size,

536
00:38:08,120 --> 00:38:09,280
about that big,

537
00:38:09,280 --> 00:38:13,000
and they had a little box at the back which was the nest box.

538
00:38:13,000 --> 00:38:16,960
And you would go in and they all had all these names on it, you know,

539
00:38:16,960 --> 00:38:21,280
the Gambian pouched rat, etc.

540
00:38:21,280 --> 00:38:26,840
And you could probably see not a single animal, they were all asleep.

541
00:38:26,840 --> 00:38:30,680
But that was of no consequence to the Zoological Society of London.

542
00:38:30,680 --> 00:38:33,920
They wanted to catalogue it and describe its habits

543
00:38:33,920 --> 00:38:35,160
while it's alive,

544
00:38:35,160 --> 00:38:38,960
but they were particularly interested in having the dead body.

545
00:38:40,480 --> 00:38:43,640
They had on staff a man called the prosector,

546
00:38:43,640 --> 00:38:48,360
whose job it was to take these animals when they died

547
00:38:48,360 --> 00:38:51,040
and dissect them and publish the results.

548
00:38:51,040 --> 00:38:52,520
# Rescue me... #

549
00:38:52,520 --> 00:38:56,560
As a young man, Gerald Durrell had been an animal collector for zoos.

550
00:38:56,560 --> 00:39:01,480
He'd spend months travelling the world and catching animals to bring home.

551
00:39:01,480 --> 00:39:05,080
- But as time went on, he became increasingly disillusioned.

552
00:39:05,080 --> 00:39:06,520
# Come on and rescue me... #

553
00:39:06,520 --> 00:39:07,960
There was the attitude,

554
00:39:07,960 --> 00:39:10,760
"Well, there are plenty more where they came from."

555
00:39:10,760 --> 00:39:16,920
And Gerry had just slaved and worked and tried to keep these creatures alive, and learned how to do it

556
00:39:16,920 --> 00:39:23,080
for so many months and then just to hand them over, well, that drove him absolutely mad.

557
00:39:23,080 --> 00:39:27,240
And I don't know when was the exact moment, but he decided,

558
00:39:27,240 --> 00:39:30,800
"I'm not going to do this any more for anybody else,

559
00:39:30,800 --> 00:39:35,560
"I'm going to develop and establish a place of my own as a sanctuary

560
00:39:35,560 --> 00:39:40,120
"where I can actually help save these creatures as species,

561
00:39:40,120 --> 00:39:42,560
"save species from extinction."

562
00:39:49,040 --> 00:39:52,520
Long ago I decided that when I finally got a zoo of my own,

563
00:39:52,520 --> 00:39:55,320
it would have to be able to do certain things.

564
00:39:55,320 --> 00:39:59,840
It would act as a sanctuary for animals which were in danger in the wild.

565
00:39:59,840 --> 00:40:05,360
And it would give people a chance of learning more about animals, both to increase their own knowledge

566
00:40:05,360 --> 00:40:09,240
and to enable the animals to be looked after with much more skill.

567
00:40:09,240 --> 00:40:12,200
Durrell was one of the first to promote the idea

568
00:40:12,200 --> 00:40:18,200
of captive breeding, breeding endangered species in zoos and later releasing them back into the wild.

569
00:40:18,200 --> 00:40:21,200
When he started to plan his own zoo in Jersey,

570
00:40:21,200 --> 00:40:25,880
he looked to pioneer Peter Scott for inspiration and advice.

571
00:40:25,880 --> 00:40:27,400
# Rescue me... #

572
00:40:27,400 --> 00:40:30,400
Gerry had great regard and great respect for Peter.

573
00:40:30,400 --> 00:40:34,320
And indeed when Peter set up the Wildfowl & Wetland Trust

574
00:40:34,320 --> 00:40:39,360
in Gloucestershire, Gerry knew all about it and wrote to Peter

575
00:40:39,360 --> 00:40:42,080
and wanted to model his own setup,

576
00:40:42,080 --> 00:40:46,280
that eventually happened in Jersey, on Peter's.

577
00:40:46,280 --> 00:40:51,040
Gerry, he loved animals but he also loved twisting the tail of authority.

578
00:40:51,040 --> 00:40:58,240
He was not a man who was necessarily a respecter of persons or position.

579
00:40:58,240 --> 00:41:01,800
He served his apprenticeship in London Zoo,

580
00:41:01,800 --> 00:41:04,800
and was, and let it be known, perfectly clear

581
00:41:04,800 --> 00:41:06,960
that he thought they were rubbish,

582
00:41:06,960 --> 00:41:11,360
by and large, that they didn't know how to look after animals properly.

583
00:41:11,360 --> 00:41:13,520
And that he was going to teach them.

584
00:41:13,520 --> 00:41:16,160
# When you walk in the Garden... #

585
00:41:16,160 --> 00:41:17,640
I thought he was mad.

586
00:41:17,640 --> 00:41:19,920
# In the Garden of Eden... #

587
00:41:19,920 --> 00:41:22,480
The London Zoo COST money, it didn't make money,

588
00:41:22,480 --> 00:41:25,640
London Zoo COST, and here was Gerry, going to set it up.

589
00:41:25,640 --> 00:41:28,600
I mean, like digging a hole in which to pour money.

590
00:41:28,600 --> 00:41:31,600
# Does your heart understand?

591
00:41:31,600 --> 00:41:35,680
# When you walk in the Garden... #

592
00:41:35,680 --> 00:41:42,680
Gerry was the first to take seriously the possibility of breeding in zoos to replace in the wild.

593
00:41:42,680 --> 00:41:45,560
It's a very big job to do that.

594
00:41:45,560 --> 00:41:48,760
There's more to it than meets the eye with this business.

595
00:41:48,760 --> 00:41:52,240
But he did it, you see. And he was extraordinarily persuasive,

596
00:41:52,240 --> 00:41:55,880
and he persuaded people that this would be a wonderful thing,

597
00:41:55,880 --> 00:41:57,720
which indeed it is, was and is.

598
00:42:00,560 --> 00:42:05,400
# When you're yearning for loving and she touches your hand... #

599
00:42:05,400 --> 00:42:09,480
Jersey Zoo became a role model for the way zoos are run,

600
00:42:09,480 --> 00:42:13,720
and famous around the world as a centre for conservation.

601
00:42:13,720 --> 00:42:18,960
But in the early days, it was a continual battle to finance the project.

602
00:42:18,960 --> 00:42:21,000
Durrell raised funds with his writing

603
00:42:21,000 --> 00:42:26,080
and from television appearances, where his natural talent was soon recognised.

604
00:42:26,080 --> 00:42:28,920
I don't think we ought to go into that, Peter!

605
00:42:28,920 --> 00:42:32,960
We ought, perhaps, to look at Patagonia on the big map.

606
00:42:32,960 --> 00:42:35,520
Yes, I'd like to show you where we went, Peter.

607
00:42:35,520 --> 00:42:38,040
'We were doing the Look programme at the time.'

608
00:42:38,040 --> 00:42:41,960
I saw a thing in the newspaper that he'd just got back and he'd brought

609
00:42:41,960 --> 00:42:46,360
a whole bunch of animals and was keeping them in Bournemouth.

610
00:42:46,360 --> 00:42:49,800
So I found his telephone number, rang him up, and said, as I said

611
00:42:49,800 --> 00:42:53,200
to all these other people in those days, "Have you got any film?

612
00:42:53,200 --> 00:42:55,120
"Did you film while you were there?"

613
00:42:55,120 --> 00:42:59,840
"Yes," he says. He had his Mickey Mouse camera, and he filmed the animals while he was away.

614
00:42:59,840 --> 00:43:03,240
So I said, "Are you interested in the thought of being on telly?"

615
00:43:03,240 --> 00:43:05,560
He said, "Yes, of course, I would love it,

616
00:43:05,560 --> 00:43:09,000
"but they won't have me because they've got David Attenborough."

617
00:43:09,000 --> 00:43:12,640
He was paranoid about David, you see, so I said, "Not necessarily."

618
00:43:12,640 --> 00:43:16,520
We were knocked out by the thought of having Gerry,

619
00:43:16,520 --> 00:43:19,560
'because Gerry Durrell was famous because of the book.'

