Nature lovers

In the 19^th century, you could be a nature lover and go off on a jolly expedition blasting animals with your shotgun. Perfectly normal. You might also be a taxidermist (handy), preserve your little friends in formaldehyde,

Photo credit: UCL UK

or be a dab hand at jamming pins through beetles. All very respectable, and a noble pursuit of scientific knowledge.

Find it, kill it, own it seemed to be the Edwardian and Victorian ethos: a childish drive to collect and possess. This still goes on today among trophy hunters, but these days naturalists are more focused on preserving wildlife in its context (or what’s left of its context).

This change seemed to begin in the 20^th century, but even then naturalists were such busybodies. It was as if they’d emerged from their childhood of pulling the wings off flies and developed some empathy, but they still just couldn’t leave the animals alone.

Gerald Durrell for instance, a very engaging writer, conservationist and educator. But he had some strange ideas about wild animals as pets.

Photo credit: Hermann Tirler

 Amazing for kids obviously (I would have loved it), but a huge disservice to the animals (if I’d been that sloth I would’ve been really annoyed). And Gavin Maxwell, what a terrible egotist. I was captivated by Ring of Bright Water as a child, but when I read the book as an adult I was horrified by his determined mistreatment of otter after otter, as he tried to domesticate them and bend them to his will.  

And then there were the Adamsons. Born free indeed. Couldn’t she have just got a tabby? 

Why do we do this to animals? Maybe it’s all the childhood literature, the way we’re brought up to think of animals as fictional characters, with human traits. Little

George, Elsa, Joy.
Photo credit: Classic Safaris Africa

friends to have tea parties with. Is that what those naturalists were acting out, while they thought they were ‘doing science’? What kind of ego buzz were they getting from pestering wild animals and believing they had a special rapport? They were like emo teenagers, “nobody understands me – except animals.”

You have to ask, was it doing the animals any good? Did it do the natural world any good? It would be fair to say these mid-century tv shows, books and movies

Dr Dolittle. Photo Credit: 20th Century Fox

influenced a generation of kids, and made them more conservation minded than their parents. But I think it skewed our perspective on what respect for the natural world really entails.

There were other naturalists of course, more interested in context, and education. Jacques Cousteau inspired a generation of marine biologists, they are just everywhere these days. And of course there’s David Attenborough – a more gentlemanly naturalist altogether, but still, not above getting too hands-on with the wildlife.

But I worry that time is running out for us to finally grow up, and learn to appreciate animals in their own habitat, valuing them as part of the fabric of the world rather than for the uses we can put them to, or the emotions we can project onto them.

Sometimes I wonder if naturalists like David Attenborough are just the same as the Victorians, really. Still collecting. Wanting to categorise and record every little thing, every part of the planet. There’s a sadness and nostalgia that permeates Attenborough’s later work, as if he’s getting ready to say goodbye to this beautiful world. Or as if he knows this beautiful world, that he has so lovingly explored and catalogued, is saying goodbye to us. He’s been quoted as saying that humans are like ‘a plague on earth’. And he’s seen more of it than any of us - he should know.