A strange week
Post categories: Mexico, New Zealand, dolphin, kakapo, whales
| 11:16 UK time, Monday, 26 October 2009
It's been a strange week, to say the least.
Sirocco, the
kakapo, has been taking the world by storm and made this endangered flightless
parrot from
We knew at
the time that Sirocco's little outburst would make good television, but had
absolutely no idea that it would attract quite so much attention. Meanwhile,
Stephen has taken to calling me the Kakapo Porn King and I am slowly getting
used to people coming up to me in the street and asking if the scars have
healed.
The good
news is that, as a result, the kakapo project in
This week
also marks the end of the series - with our search for the blue whale in
The whole
point of the series, of course, was to retrace the steps I'd taken with Douglas
Adams twenty years earlier - and the final programme was the only time we
didn't actually do that. We should have gone to
Last Chance to See was a series about endangered species and conservation, of course, but six hours of doom and gloom television ranting about all the terrible things we are doing to the planet, just wouldn't have worked. Few people would have watched and many of those would have switched off halfway through. But our hope was that, by mixing extremes such as these - the silliness of Sirocco mating with my head, the sheer joy of encountering a blue whale and the shock and sadness of the Yangtze river dolphin disappearing before our very eyes - we could make a series about conservation without anyone really noticing that it was a series about conservation.
© MMIX~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~34~RS~)
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Hi Mark,
Looking forward to your talk tomorrow night at the RGS.
I have just launched an 'evenings and weekends' project for COP15 in Copenhagen called thisplace09 to try and create empathy around the conference.
We are compiling a 'tweetbook' (so just 140 characters) from people all around the world with personal stories and insights on 'What's worth saving in #thisplace?'
I just wrote this (slightly tongue in cheek) post about my plans to try and win 140 characters worth of time from Stephen and Yourself to help us out.
http://www.thisplace09.com/blog/
Sure you would have something great to add that relates to the talk tomorrow. If so it would be V appreciated!!
(PS - we are having safari issues so IE or Firefox is best to view the site)
David
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Many congratulations to Mark, Stephen, Tim and all of the rest of the team involved in "Last Chance to See". I think you certainly did manage to achieve your aim of making a series about conservation without anyone realising it was about conservation! A very clever concept indeed.
Mark's knowledge and passion combined with Stephen's wit and childlike excitement has resulted in a very appealing collaboration and utterly enthralling viewing. I have laughed, I have cried (with both joy and despair!) but most of all I have received a pretty powerful message about the disappearing world around us.
I have already discovered that Sunday evenings are just not the same without you! The DVD is great but does not quite fill the void of anticipation prior to each episode or indeed the hunger for more knowledge. With the current period of mass extinction and the estimated thousands of species which are threatened, it begs the question ... when are you going to start the second series?!? (And, of course, if Mark and Stephen need someone to carry their bags I am always available!) But, in all seriousness, very well done to everyone for such a thoroughly entertaining and thought-provoking series.
P.S. I hope Mark is feeling better soon!
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Hi mark and all the team.
I've to thank you for showing bits of the natural world that we sometimes don't know or ignore. Its sad to see that we sometimes forget how beautiful and unique is our globe and how stupidly we abuse it.
As a nature lover, I'm ashamed of what we've been doing and disappointed as well.
Again, thank you all for this lovely series and also the dedication that you (and your team) gave and have to this cause.
Many thanks
Luis
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Hi there
From this week, there will be a change to how you leave comments on this blog - we're upgrading our current registration system to a new and improved one. When you sign in to the new system, you will be prompted to upgrade your existing account, and you should be able to do that with a minimum of fuss. The only thing to mention is that if you have more than one BBC membership registered to one email address, make sure you upgrade your favourite one. More details on this can be found on the BBC Internet Blog. Please leave comments below if you have any problems, or email lastchancetosee@bbc.co.uk if you get really stuck.
All the best
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Just wanted to thank you, Stephen and the whole team for your truly excellent series. My whole family were enthralled.
I had really enjoyed the original book by Douglas Adams and yourself, many years ago, so I was very pleased to see an update. It was wonderful to see projects, such as the kakapo one, successfully protecting the animals and allowing numbers to recover; but it was heartbreaking to discover about the habitat destruction in Madagascar, and the extinction of the Northern White rhino and Yangtze River Dolphin. The contrast between the ease of destruction and the incredible effort required for conservation was quite stark.
The series was wonderfully made though, full of wit, information, and personality, and thankfully without over-dramatic music or effects. The stories you were telling were quite dramatic enough. It is a shame that series such as this are looking as endangered as some of the animals, being replaced by ones catering for people with the attention span of a hyperactive toddler.
I hope that you will be able to update us again, in the same calm, friendly manner, in a few years; and in the meantime we will avidly pore over the book and DVD!
Thanks again.
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