620
00:43:19,560 --> 00:43:21,480
This is the Tembeling river

621
00:43:21,480 --> 00:43:24,320
in the centre of Malaya.

622
00:43:24,320 --> 00:43:28,360
Jackie, my wife, and I are going up to see the National Park, the biggest

623
00:43:28,360 --> 00:43:33,480
of Malaya's national parks, and it's a journey that takes about six hours by boat.

624
00:43:33,480 --> 00:43:35,120
By this sort of boat, anyway.

625
00:43:35,120 --> 00:43:36,920
I can see some rough water ahead.

626
00:43:38,440 --> 00:43:40,000
Durrell went on to make

627
00:43:40,000 --> 00:43:43,520
many hugely popular and successful television programmes,

628
00:43:43,520 --> 00:43:45,400
drawing the audience in

629
00:43:45,400 --> 00:43:48,280
with the same powers of description

630
00:43:48,280 --> 00:43:49,800
that he'd used in his books.

631
00:43:49,800 --> 00:43:53,720
You see that strange white throat that he keeps inflating?

632
00:43:53,720 --> 00:43:56,240
Looks rather like the sail of a sailing ship?

633
00:43:56,240 --> 00:44:00,560
It's a territory display, he's obviously warning off another male

634
00:44:00,560 --> 00:44:02,880
who's wandered into his territory.

635
00:44:06,520 --> 00:44:10,720
Though it doesn't look like it, it's actually a flying lizard.

636
00:44:11,640 --> 00:44:16,560
The wings aren't really wings at all in the sense that a bird or a bat has wings.

637
00:44:16,560 --> 00:44:20,280
They're rather like two sections of umbrella on each side of his body.

638
00:44:20,280 --> 00:44:24,760
Thin skin supported by elongated rib bones.

639
00:44:24,760 --> 00:44:26,880
Though he's called a flying lizard,

640
00:44:26,880 --> 00:44:30,640
it would probably be more accurate to call him a gliding lizard.

641
00:44:30,640 --> 00:44:34,040
If you wait long enough, you can sometimes see them performing.

642
00:44:39,960 --> 00:44:41,920
Now, I think he's going to take off.

643
00:44:44,400 --> 00:44:46,560
There, isn't that incredible?

644
00:44:48,360 --> 00:44:51,840
'Gerry absolutely loved television and filming.'

645
00:44:51,840 --> 00:44:54,760
He said if he hadn't been an animal collector for zoos,

646
00:44:54,760 --> 00:44:56,480
he would've been a film-maker.

647
00:44:56,480 --> 00:44:59,760
And he certainly saw that as a way to get the message across.

648
00:44:59,760 --> 00:45:01,560
There were his books, of course,

649
00:45:01,560 --> 00:45:05,320
but he loved being both behind the camera and in front of the camera,

650
00:45:05,320 --> 00:45:09,320
and tried to do that as often as he could.

651
00:45:09,320 --> 00:45:13,600
Television presenters such as Durrell and Peter Scott saw it as part of their duty

652
00:45:13,600 --> 00:45:19,400
to raise people's awareness about the plight of endangered species around the world.

653
00:45:19,400 --> 00:45:23,000
Television would be an essential tool in getting people to become

654
00:45:23,000 --> 00:45:30,400
actively involved in wildlife issues and Scott used his Look series as a platform to voice concern about

655
00:45:30,400 --> 00:45:32,840
animals in danger of becoming extinct.

656
00:45:32,840 --> 00:45:38,800
This is a programme about the wild animals of the world,

657
00:45:38,800 --> 00:45:45,040
their place in our lives today and their place in our lives tomorrow.

658
00:45:45,040 --> 00:45:51,280
You see, comfortably at the back of our minds is the idea that out in Africa or India or somewhere,

659
00:45:51,280 --> 00:45:56,840
there are still millions of these great wild animals roaming the jungles and deserts,

660
00:45:56,840 --> 00:46:02,920
millions of lions, millions of elephants, millions of giraffes.

661
00:46:02,920 --> 00:46:05,960
Well, it just isn't true.

662
00:46:05,960 --> 00:46:09,240
There are probably today more lions in the world's zoos

663
00:46:09,240 --> 00:46:11,080
than there are wild in Africa.

664
00:46:13,360 --> 00:46:15,320
When someone like Peter Scott said,

665
00:46:15,320 --> 00:46:18,000
"You know, don't you, all these are in danger?"

666
00:46:18,000 --> 00:46:22,760
it did make you wake up.

667
00:46:24,280 --> 00:46:27,040
But raising awareness at home wouldn't be enough.

668
00:46:27,040 --> 00:46:30,920
Peter Scott needed to take his message to an international audience.

669
00:46:44,480 --> 00:46:48,800
In 1961, Peter Scott joined a group of leading naturalists

670
00:46:48,800 --> 00:46:54,520
at a conference held by the International Union for Conservation Of Nature.

671
00:46:54,520 --> 00:46:58,840
They drew up a charter, stating that everyone had a responsibility

672
00:46:58,840 --> 00:47:02,680
to protect endangered species for future generations.

673
00:47:05,080 --> 00:47:09,240
Scott used his influence and public image to raise money

674
00:47:09,240 --> 00:47:12,680
for the charter, helping to form the World Wildlife Fund.

675
00:47:18,800 --> 00:47:21,280
A World Wildlife Charter

676
00:47:21,280 --> 00:47:26,840
to meet what amounts to a state of emergency for wildlife,

677
00:47:26,840 --> 00:47:30,160
and now we've got a World Wildlife Fund,

678
00:47:30,160 --> 00:47:32,760
which is being launched to give it teeth.

679
00:47:32,760 --> 00:47:36,720
Practically all the animals you've seen can be saved

680
00:47:36,720 --> 00:47:41,960
for our children's grandchildren, if only we care enough.

681
00:47:41,960 --> 00:47:49,120
It would be tragic, wouldn't it, if, through our own thoughtlessness, we destroyed them forever.

682
00:47:55,440 --> 00:47:59,240
Peter Scott's ambition to set up the World Wildlife Fund,

683
00:47:59,240 --> 00:48:03,840
was, I think, driven first of all by the idea that environment

684
00:48:03,840 --> 00:48:08,760
and conservation and animals doesn't respect political frontiers,

685
00:48:08,760 --> 00:48:11,080
that this was a global problem.

686
00:48:13,360 --> 00:48:15,760
Birds migrate across political frontiers.

687
00:48:15,760 --> 00:48:18,920
Animals migrate across political frontiers.

688
00:48:18,920 --> 00:48:24,400
Scott was trying to see a wider picture of this on a global scale.

689
00:48:30,520 --> 00:48:36,440
In pre-war times, in the days of the Empire, getting things done on a global scale was much easier.

690
00:48:36,440 --> 00:48:38,320
Then, it was the elite of the day,

691
00:48:38,320 --> 00:48:40,480
wanting to protect their hunting stock,

692
00:48:40,480 --> 00:48:42,880
who could get laws forced through.

693
00:48:46,440 --> 00:48:51,080
In 1903, a group of colonial hunters had established what was essentially the first

694
00:48:51,080 --> 00:48:55,280
international conservation group for the preservation of wildlife.

695
00:48:58,360 --> 00:49:01,120
I suppose back in 1903, when we were established,

696
00:49:01,120 --> 00:49:04,560
we were the Society for the Preservation of the Wildlife

697
00:49:04,560 --> 00:49:05,960
of the British Empire,

698
00:49:05,960 --> 00:49:09,280
so that is a different precept to where we are today,

699
00:49:09,280 --> 00:49:10,800
and we very much started off

700
00:49:10,800 --> 00:49:17,800
as a group of people worrying that game animals were declining in Africa and that there was a need

701
00:49:17,800 --> 00:49:24,320
to try to respond to this problem and to provide some limits to allow game species to recover.

702
00:49:26,280 --> 00:49:32,800
They were very much from the elite classes, the people with the time and the money to take responsibility

703
00:49:32,800 --> 00:49:37,960
for such things, and they were seeing that their recreational hunting was at risk.

