I mean, it is an extraordinary thing that a large proportion of your country and my country, of the citizens, never see a wild creature from dawn ’til dusk, unless it’s a pigeon, which isn’t really wild, which might come and settle near them.
We can now destroy, or we can cherish – the choice is ours.
If we and the rest of the back-boned animals were to disappear overnight, the rest of the world would get on pretty well. But if the invertebrates were to disappear, the world’s ecosystems would collapse.
The savage, rocky shores of Christmas Island, 200 miles south of Java, in the Indian Ocean. It’s November, the moon is in its third quarter, and the sun is just setting. In a few hours from now, on this very shore, a thousand million lives will be launched.
I’m swanning round the world looking at the most fabulously interesting things. Such good fortune.
I’m not over-fond of animals. I am merely astounded by them.
I’m not an animal lover if that means you think things are nice if you can pat them, but I am intoxicated by animals.
I think we’re lucky to be living when we are, because things are going to get worse.
When I was a boy in the 1930s, the carbon dioxide level was still below 300 parts per million. This year, it reached 382, the highest figure for hundreds of thousands of years.
Everyone likes birds. What wild creature is more accessible to our eyes and ears, as close to us and everyone in the world, as universal as a bird?
Now, I find that very difficult to reconcile with notions about a merciful God.
If you watch animals objectively for any length of time, you’re driven to the conclusion that their main aim in life is to pass on their genes to the next generation.
I have no doubt that the fundamental problem the planet faces is the enormous increase in the human population.
The fundamental issue is the moral issue.
Many individuals are doing what they can. But real success can only come if there is a change in our societies and in our economics and in our politics.
I find it far more awesome, wonderful, that creation; our appearance in the world; should be the culmination, or at least one of the latest products of 3,000 Million years of organic evolution, than a kind of country trick, taking a rib out of a man’s side in a trance.
I like animals. I like natural history. The travel bit is not the important bit. The travel bit is what you have to do in order to go and look at animals.
Before the BBC, I joined the Navy in order to travel.
I am an ardent recycler. I would like to think that it works. I don’t know whether it does or not.
It is curiosity, quite right-a divine curiosity. A characteristic of the gods is curiosity.