Before releasing the tuataras into their new home, I wanted to be sure that the journey had not upset them too much, and that they would feed, so we left them in their travelling box overnight and put twelve dead baby rats in with them. The next day, to my delight, the box contained no trace of baby rats but a couple of rather portly and smug tuataras. It was obvious that a plane journey of a thousand miles was a mere nothing to creatures of such ancient lineage, and so we put them into their new quarters. Here, I am glad to say, they have settled down very well and have now grown so tame that they will feed from your hand. I hope that in the not too distant future we might make zoological history by breeding them, for as far as I know no zoo outside Australia and New Zealand has succeeded in hatching baby tuataras.
Now that the zoo was solvent and had acquired so many pain of threatened species, I felt the time had come to take the next big step forward. It was essential, if we were to do the work of saving threatened species which was my aim, for us to have outside financial assistance and to put the whole operation on an intelligent scientific footing. The answer, therefore, was for the zoo to cease being a limited company and to become a proper scientific trust.
On the face of it, this seems a fairly simple manoeuvre, but in practice it is infinitely more difficult. First you have to gather together a council of altruistic and intelligent people who believe in the aims of the trust, and then launch a public appeal for funds. I shall not go into all the wearisome details of this period, which can be of no interest to anyone but myself. Suffice it to say that I managed to assemble a council of hard-working and sympathetic people on the island who did not consider my aims so fantastic as to qualify me for a lunatic asylum, and with their help the Jersey Wildlife Preservation Trust came into being. We launched a public appeal for funds, and once more the people of Jersey came to my rescue, as they had in the past with calves, or tomatoes, or snails, or earwigs. This time they came forward with their cheque-books, and before long the trust had acquired sufficient money to take over the zoo.
This means that after twenty-two years of endeavour I shall have achieved one of the things that I most desired in the world—to help some of the animals that have given me so much pleasure and so much interest during my lifetime. I realize that the part we can play here is only a very small one, but if by our efforts we can prevent only a tiny proportion of threatened species from becoming extinct, and by our efforts interest more people in the urgent and necessary work of conservation, then our work will not have been in vain.
A MESSAGE FROM THE DURRELL WILDLIFE CONSERVATION TRUST
The menagerie Gerald Durrell brought to Les Augres Manor in 1959 subsequently enabled him to save endangered animals from all over the world. His lifetime crusade to preserve the rich diversity of animal life on our planet now includes programmes for the world’s rarest kestrel, pigeon, parrot, tortoise, fruit bat, pig and several of the world’s rarest monkeys.
This crusade to preserve endangered species did not end with Gerald Durrell’s death in 1995. His work goes on through the untiring efforts of the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust.
Over the years many readers of Gerald Durrell’s books have been so motivated by his experiences and vision that they have wanted to continue the story for themselves by supporting the work of his Trust. We hope that you will feel the same way today because through his books and life, Gerald Durrell set us all a challenge. Animals are the great voteless and voiceless majority,’ he wrote, ‘who can only survive with our help.’
Please don’t let your interest in conservation end when you turn this page. Write to us now and we’ll tell you how you can be part of our crusade to save animals from extinction.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION, OR TO SEND A DONATION, WRITE TO:
Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust Les Augres Manor Jersey, English Channel Islands, JE3 5BP UK
www.durrellwildlife.org