704
00:49:37,960 --> 00:49:42,560
# Wordlessly watching He waits by the window

705
00:49:42,560 --> 00:49:46,800
# And wonders at the empty place inside... #

706
00:49:46,800 --> 00:49:51,600
In a way, these sportsmen, these hunters,

707
00:49:51,600 --> 00:49:59,000
were in such close contact with animals, as part of the hunt, the Imperial hunt, which was embedded

708
00:49:59,000 --> 00:50:06,080
in a great deal of ritual, class and gender, they were intimately involved with the animals

709
00:50:06,080 --> 00:50:13,120
they were shooting, and keenly aware of the decline of species, keenly aware of the loss of habitat.

710
00:50:15,480 --> 00:50:19,320
They were known as The Repentant Butcher's Club because they had

711
00:50:19,320 --> 00:50:22,680
put down guns and started to turn to conservation,

712
00:50:22,680 --> 00:50:27,280
and they were the first people who agitated for game reserves,

713
00:50:27,280 --> 00:50:31,720
and it was those game reserves that evolved later in the 20th century

714
00:50:31,720 --> 00:50:34,120
in Africa and India as national parks.

715
00:50:38,920 --> 00:50:42,560
With the gradual demise of the Empire came a loss of influence,

716
00:50:42,560 --> 00:50:46,600
and by the late '50s, concern was growing among the wildlife gentry

717
00:50:46,600 --> 00:50:51,680
that the newly-independent ex-colonies would not protect their national parks from poachers.

718
00:50:51,680 --> 00:50:57,040
This was where the World Wildlife Fund came in, realising that, to raise enough money

719
00:50:57,040 --> 00:51:03,120
to protect endangered species, they had to engage the widest-possible audience.

720
00:51:05,480 --> 00:51:09,160
One of the leading figures in the British appeal

721
00:51:09,160 --> 00:51:14,480
was a PR man who knew about advertising,

722
00:51:14,480 --> 00:51:16,600
and he used all the techniques

723
00:51:16,600 --> 00:51:20,200
which had made him so successful as a businessman

724
00:51:20,200 --> 00:51:22,440
in the service of the charity.

725
00:51:22,440 --> 00:51:27,360
He knew it had to have an emblem, he knew it had to have an icon,

726
00:51:27,360 --> 00:51:30,560
he knew it would be at that stage,

727
00:51:30,560 --> 00:51:33,840
in the public's mind, at any rate,

728
00:51:33,840 --> 00:51:36,520
it ought to be furry and cuddly.

729
00:51:36,520 --> 00:51:39,840
It ought to be something that you could give an image

730
00:51:39,840 --> 00:51:45,680
which was immediately identifiable and easily reproduced.

731
00:51:45,680 --> 00:51:47,800
All of those kind of practical things,

732
00:51:47,800 --> 00:51:50,720
so it came down to a panda and Peter designed the panda.

733
00:51:51,920 --> 00:51:56,760
Scott used his artistic skill and designed a simple but effective logo,

734
00:51:56,760 --> 00:52:00,320
creating an iconic image which is still in use today.

735
00:52:02,280 --> 00:52:06,760
I think it was perhaps the most obvious rallying call to the public

736
00:52:06,760 --> 00:52:11,680
and Peter Scott's focus on the panda as a symbol of something that was worth saving,

737
00:52:11,680 --> 00:52:15,680
that the individual man in the street could do something about it,

738
00:52:15,680 --> 00:52:19,760
rather than something that was just under the control of governments.

739
00:52:19,760 --> 00:52:23,440
The fact that you could sit in your homes and put £5 in an envelope

740
00:52:23,440 --> 00:52:26,480
and know that you were doing something.

741
00:52:26,480 --> 00:52:33,120
One of the first campaigns WWF ran in 1961 was for the plight of the black rhino.

742
00:52:33,120 --> 00:52:37,160
Not only did they persuade the Daily Mirror to run the story,

743
00:52:37,160 --> 00:52:42,080
but the paper carried it on its front page and for several pages inside.

744
00:52:42,080 --> 00:52:44,760
# Since you went away

745
00:52:45,960 --> 00:52:50,080
# I have been losing my sleep at night... #

746
00:52:50,080 --> 00:52:51,800
It was an extraordinary coup

747
00:52:51,800 --> 00:52:55,600
to get a newspaper to do that and I think it spoke to a particular way

748
00:52:55,600 --> 00:53:00,000
of understanding nature, that was dominant in Britain - the concern for individual

749
00:53:00,000 --> 00:53:05,920
animals who are being mistreated, isn't the same thing about concern for the rarity of species or a loss

750
00:53:05,920 --> 00:53:12,400
of ecosystem structure, but it's the one that really strikes a chord with the British public, then.

751
00:53:12,400 --> 00:53:16,520
And still does, so that it was an effective way of

752
00:53:16,520 --> 00:53:21,560
introducing the wider problem of the loss of species, the loss of habitat.

753
00:53:21,560 --> 00:53:24,720
# Bringin' on back the good times... #

754
00:53:24,720 --> 00:53:28,680
The article about the rhino hit home with the public,

755
00:53:28,680 --> 00:53:31,320
and tens of thousands of pounds was raised

756
00:53:31,320 --> 00:53:35,160
from individual donations and local charity events.

757
00:53:37,760 --> 00:53:43,880
What they did was to make themselves into a big membership organisation,

758
00:53:43,880 --> 00:53:48,680
so that it was a small donation, and lots of people could do it

759
00:53:48,680 --> 00:53:53,080
and in that, I think, was its power and its influence.

760
00:53:53,080 --> 00:53:59,240
Just numbers of people, and they were attracted because the big animals,

761
00:53:59,240 --> 00:54:02,800
the big, attractive animals were used.

762
00:54:02,800 --> 00:54:09,040
That shows the power of using an animal as a kind of flagship

763
00:54:09,040 --> 00:54:12,920
for further conservation efforts.

764
00:54:20,200 --> 00:54:24,600
Elephants and rhinos are the things that really got people turned on

765
00:54:24,600 --> 00:54:29,000
because they suddenly realised that there were these iconic animals

766
00:54:29,000 --> 00:54:31,280
that were being slaughtered.

767
00:54:31,280 --> 00:54:36,880
And this was why the World Wildlife Fund was able to take off and why it

768
00:54:36,880 --> 00:54:42,080
started to get a lot of general support because people realised, "Wow, it does matter to me."

769
00:54:42,080 --> 00:54:45,080
# Don't let me down

770
00:54:47,560 --> 00:54:50,120
# Don't let me down... #

771
00:54:50,120 --> 00:54:55,320
WWF had instant impact and raised large amounts of money, but while it increased awareness

772
00:54:55,320 --> 00:54:59,040
of the threat of extinction posed to big animals abroad,

773
00:54:59,040 --> 00:55:05,720
back home there was an invisible threat to wildlife which was only just beginning to be noticed.

774
00:55:16,640 --> 00:55:23,720
Rural Britain, romanticised by poets and artists for centuries, was changing.

775
00:55:23,720 --> 00:55:28,040
The birds that had graced the countryside for as long as people could remember

776
00:55:28,040 --> 00:55:31,360
were becoming notable by their absence.

777
00:55:34,560 --> 00:55:39,080
It's difficult now to picture it, but if you went out into the arable land in the Fens,

778
00:55:39,080 --> 00:55:43,120
the place was littered with dead pigeons and partridges,

779
00:55:43,120 --> 00:55:46,200
and it was obvious to anyone living in the country

780
00:55:46,200 --> 00:55:48,280
that something awful was happening.

781
00:55:49,320 --> 00:55:52,280
Norman Moore was one of the first people to realise that

782
00:55:52,280 --> 00:55:56,640
the UK's wildlife was under threat from man-made chemicals.

783
00:55:56,640 --> 00:56:01,680
He was one of a small group of scientists who had been given the task

784
00:56:01,680 --> 00:56:05,240
of researching the impact of pesticides.

785
00:56:05,240 --> 00:56:08,240
Quite early on I realised that

786
00:56:08,240 --> 00:56:12,360
DDT and dieldrin, particularly dieldrin,

787
00:56:12,360 --> 00:56:17,200
were really very dangerous things to have in the environment.

