As a child I was a great animal and nature lover. I spent my life up trees and wading through ditches and ponds. I collected caterpillars, newts, frogs, toads, slow-worms, lizards and grass-snakes. I had a big pit down the garden where I kept my wild animals. I had a shed full of mice, gerbils and hamsters, a pet crow, a pet rabbit and forty guinea pigs in assorted colours.

It led me to become a biologist and become interested in ecology and the environment. I became a Biology teacher before moving up the echelons.

I have been fortunate enough to travel all around the world and see many gorgeous animals in the wild. I love them.

It was the appalling destruction that I witnessed first-hand that caused me to write my own experiences down in the book ‘Anthropocene Apocalypse’. In my life-time I…