Nature is a wonder. We are part of it. We need to preserve it. It is our life-raft.
Photography – Flamingoes – Durrell Wildlife Park
Photography – Orangutans – Mother with baby – Jersey Durrell Wildlife Park
Never has there been a greater need for conservation. We must stop the destruction of the wilderness, the indiscriminate chopping down of rainforest, the loss of habitat and the wanton killing of animals. We are destroying our planet.
One look at the interaction between this mother and her child is enough to show the intelligence and love. Yet these close relatives of ours are being destroyed with such cruelty! It has to stop!
Photography – Gorillas – Gerald Durrell – The Jersey Durrell Wildlife Park
Jersey – The Durrell Wildlife Park – Gerald Durrell
‘The animals and plants have nobody to speak up for them except us, the human beings who share the world with them but do not own it.’ – Gerald Durrell 1972.
Gerald Durrell is one of my heroes. He was a naturalist who loved animals. He wrote about his early life on Corfu in the 1930s where he lived with his eccentric family and lived an idyllic life with all the animals he collected.
It was a life I could relate to. I spent my childhood wandering the fields, climbing trees, wading through ditches and ponds and collecting caterpillars, newts, frogs, toads, snakes, lizards and slowworms.
Gerald was passionate about conservation. He set up his Wild-life Park as a conservation project that came straight out of his love of animals. He, like me, was utterly distraught by the cruelty and mindless destruction of nature. He did what he could to conserve it.
I don’t like zoos. I don’t like wild animals being confined in unnatural environments for people to ogle at. But I was taken with this wild-life park.
Gerald Durrell was someone I would love to have met.
Gerald Durrell’s house
A photo of Gerald that reminded me of one of me when I was a similar age holding a chimp.