788
00:56:20,280 --> 00:56:23,960
They were both highly persistent and that meant that

789
00:56:23,960 --> 00:56:30,080
it was sprayed one year and it would remain in the soil a lot later.

790
00:56:34,800 --> 00:56:41,040
These pesticides had a profound effect on one of the UK's favourite birds of prey.

791
00:56:41,040 --> 00:56:45,840
And another keen naturalist, who'd spent years watching

792
00:56:45,840 --> 00:56:52,560
the decline of peregrine falcons, Derek Ratcliffe, hit the news with his pioneering fieldwork.

793
00:56:55,680 --> 00:57:02,120
The decline has been worse in the south of the country, with very few pairs remaining

794
00:57:02,120 --> 00:57:05,720
in the south of England or Wales where there used to be good numbers.

795
00:57:10,040 --> 00:57:14,400
His findings showed that sprayed crops were eaten by pigeons.

796
00:57:14,400 --> 00:57:19,120
They, in turn, were consumed by peregrine falcons, with devastating results.

797
00:57:19,120 --> 00:57:23,720
He estimated that more than half of their population had disappeared.

798
00:57:29,320 --> 00:57:34,040
The pesticides had a sinister side effect - the falcons

799
00:57:34,040 --> 00:57:38,920
started laying eggs with abnormally-thin shells, which easily broke.

800
00:57:54,360 --> 00:57:57,240
Ratcliffe's study was welcomed in some circles,

801
00:57:57,240 --> 00:58:02,800
but attacked by the authorities and had to be defended by scientists.

802
00:58:02,800 --> 00:58:05,360
Well, a bird of prey has never done me much good -

803
00:58:05,360 --> 00:58:06,880
why should I worry about it?

804
00:58:06,880 --> 00:58:11,240
I don't think it's the bird of prey as a bird of prey that matters -

805
00:58:11,240 --> 00:58:14,760
what matters is that the work on birds of prey

806
00:58:14,760 --> 00:58:18,440
has shown that pesticides all over the Earth's surface

807
00:58:18,440 --> 00:58:25,000
can accumulate and do harm to a species over very large areas.

808
00:58:25,000 --> 00:58:26,920
And this I think is important.

809
00:58:26,920 --> 00:58:30,200
The Ministry of Agriculture and things,

810
00:58:30,200 --> 00:58:33,720
they didn't like it at all, what we were doing.

811
00:58:33,720 --> 00:58:37,720
They had, they knew it was partially true anyhow,

812
00:58:37,720 --> 00:58:41,120
but they wanted to tone it down altogether

813
00:58:41,120 --> 00:58:45,440
and of course we were not at all going to tone it down altogether -

814
00:58:45,440 --> 00:58:49,400
we wanted people to get involved and solve the problems.

815
00:58:49,400 --> 00:58:53,080
Unlike today, people didn't fear pesticides.

816
00:58:53,080 --> 00:58:57,080
In fact they saw them as modern saviours.

817
00:58:57,080 --> 00:58:59,440
DDT was a life-saver!

818
00:58:59,440 --> 00:59:05,640
During the Second World War, it saved God knows how many lives,

819
00:59:05,640 --> 00:59:08,880
because it killed mosquitoes.

820
00:59:11,240 --> 00:59:15,480
And mosquitoes were spreading malaria which was killing our troops.

821
00:59:15,480 --> 00:59:20,520
And I shall never forget, as a child, DDT,

822
00:59:20,520 --> 00:59:26,200
we thought it was fantastic, we thought it was a miracle, absolute miracle,

823
00:59:26,200 --> 00:59:30,880
because it was doing all the things that nothing else had done -

824
00:59:30,880 --> 00:59:34,840
that is, killing nasty bugs.

825
00:59:35,840 --> 00:59:40,600
After the war they were still in popular use to improve food production.

826
00:59:40,600 --> 00:59:44,080
Having endured years of austerity and food rationing,

827
00:59:44,080 --> 00:59:50,120
the public were unwilling to hear that there might be a hidden cost to their new quality of life.

828
00:59:51,760 --> 00:59:59,080
Most people, the vast majority of the general public, who are enjoying the benefits of cheaper food,

829
00:59:59,080 --> 01:00:02,040
see only the good pesticides do.

830
01:00:02,040 --> 01:00:04,680
So although there were signs,

831
01:00:04,680 --> 01:00:11,000
I think by and large people were so enamoured of the bounties of science

832
01:00:11,000 --> 01:00:14,720
and technology and industrialised agriculture,

833
01:00:14,720 --> 01:00:18,920
I think people would have said, taken the attitude,

834
01:00:18,920 --> 01:00:21,920
that a few dead birds was a tiny price to pay

835
01:00:21,920 --> 01:00:26,640
for feeding the hungry, which is how it was perceived at the time.

836
01:00:31,120 --> 01:00:33,400
'This is the American Dream...'

837
01:00:33,400 --> 01:00:37,480
Technology was moving at an even faster pace in America,

838
01:00:37,480 --> 01:00:39,040
feeding into the idea

839
01:00:39,040 --> 01:00:42,800
that such advances all contributed to a better quality of life

840
01:00:42,800 --> 01:00:44,880
and should be widely celebrated.

841
01:00:48,400 --> 01:00:53,160
Pesticides such as DDT were seen as part of this new and prosperous era,

842
01:00:53,160 --> 01:00:56,680
helping farmers to grow food much more successfully.

843
01:01:00,880 --> 01:01:02,920
'Grasshopper control, leader, Wyoming.

844
01:01:02,920 --> 01:01:04,440
'Be on guard for a possible outbreak.'

845
01:01:04,440 --> 01:01:08,240
'Warning, state grasshopper control leader, Nevada, tremendous egg population, your state.'

846
01:01:08,240 --> 01:01:11,680
'Montana, be on guard, possible grasshopper outbreak.'

847
01:01:11,680 --> 01:01:13,200
'Texas, Arizona, Utah...'

848
01:01:15,800 --> 01:01:19,400
'Airplanes chartered by ranchers, states and the federal government

849
01:01:19,400 --> 01:01:21,680
'baited millions of acres of range land

850
01:01:21,680 --> 01:01:23,760
'in the most heavily infested areas.

851
01:01:23,760 --> 01:01:29,520
'Spraying insecticides that spell death to the invaders.'

852
01:01:35,000 --> 01:01:40,640
But in 1962, a revolutionary book was published which would profoundly change this view.

853
01:01:47,880 --> 01:01:51,160
'There was once a town in the heart of America

854
01:01:51,160 --> 01:01:55,880
'where all life seemed to live in harmony with its surroundings.

855
01:01:55,880 --> 01:02:01,040
'Then a strange blight crept over the area and everything began to change.

856
01:02:01,040 --> 01:02:05,400
'Some evil spell had settled on the community.

857
01:02:05,400 --> 01:02:08,760
'Mysterious maladies swept the flocks of chickens.

858
01:02:08,760 --> 01:02:11,560
'The cattle and sheep sickened and died.

859
01:02:11,560 --> 01:02:14,960
'Everywhere was a shadow of death.

860
01:02:14,960 --> 01:02:17,920
'There was a strange stillness.

861
01:02:17,920 --> 01:02:20,680
'The birds, for example, where had they gone?

862
01:02:20,680 --> 01:02:24,120
'It was a spring without voices.'

863
01:02:30,680 --> 01:02:34,480
Rachel Carson was an American biologist and writer.

864
01:02:34,480 --> 01:02:36,120
Her book, Silent Spring,

865
01:02:36,120 --> 01:02:40,080
questioned the use of toxic chemicals in the countryside.

866
01:02:41,600 --> 01:02:45,640
It had a huge effect on the public.

867
01:02:45,640 --> 01:02:47,960
It was a public book about it.

868
01:02:47,960 --> 01:02:49,720
It was very readable.

869
01:02:49,720 --> 01:02:51,520
I knew Rachel Carson.

870
01:02:53,040 --> 01:02:57,080
She was a very charismatic person,

871
01:02:57,080 --> 01:02:59,920
and a very readable book.

872
01:02:59,920 --> 01:03:04,400
It exaggerates in places but it's basically true.

