Last Chance To See

Documentary

BBC

BluRay and DVD 2-DVD set

In the 1980s writer Douglas Adams teamed up with zoologist Mark Carwardine to search for some of the world’s most endangered species. Adams died a few years ago but now BBC Wales has teamed Mark Carwardine with English TV presenter Stephen Fry to revisit the animals and see what their current status is. The results were generally appalling.

Animals like the Amazon Manatee and a pink river dolphin had just about been eaten into extinction by the local people. The aye-aye, a lemur from Madagascar, is even more heavily under threat as its rainforest habitat is being cleared for slash and burn agriculture. Africa’s Northern White Rhino is being hunted for its horn a reputed aphrodisiac in China. Its population is now estimated to be about four individual animals. Even the elephant, symbol of Africa, is becoming endangered. Fortunately their numbers are now increasing after many were relocated to a conservation area in Kenya.

The six journeys cover much of the world’s surface and it becomes increasingly clear that the biggest threat to these animals is man. Sometimes the extinctions are a by-product of the need to grow more food for an ever-larger population. Sometimes it is for greed – rhinos are hunted for their horn and the money used to buy guns for a revolution in the Congo. Even so there can be no excuse for killing off these animals for short term gain, quack medical properties or a belief that they can inflict bad magic.

But how do you fight greed and superstition? Some people are making the effort to raise the creatures in captivity but the sheer difficulty of finding these animals in the wild shows just how fragile their remaining populations are. The rhinos are in such a threatened state that their reserves are protected by armed guards.

The series is let down a little by Stephen Fry. He tries to be funny but his humour is out of place in such a series. Instead of carrying the show he comes across as superficial and uninformed. Mark Carwardine in his quiet way has more to teach us about these animals if only he could get Fry out of centre camera. Don’t let that put you off, though. It is still a valuable series if only to remind us of just what “endangered species” really means.

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