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| Cover painting by Robert Giusti |
| LAST CHANCE TO SEE Douglas Adams Mark Carwardine New York: Harmony Books, 1990 |
Rating: 5.0 High |
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| ISBN-13 978-0-517-58215-2 | ||||
| ISBN 0-517-58215-5 | 220pp. | HC/FCI | $20.00 | |
This book records a series of trips the authors undertook to Madagascar, to Indonesia and New Zealand, to Zaire and China and Mauritius, in search of endangered species.
Their first trip was to Madagascar in 1985, on assignment for Observer Colour Magazine.1 Things did not always go swimmingly.
"I nearly telexed you not to come," [Mark] said. "The whole thing's a nightmare. I've been here for five days and I'm still waiting for something to go right. The Ambassador in Brussels promised me that the Ministry of Agriculture would be able to provide us with two Landrovers and a helicopter. Turns out all they've got is a moped and it doesn't work." "The Ambassador in Brussels also assured me that we could drive right to the north, but the road suddenly turns out to be impassable because it's being rebuilt by the Chinese, only we're not supposed to know that. And exactly what is meant by 'suddenly' I don't know because they've apparently been at it for ten years." – Page 3 |
At least they weren't building a hyperspace bypass.
"You see, the young birds that we've hatched here don't come to sexual maturity at the same time, so when the females start getting sexy, the males are not ready to handle it. The females are bigger and more belligerent and often beat the males up. So when that happens, we collect semen from Pink and—" "How do you do that?" asked Mark. "In a hat." "I thought you said in a hat." "That's right. Carl puts on this special hat, which is a bit like a rather strange bowler hat with a rubber brim. Pink goes mad with desire for Carl, flies down and fucks the hell out of his hat." "What?" "He ejaculates into the brim. We collect the drop of semen and use it to inseminate a female." – Pages 183-4 |
Such are the measures needed to preserve endangered species: by any means necessary.
The narratives are leavened with Adams's inimitable air of bewildered acceptance toward the bizarre difficulties he and his groups encounter. I found this at first amusing and then tiresome. But fear not: it's mostly limited to the first chapter, which concerns their first trip. He provides plenty of natural history of the animals he's chasing as well as others. His targets were big animals like the Komodo dragon, the mountain gorilla, the northern white rhinoceros, the Yangtze River dolphin — but also the aye-aye (a diminutive lemur found only in Madagascar), the Rodrigues fruit bat, and New Zealand's kakapo: a fat, green, flightless parrot.
Coauthor Mark Carwardine was a conservation officer with the World Wildlife Fund, and he did most of the preparatory work for the trips. Douglas Adams (1952-2001) is of course best known for The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy and other humorous works of fiction. He also became an ardent champion of conservation. After his untimely death, a lecture series on conservation and related topics was established in his name; it continues today.
The book includes 26 color photographs in two groups. As noted, these were not taken by a professional photographer, and it shows. Also, the book has no index. It is intended to be inspirational, more than educational. Despite that, Adams manages to impart a good deal of information on the various species he mentions — not only the big, photogenic animals we all know, but obscure ones including megapodes and bellbirds and shelducks, Telfair's skink and Guenther's gecko, and plants as well. His irreverent, witty style has a sneaky way of making these facts stick with the reader. He also conveys clearly the measures being undertaken to keep these animals and plants alive so that the title of his book will turn out to be inaccurate. So I recommend this as a book that should be read and passed along.
"Extinctions, of course, have been happening for millions of years: animals and plants were disappearing long before people arrived on the scene. But what has changed is the extinction rate. For millions of years, on average, one species became extinct every century. But most of the extinctions since prehistoric times have occurred in the last three hundred years." "And most of the extinctions that have occurred in the last three hundred years have occurred in the last fifty." "And most of the extinctions that have occurred in the last fifty have occurred in the last ten." – Mark Carwardine, Page 210 |
To contact Chris Winter, send email to this address.