873
01:03:04,400 --> 01:03:07,840
I think added together, it will mean that unless we do

874
01:03:07,840 --> 01:03:10,720
bring these chemicals under better control,

875
01:03:10,720 --> 01:03:13,200
we're certainly heading for disaster.

876
01:03:13,200 --> 01:03:19,280
Chemicals are the sinister and little recognised partners of radiation in changing

877
01:03:19,280 --> 01:03:22,760
the very nature of the world, the very nature of its life.

878
01:03:22,760 --> 01:03:30,200
These sprays, dust and aerosols are now applied almost universally to farms, gardens, forest and homes.

879
01:03:30,200 --> 01:03:35,120
Non-selective chemicals that have the power to kill every insect,

880
01:03:35,120 --> 01:03:40,800
the good and the bad, to coat the leaves with a deadly film,

881
01:03:40,800 --> 01:03:43,120
and to linger on in soil.

882
01:03:43,120 --> 01:03:47,560
Can anyone believe it's possible to lay down such a barrage of poisons

883
01:03:47,560 --> 01:03:53,720
on the surface of the Earth, without making it unfit for all life?

884
01:03:53,720 --> 01:03:56,080
That was a seminal work at that time -

885
01:03:56,080 --> 01:03:59,960
it was the first thing that brought that level of real concern

886
01:03:59,960 --> 01:04:04,120
about what was happening, to attention,

887
01:04:04,120 --> 01:04:08,880
and Rachel Carson managed to put together such

888
01:04:08,880 --> 01:04:10,680
a convincing argument of things

889
01:04:10,680 --> 01:04:15,040
that perhaps hadn't filtered through to the general consciousness before.

890
01:04:15,040 --> 01:04:19,080
It was just in those sorts of days when we were beginning to wonder

891
01:04:19,080 --> 01:04:25,360
about where our food came from and suddenly, you're thinking about what's happening to our rivers?

892
01:04:25,360 --> 01:04:28,280
Where are all these things that are used to grow our crops,

893
01:04:28,280 --> 01:04:30,320
what's happening to them, and what are the consequences?

894
01:04:30,320 --> 01:04:33,480
# Where have all the flowers gone?

895
01:04:33,480 --> 01:04:35,280
# A long time passing... #

896
01:04:38,400 --> 01:04:40,040
Silent Spring catalogued

897
01:04:40,040 --> 01:04:44,320
the widespread destruction of wildlife in America by pesticides.

898
01:04:44,320 --> 01:04:48,160
But it was also about ecology - the relation of plants and animals

899
01:04:48,160 --> 01:04:51,000
to their environment, and to one another.

900
01:04:51,000 --> 01:04:54,280
Although today this is a well accepted principle,

901
01:04:54,280 --> 01:04:57,160
in the early '60s it was leading-edge stuff.

902
01:05:01,440 --> 01:05:05,320
Rachel Carson had to do a lot of the fieldwork herself.

903
01:05:05,320 --> 01:05:09,680
There wasn't a huge body of literature that she could call on.

904
01:05:09,680 --> 01:05:14,000
And that's why the agrochemicals companies went after her -

905
01:05:14,000 --> 01:05:16,120
they said, who is this woman?

906
01:05:16,120 --> 01:05:19,520
She's not a real scientist as we know a real scientist.

907
01:05:19,520 --> 01:05:22,680
She's doing a lot of her own observational and measurement work,

908
01:05:22,680 --> 01:05:24,440
and what does this tell us about anything?

909
01:05:24,440 --> 01:05:28,880
And really went for the jugular in terms of her scientific credentials

910
01:05:28,880 --> 01:05:30,960
and the fact she was a woman, of course.

911
01:05:30,960 --> 01:05:33,320
Things were pretty crude in those days

912
01:05:33,320 --> 01:05:36,520
and the agrochemicals companies had no compunction at all

913
01:05:36,520 --> 01:05:40,400
in seeking to destroy her reputation, partly because she was a woman.

914
01:05:43,080 --> 01:05:46,280
The major claims in Miss Rachel Carson's book,

915
01:05:46,280 --> 01:05:50,400
Silent Spring, are gross distortions of the actual facts.

916
01:05:50,400 --> 01:05:55,320
Completely unsupported by scientific experimental evidence and general,

917
01:05:55,320 --> 01:05:57,680
practical experience in the field.

918
01:05:57,680 --> 01:06:00,800
The real threat, then, to the survival of man,

919
01:06:00,800 --> 01:06:02,960
is not chemical but biological

920
01:06:02,960 --> 01:06:07,400
in the shape of hordes of insects that can denude our forests,

921
01:06:07,400 --> 01:06:09,080
ravage our food supply

922
01:06:09,080 --> 01:06:13,920
and leave in their wake a train of destitution and hunger.

923
01:06:13,920 --> 01:06:18,560
If man were to faithfully follow the teachings of Miss Carson,

924
01:06:18,560 --> 01:06:23,000
we would return to the Dark Ages, and the insects and diseases

925
01:06:23,000 --> 01:06:26,520
and vermin would once again inherit the earth.

926
01:06:28,640 --> 01:06:31,040
Silent Spring is one of a number of blows.

927
01:06:31,040 --> 01:06:37,840
They kind of rain down on the reputation of scientific modernism.

928
01:06:37,840 --> 01:06:40,080
Before '62,

929
01:06:40,080 --> 01:06:44,360
there had been this absolutely uncritical,

930
01:06:44,360 --> 01:06:50,000
almost kind of gushing worship of science and technology.

931
01:06:50,000 --> 01:06:52,320
And what Silent Spring does,

932
01:06:52,320 --> 01:06:57,320
it's the first kind of dent in modernisation's reputation.

933
01:06:57,320 --> 01:07:02,440
It expresses, I think, the anxieties of people that things had got out of control, had gone too far,

934
01:07:02,440 --> 01:07:03,760
and all this progress,

935
01:07:03,760 --> 01:07:06,720
which has changed the lives of millions of people,

936
01:07:06,720 --> 01:07:08,280
has not come without cost.

937
01:07:08,280 --> 01:07:09,960
And what happens in the '60s

938
01:07:09,960 --> 01:07:14,080
is that people, for the first time, realise what the costs really are.

939
01:07:15,920 --> 01:07:20,720
Rachel Carson's Silent Spring set in motion a new spirit of activism,

940
01:07:20,720 --> 01:07:23,040
when an interest in animals would change

941
01:07:23,040 --> 01:07:26,160
from passively watching them on television

942
01:07:26,160 --> 01:07:29,280
to actively campaigning for their welfare.

943
01:07:39,360 --> 01:07:41,280
The '60s was a decade of protests

944
01:07:41,280 --> 01:07:44,720
which fed directly into the wildlife protection movement.

945
01:07:44,720 --> 01:07:48,000
Just as people had been shocked by newspaper pictures

946
01:07:48,000 --> 01:07:50,120
showing the plight of the rhino,

947
01:07:50,120 --> 01:07:53,400
they were now angry about images of seal culling.

948
01:07:57,800 --> 01:08:02,320
# Wild Thing I think you move me. #

949
01:08:02,320 --> 01:08:04,560
Few people will rally to protect you

950
01:08:04,560 --> 01:08:09,120
if you are an ugly and unattractive animal.

951
01:08:09,120 --> 01:08:13,920
The conservation movement in the 1960s and 1970s certainly

952
01:08:13,920 --> 01:08:19,720
selected certain iconic species - giant pandas, mountain gorillas,

953
01:08:19,720 --> 01:08:23,280
and seals, which became totemic species.

954
01:08:23,280 --> 01:08:28,040
They became hugely powerful recruiting tools

955
01:08:28,040 --> 01:08:30,200
for the environmental organisations

956
01:08:30,200 --> 01:08:33,120
and conservation organisations of this period.

957
01:08:33,120 --> 01:08:37,520
In some ways, because people identified with them.

958
01:08:37,520 --> 01:08:40,320
People almost identify human qualities in them.

959
01:08:40,320 --> 01:08:43,320
As seal culls were taking place on the Farne Islands,

960
01:08:43,320 --> 01:08:46,440
and in the far north of Scotland, on Orkney and Shetland,

961
01:08:46,440 --> 01:08:50,920
so the public began to get more angry and disenchanted

962
01:08:50,920 --> 01:08:53,240
and dissatisfied and uncomfortable

963
01:08:53,240 --> 01:08:57,000
with the fact that we were culling such a beautiful animal.

964
01:08:57,000 --> 01:09:00,800
This has been one of the great sea changes in British society.

965
01:09:00,800 --> 01:09:03,040
In fact it's one of the great untold stories

966
01:09:03,040 --> 01:09:06,600
of British social and cultural history - the way that we have rallied,

967
01:09:06,600 --> 01:09:09,520
over the 20th century, decade by decade,

968
01:09:09,520 --> 01:09:13,400
to protect certain iconic species that we have decided

969
01:09:13,400 --> 01:09:17,080
have value, and we cherish and we want to interact with

970
01:09:17,080 --> 01:09:19,080
and we want to know are doing well

971
01:09:19,080 --> 01:09:21,400
out there in the wider natural world.

972
01:09:21,400 --> 01:09:26,600
Unlike WWF's rhino campaign in 1961, where people were happy to send

973
01:09:26,600 --> 01:09:31,840
money from the comfort of their own homes, animal welfare had moved on.

974
01:09:31,840 --> 01:09:36,080
And, for some, it was now about getting up and doing something.

975
01:09:36,080 --> 01:09:39,360
# Call out the instigator

976
01:09:39,360 --> 01:09:44,320
# Because there's something in the air

977
01:09:44,320 --> 01:09:49,640
# We got to get together sooner or later

978
01:09:49,640 --> 01:09:52,160
# Because the revolution's here... #

979
01:09:52,160 --> 01:09:55,280
This new kind of activist had cut their teeth

980
01:09:55,280 --> 01:09:58,520
on the anti-nuclear protests of the late '50s and early '60s.

981
01:09:58,520 --> 01:10:03,200
They had found a new freedom - the right to stand up and be counted.

982
01:10:03,200 --> 01:10:06,240
At the beginning of the '50s

983
01:10:06,240 --> 01:10:11,240
there was still quite a strong obedience in the British nation.

984
01:10:11,240 --> 01:10:14,600
They were used to being led by the upper classes,

985
01:10:14,600 --> 01:10:18,720
used to being led with a degree of discipline during the war.

986
01:10:18,720 --> 01:10:24,840
And it was only really in the late '50s and early '60s

987
01:10:24,840 --> 01:10:27,600
that the absolute right to question and rebel

988
01:10:27,600 --> 01:10:29,480
was enshrined in British life.

989
01:10:32,720 --> 01:10:36,200
We campaigned against apartheid and nuclear weapons

990
01:10:36,200 --> 01:10:39,080
and we campaigned against this, that and the next thing.

991
01:10:39,080 --> 01:10:40,200
It was the age of protest.

992
01:10:40,200 --> 01:10:44,120
And that also helped take the conservation movement forward.

993
01:10:45,800 --> 01:10:48,840
The sense that people felt

994
01:10:48,840 --> 01:10:53,800
they were free to express their opinions.

995
01:10:53,800 --> 01:10:57,000
It's that collectiveness which give you such a feeling

996
01:10:57,000 --> 01:11:00,880
of, "I can say something, my voice will make a difference.

997
01:11:00,880 --> 01:11:03,960
"They must listen. Look at us all, how many we are here."

998
01:11:03,960 --> 01:11:08,000
And that's probably what people felt at that time.

999
01:11:12,880 --> 01:11:16,160
While the demonstrators were only a small section of society,

1000
01:11:16,160 --> 01:11:21,040
the animal campaigns were attracting a wider range of people.

1001
01:11:27,360 --> 01:11:29,440
Environmentalism has always suffered

1002
01:11:29,440 --> 01:11:32,920
from the image of being a very precious, middle-class activity.

1003
01:11:32,920 --> 01:11:36,800
Now, clearly in the '60s you did have a change,

1004
01:11:36,800 --> 01:11:40,520
in that it slightly stopped been the province

1005
01:11:40,520 --> 01:11:45,880
of late middle-aged men with beards, and became a young person's thing,

1006
01:11:45,880 --> 01:11:47,600
and it became what I would see

1007
01:11:47,600 --> 01:11:51,240
as a move from the upper-middle class to lower middle-class.

1008
01:11:54,120 --> 01:11:57,360
They're not from the very bottom of society

1009
01:11:57,360 --> 01:11:59,560
but they're not from the top.

1010
01:11:59,560 --> 01:12:02,760
And these people were often burning with righteous anger.

1011
01:12:02,760 --> 01:12:05,040
They want to bring something new,

1012
01:12:05,040 --> 01:12:08,960
they want to tear down the old order, they want change now.

1013
01:12:08,960 --> 01:12:12,480
And they take that activist energy

1014
01:12:12,480 --> 01:12:17,160
and channel it into the ecological movement.

1015
01:12:17,160 --> 01:12:20,040
The animal protests of the '60s had attracted

1016
01:12:20,040 --> 01:12:26,000
a different type of follower but essentially it was still a movement for a minority of people.

1017
01:12:26,800 --> 01:12:29,880
However, towards the end of the decade

1018
01:12:29,880 --> 01:12:32,360
there would be in an ecological disaster

1019
01:12:32,360 --> 01:12:34,960
that would change everybody's outlook.

1020
01:12:46,360 --> 01:12:52,160
On 18th March 1967, one of the World's first supertankers crashed

1021
01:12:52,160 --> 01:12:54,880
on to rocks just off Land's End.

1022
01:12:59,240 --> 01:13:05,520
The Torrey Canyon was carrying a cargo of 120,000 tonnes of crude oil.

1023
01:13:10,040 --> 01:13:11,400
The image of oiled birds

1024
01:13:11,400 --> 01:13:13,240
becomes very vivid immediately

1025
01:13:13,240 --> 01:13:15,720
when you mention the word, Torrey Canyon.

1026
01:13:19,240 --> 01:13:22,760
It's a doomsday scenario coming true.

1027
01:13:22,760 --> 01:13:27,640
And it's happened not in America or on the other side of the world

1028
01:13:27,640 --> 01:13:30,160
but right on our front doorstep.

1029
01:13:30,160 --> 01:13:33,960
And when you have all these birds covered black with oil,

1030
01:13:33,960 --> 01:13:38,480
it sort of presses a very British button, if you like,

1031
01:13:38,480 --> 01:13:43,240
which is the cute and cuddly natural world,

1032
01:13:43,240 --> 01:13:46,880
which we have polluted, which we have ruined and destroyed,

1033
01:13:46,880 --> 01:13:48,680
and that's a very powerful image.

1034
01:13:53,480 --> 01:13:55,120
It was a very big thing, yes.

1035
01:13:55,120 --> 01:14:00,080
And it had a very important impact on the public.

1036
01:14:03,760 --> 01:14:06,720
I think it was a big shock.

1037
01:14:08,600 --> 01:14:11,000
Looking back on it now, of course,

1038
01:14:11,000 --> 01:14:14,600
it was a pinprick compared with what is happening

1039
01:14:14,600 --> 01:14:17,000
in the Gulf of Mexico.

1040
01:14:19,760 --> 01:14:25,000
Those images were just astonishing.

1041
01:14:25,000 --> 01:14:27,520
And again, it's so intriguing

1042
01:14:27,520 --> 01:14:28,880
that over the years,

1043
01:14:28,880 --> 01:14:32,000
the things that changed people's minds about this

1044
01:14:32,000 --> 01:14:35,880
is the moment where something that was invisible becomes visible.

1045
01:14:35,880 --> 01:14:39,400
Where that which was largely under the radar, just tripping along

1046
01:14:39,400 --> 01:14:43,240
with people either conniving in, or actively comfortable about,

1047
01:14:43,240 --> 01:14:46,120
a particular pattern of environmental damage,

1048
01:14:46,120 --> 01:14:50,000
suddenly goes public, goes live, goes very visible.

1049
01:14:50,000 --> 01:14:53,040
And the Torrey Canyon undoubtedly was one of those moments

1050
01:14:53,040 --> 01:15:00,120
where people thought, "Wow, that's the dark side of the oil economy, that's one of the consequences."

1051
01:15:00,120 --> 01:15:01,880
An early recognition

1052
01:15:01,880 --> 01:15:05,320
that all the benefits that came through the widespread use

1053
01:15:05,320 --> 01:15:07,760
of relatively cheap hydrocarbons

1054
01:15:07,760 --> 01:15:10,720
- which they were in the '60s and '70s -

1055
01:15:10,720 --> 01:15:13,400
that there was a downside, a dark side, to that.

1056
01:15:13,400 --> 01:15:15,560
And certainly those images brought it,

1057
01:15:15,560 --> 01:15:17,760
for the first time, into people's lives.

1058
01:15:20,720 --> 01:15:24,120
The Government called in the forces to deal with the disaster.

1059
01:15:24,120 --> 01:15:27,480
It was treated as a full-blown military operation.

1060
01:15:27,480 --> 01:15:29,960
Though it was an enemy people knew little about.

1061
01:15:29,960 --> 01:15:32,560
'The south-west coast was a battle area.

1062
01:15:32,560 --> 01:15:35,720
'Civilians, 2,000 soldiers and Royal Marines

1063
01:15:35,720 --> 01:15:40,080
'grappled with the stupendous task of trying to fight off the oil.

1064
01:15:40,080 --> 01:15:44,160
'Enormous quantities of detergent were brought to the area.

1065
01:15:44,160 --> 01:15:48,200
'A small defence indeed against an estimated 50,000 tonnes of crude oil

1066
01:15:48,200 --> 01:15:50,280
'already floating on the sea.

1067
01:15:50,280 --> 01:15:53,440
'But with the mass of mobile pumping machinery now assembled,

1068
01:15:53,440 --> 01:15:55,760
'it was the only remedy available on the shore.'

1069
01:16:00,280 --> 01:16:02,560
They had to deal with the oil on the beaches

1070
01:16:02,560 --> 01:16:06,520
because politicians especially have to be seen to be doing something.

1071
01:16:06,520 --> 01:16:08,720
Although in retrospect it's pretty clear

1072
01:16:08,720 --> 01:16:10,560
that they should have done nothing

1073
01:16:10,560 --> 01:16:12,280
and just let the oil sit on the beach

1074
01:16:12,280 --> 01:16:14,440
because in a very few months it would be gone.

1075
01:16:14,440 --> 01:16:16,880
In real life they came down and poured detergent,

1076
01:16:16,880 --> 01:16:21,280
vast quantities of this detergent, all along the beaches.

1077
01:16:21,280 --> 01:16:25,880
'Every tide left a thick covering of oil, to which detergent was applied with all speed.

1078
01:16:25,880 --> 01:16:29,680
'The lovely beaches of Cornwall, the delight of holiday making millions

1079
01:16:29,680 --> 01:16:32,200
'would not be sacrificed without a struggle.'

1080
01:16:34,360 --> 01:16:38,000
In a desperate attempt to staunch the oil from the wrecked tanker,

1081
01:16:38,000 --> 01:16:40,240
the then Prime Minister, Harold Wilson,

1082
01:16:40,240 --> 01:16:43,560
even called in the RAF to bomb the vessel,

1083
01:16:43,560 --> 01:16:46,240
hoping the oil could be burnt off.

1084
01:16:50,000 --> 01:16:52,200
Although this action looked spectacular,

1085
01:16:52,200 --> 01:16:53,720
most of the ship's cargo

1086
01:16:53,720 --> 01:16:58,080
had already been lost and the damage had been done.

1087
01:16:58,080 --> 01:17:02,520
# Time it was and what a time it was, it was

1088
01:17:04,520 --> 01:17:08,120
# A time of innocence

1089
01:17:08,120 --> 01:17:12,000
# A time of confidence ebbed... #

1090
01:17:12,000 --> 01:17:16,200
It was the worst possible time of year for the breeding auks.

1091
01:17:16,200 --> 01:17:19,640
We were getting guillemots especially and razorbills

1092
01:17:19,640 --> 01:17:23,400
and gannets coming ashore on the beaches.

1093
01:17:23,400 --> 01:17:27,680
People were setting up bird rescue stations all over west Cornwall.

1094
01:17:27,680 --> 01:17:29,920
Hairdressers were doing this especially

1095
01:17:29,920 --> 01:17:31,680
because they had the equipment.

1096
01:17:31,680 --> 01:17:34,240
For giving them shampoos.

1097
01:17:36,200 --> 01:17:38,480
Many of our greatest conservationists

1098
01:17:38,480 --> 01:17:41,360
who would build their careers in the 1970s and 1980s,

1099
01:17:41,360 --> 01:17:44,720
cut their teeth, if you like, became angered about what they

1100
01:17:44,720 --> 01:17:49,240
were seeing with the sea birds and Torrey Canyon

1101
01:17:49,240 --> 01:17:52,360
and rushed down to help and clean birds.

1102
01:17:52,360 --> 01:17:57,120
We quickly realised it was easy to get the oil off them with detergent.

1103
01:17:57,120 --> 01:18:01,240
The problem was to get them back so that they had the natural grease on their feathers

1104
01:18:01,240 --> 01:18:02,640
so that they could fly again.

1105
01:18:02,640 --> 01:18:08,040
And any number of birds were treated and then put back in the sea to die.

1106
01:18:20,640 --> 01:18:24,200
Torrey Canyon flagged up one important thing - who on earth

1107
01:18:24,200 --> 01:18:28,440
in Britain was responsible for an environmental disaster?

1108
01:18:28,440 --> 01:18:31,840
Which government department? Which group of civil servants?

1109
01:18:31,840 --> 01:18:34,640
Nobody knew who was responsible for something like this.

1110
01:18:34,640 --> 01:18:40,320
So it led to the standing Royal Commission on Environmental pollution in 1970.

1111
01:18:40,320 --> 01:18:43,160
It led also to the establishment of the world's first

1112
01:18:43,160 --> 01:18:44,880
Department for the Environment.

1113
01:18:48,800 --> 01:18:52,040
# You can't always get what you want... #

1114
01:18:52,040 --> 01:18:54,720
The devastation had rocked the British public

1115
01:18:54,720 --> 01:18:58,080
and the Government's reaction in creating

1116
01:18:58,080 --> 01:19:00,600
the Department of the Environment

1117
01:19:00,600 --> 01:19:03,800
marked a sea-change in the way we as a nation

1118
01:19:03,800 --> 01:19:05,720
put value on our wildlife.

1119
01:19:05,720 --> 01:19:07,640
# But if you try some time

1120
01:19:07,640 --> 01:19:11,960
# You might find you get what you need... #

1121
01:19:18,240 --> 01:19:25,040
The creation of a department of state for the environment,

1122
01:19:25,040 --> 01:19:30,320
the idea that that should be given importance alongside defence

1123
01:19:30,320 --> 01:19:36,400
and agriculture, that sort of shift was quite radical at the time.

1124
01:19:36,400 --> 01:19:41,120
Torrey Canyon brought home to people for the first time

1125
01:19:41,120 --> 01:19:45,000
in a visceral way, it's not a book, it's not Silent Spring,

1126
01:19:45,000 --> 01:19:47,440
it's something that is in the news day after day,

1127
01:19:47,440 --> 01:19:52,240
it brought home to people just the risks of our obsession with oil,

1128
01:19:52,240 --> 01:19:54,760
with economic progress and growth

1129
01:19:54,760 --> 01:19:58,520
and with technological change and all those kinds of things

1130
01:19:58,520 --> 01:20:00,040
and it made you realise,

1131
01:20:00,040 --> 01:20:01,560
you know, we did this damage -

1132
01:20:01,560 --> 01:20:05,120
it is not something that the world inflicted upon itself, we did it.

1133
01:20:08,120 --> 01:20:15,480
The awareness of how vulnerable our planet really is became even more apparent in 1968.

1134
01:20:15,480 --> 01:20:17,680
But this wasn't due to a disaster -

1135
01:20:17,680 --> 01:20:20,840
it was thanks to a technological breakthrough.

1136
01:20:20,840 --> 01:20:27,480
5, 4, 3, 2, 1, zero. All engines are on. Lift off!

1137
01:20:29,240 --> 01:20:31,760
We have a lift off. 32 minutes past the hour.

1138
01:20:34,640 --> 01:20:36,160
People back on Earth,

1139
01:20:36,160 --> 01:20:40,960
the crew of Apollo 8 have a message that we would like to send to you.

1140
01:20:40,960 --> 01:20:44,480
The shots taken from Apollo 8 were the first time anyone

1141
01:20:44,480 --> 01:20:47,080
had seen the Earth from outer space

1142
01:20:47,080 --> 01:20:52,360
and the images brought the fragility of our planet into sharp relief.

1143
01:20:52,360 --> 01:20:56,760
I think the first pictures from space, people were astounded

1144
01:20:56,760 --> 01:21:00,800
and, I hope, made a bit humble.

1145
01:21:00,800 --> 01:21:03,400
We are not the biggest, greatest beings in the universe

1146
01:21:03,400 --> 01:21:07,320
because we couldn't get out of it and look back at ourselves.

1147
01:21:09,880 --> 01:21:13,360
In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

1148
01:21:13,360 --> 01:21:15,400
And the Earth was without form.

1149
01:21:17,920 --> 01:21:20,360
Those pictures people see of the little blue ball

1150
01:21:20,360 --> 01:21:23,920
spinning in the darkness of space, weren't part of the mission plan

1151
01:21:23,920 --> 01:21:28,240
but I think they did generate this sense

1152
01:21:28,240 --> 01:21:34,160
that the world was not of infinite size and therefore

1153
01:21:34,160 --> 01:21:37,640
it needed to be thought of as something that could be managed.

1154
01:21:37,640 --> 01:21:40,560
And God said, "let there be light", and there was light.

1155
01:21:43,320 --> 01:21:49,120
It fostered an idea of Spaceship Earth, of a common future.

1156
01:21:49,120 --> 01:21:53,960
It fostered a powerful idea of us all being in this together.

1157
01:21:53,960 --> 01:21:57,200
It showed us that we didn't have anywhere else to go

1158
01:21:57,200 --> 01:21:58,960
if we messed up this planet.

1159
01:22:06,920 --> 01:22:13,720
And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night,

1160
01:22:13,720 --> 01:22:18,360
good luck, and God bless all of you, all of you on the good Earth.

1161
01:22:21,760 --> 01:22:24,280
The Apollo 8 pictures contributed

1162
01:22:24,280 --> 01:22:26,320
to the idea of one world,

1163
01:22:26,320 --> 01:22:30,600
a world shared by people, all species of animals,

1164
01:22:30,600 --> 01:22:32,480
plants, everything.

1165
01:22:40,000 --> 01:22:43,680
It was an inspiration for the first ever Earth Day.

1166
01:22:43,680 --> 01:22:48,840
In 1970, millions of people gathered on streets across America

1167
01:22:48,840 --> 01:22:50,400
in what was one of the largest

1168
01:22:50,400 --> 01:22:52,880
environmental demonstrations in history.

1169
01:22:54,640 --> 01:22:59,200
I think that by the 1970s, people had started to realise

1170
01:22:59,200 --> 01:23:05,120
that some of the most important issues were environmental issues.

1171
01:23:05,120 --> 01:23:08,720
They started to realise, just as they do now

1172
01:23:08,720 --> 01:23:14,640
with climate change, that these are possibly THE most important issues.

1173
01:23:19,440 --> 01:23:23,080
We didn't really know what we were doing, with sort of marches

1174
01:23:23,080 --> 01:23:26,520
and banners, you know, those sorts of things that you did in the '60s.

1175
01:23:26,520 --> 01:23:32,920
But it was to try to generate an awareness and appreciation

1176
01:23:32,920 --> 01:23:38,520
of the web of life, as we said back then, of the interconnectedness

1177
01:23:38,520 --> 01:23:43,320
of all living beings and their physical environment.

1178
01:23:43,320 --> 01:23:45,760
That was the whole point of that,

1179
01:23:45,760 --> 01:23:48,920
was to bring that to more and more people.

1180
01:23:50,640 --> 01:23:53,640
It seemed there was no stopping this tide of feeling,

1181
01:23:53,640 --> 01:23:58,480
and awareness of nature and wildlife was now part of our daily lives.

1182
01:23:58,480 --> 01:24:00,520
# Words are flowing out... #

1183
01:24:03,960 --> 01:24:08,080
It was stunning, the transformation of attitudes.

1184
01:24:08,080 --> 01:24:12,520
Environmental issues were on the front pages in the early '70s

1185
01:24:12,520 --> 01:24:15,200
in a way they just weren't in the early '60s.

1186
01:24:15,200 --> 01:24:18,960
People talk about environmental issues, people are interested

1187
01:24:18,960 --> 01:24:22,840
in the environment and the natural world and wildlife and so on.

1188
01:24:28,040 --> 01:24:32,600
But there's also, I think, a much deeper change, beyond the headlines

1189
01:24:32,600 --> 01:24:36,840
and that is that you have had a complete cultural transformation

1190
01:24:36,840 --> 01:24:41,440
from the early '60s when there was this absolutely, almost unthinking

1191
01:24:41,440 --> 01:24:45,320
worship of science and technology.

1192
01:24:45,320 --> 01:24:49,240
Now, by the early '70s that had almost completely collapsed.

1193
01:24:49,240 --> 01:24:52,960
For the first time people have realised the costs

1194
01:24:52,960 --> 01:24:55,280
that progress brings with it.

1195
01:25:01,480 --> 01:25:04,360
This change was reflected on television.

1196
01:25:04,360 --> 01:25:09,080
In 1970, the BBC commissioned a hugely popular TV drama, Doom Watch.

1197
01:25:09,080 --> 01:25:12,760
It covered themes like pesticides and chemical leaks.

1198
01:25:12,760 --> 01:25:14,480
It portrayed science,

1199
01:25:14,480 --> 01:25:18,720
technology and big business as potentially sinister.

1200
01:25:18,720 --> 01:25:21,280
Is this happening anywhere else?

1201
01:25:21,280 --> 01:25:24,360
Do you know, I shouldn't be at all surprised if this is a pesticide spray?

1202
01:25:24,360 --> 01:25:28,240
Doomwatch is not a programme that would have been conceivable in the early '60s.

1203
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It wouldn't have been commissioned.

1204
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And the reason is because popular television, popular entertainment,

1205
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generally reflected scientific optimism rather than pessimism.

1206
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My department is interested in pesticides.

1207
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But by the early '70s there's been a complete change.

1208
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Because I'm going to make sure that everybody sees you for what you are!

1209
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We want to do a programme that 10 million people will watch.

1210
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It's about precisely the opposite,

1211
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it's about the dangers of science and industrialisation

1212
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and the threat posed by big business.

1213
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These are quite radical themes but it's a sign of how mainstream

1214
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they have become that something like Doom Watch could be made

1215
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as early as 1970.

1216
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Doom Watch showed how much wider wildlife issues had become.

1217
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Conservation groups were no longer confined to a small, elite group

1218
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and, by the early 70s there were

1219
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new organisations being set up to appeal to all ages and interests.

1220
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The thing that the new campaigns around Friends of the Earth

1221
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and Greenpeace did is to get into the thoughts and ideas of young people.

1222
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And I think that was one of the biggest impacts they had,

1223
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was that this stuff became much more interesting to young people.

1224
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# How many roads must a man walk down... #

1225
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By the end of the '60s, people from all spectrums of society

1226
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had changed their attitudes towards animals and the natural world.

1227
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Early television programmes and books had captured their imagination

1228
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and helped inspire a new reverence and respect for the wild.

1229
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Pioneers such as Peter Scott had tapped into this,

1230
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persuading the public that

1231
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protecting species did matter and that we could all contribute.

1232
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Saving animals was no longer just about individual species -

1233
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it was about their habitat,

1234
01:27:22,680 --> 01:27:25,880
the interconnectedness of all living things

1235
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and, ultimately, caring for the whole planet.

1236
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# How many years must a mountain exist

1237
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# Before it is washed to the sea?

1238
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# How many times can a man turn his head

1239
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# And pretend that he just doesn't see?

1240
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# The answer my friend is blowing in the wind

1241
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# The answer is blowing in the wind. #

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Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

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E-mail subtitling@bbc.co.uk