The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Endangered Species

“Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.

Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.”…

So starts The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, that wholly remarkable book by the late, great Douglas Adams. Somewhere and somewhen, in the early years of the 1980s, my teenage self discovered the phenomenon that is “Hitchhiker.” I think it was probably the wobbly BBC TV series that I found first, but I soon devoured all the currently available novels, repeats of the original radio series wafted through my stereo courtesy of BBC Radio 4, and by then I was hooked. Douglas Adams’ writing tickled something in me that has remained ticklish ever since.

1987 rolled around, and in those pre-Internet days I had no idea that Douglas had been busy not writing a new novel for a few years – he preferred baths. So, while on a family holiday in the south of England, it came as quite a shock when I saw Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency staring out at me from a WH Smith bookshelf. I bought the book immediately and practically read it cover-to-cover while traipsing round another anonymous market town behind my parents. The novel was, in equal parts, utterly unfathomable and wonderfully delicious.

I read it again that same night. I understood it better the second time around, especially the relevance of the bit about the infamous giant Mauritian pigeon, which went extinct somewhere around 1680. The book’s heroes, Richard MacDuff, Dirk Gently and Professor Urban Chronotis (“Reg”) have travelled back in time to Mauritius, 1676, and come face to face with “a large, cross bird”, one of only three Dodos left alive…

“I only come to look,” said Reg in a small voice, and, glancing at him, Dirk was discomfited to see that the old man’s eyes were brimming with tears which he quickly brushed away. “Really, it is not for me to interfere – ”

As has since become apparent, not a lot of people realized at the time that once you killed an animal, whether it be for its fur, its skin, its feathers, its horns, or just for the pure damn hell of it, if that animal was the last of its species, then that was it, the end, no more – finito! The fate of the Dodo brought a lot of people to their senses (Well, a few anyway).

Of course, species evolve and die out all the time. That’s what Nature does. It’s when man gives Nature a helping hand that really makes one stop and think. It doesn’t take much to tip a species over the brink, and man is only too ready with his guns, his deforestation, his pollutants, and his plain old carelessness.

Douglas Adams was struck by this realization during the writing of a 1985 Observer Colour Magazine article. The magazine had suggested that he go to the island of Madagascar to meet Mark Carwardine, a naturalist and broadcaster. Once there, they would try and locate a species of nocturnal lemur called the Aye-Aye which hadn’t been seen for years. They did find the creature, albeit briefly, but they took a few pictures, wrote up the article for the magazine, and then got to talking about endangered species in general.

Mark told Douglas about the Mountain Gorilla, the Northern White Rhino and the Kakapo, the world’s fattest and least able-to-fly parrot. He told him about the Komodo Dragon, the Rodrigues Fruitbat and the Baiji, the blind dolphin of the Yangtze River. Something struck a chord with Douglas and so, once he’d finished his 'Dirk Gently' books, he and Mark (and a BBC Radio sound-engineer) set off around the world to visit these and other endangered animals. The resulting BBC Radio series and book were called Last Chance To See, and it turned out to be Douglas’ favourite work.
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When I was a spotty student at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, I was lucky enough to meet Douglas Adams at a bookshop in the town, and my signed copy of Last Chance To See has since become something of a treasured possession.

Last Chance To See And Me

Douglas himself became quite the conservation advocate, and went on to become patrons to both the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund and Save The Rhino International, both wonderful organisations which do tremendous work. He gave regular lectures on the subject, and one of his last public appearances was at the University of Santa Barbara (his adopted home town), giving his “Parrots, the Universe and Everything” talk. Very sadly, some two weeks later, while working out at the gym, Douglas died of a heart attack. It was May 11th, 2001. He was only 49 years old.

His legacy lives on. A posthumous book, The Salmon of Doubt, collected together most of the contents of his precious Mac hard-drive. A big screen version of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy arrives in April 2005, and three new radio series have recently been produced for the BBC, reuniting most of the original cast.

During the summer of 2004, I got to chatting with MJ Simpson, Douglas Adams' biographer. I asked him whether he’d ever come across a website that brought the story of Last Chance To See up-to-date. It was, after all, nearly 15 years since the book had originally been published. So many of the creatures had been dangling on the precipice of extinction in the late 1980s, and one had to wonder how they were doing now. Simpson confirmed that he’d never seen such a site, and because he was so busy with his own Planet Magrathea, he suggested that I give it a go myself…

I mulled this over for a few days, and then jumped in feet first and started “Another Chance To See”, using the currently popular format of a weblog, or blog. I scoured the Internet for articles and information about the Last Chance To See animals, and very soon the visitors started arriving. It’s been running for over six months now and I’ve had emails from many delighted Douglas Adams fans thanking me for my efforts. I’ve had a lot of fun with the project, learned a great deal, and it’s given me significant personal satisfaction in bringing the whole thing together.

In this series of articles, I’ll introduce you to some of the creatures from the book. I will try and explain why many of them are in such desperate trouble and what steps are being taken to help them survive. I don’t profess any great expertise in the subject, just what I’ve picked up from books and from compiling my website. I have Douglas to thank for sparking my interest. He was one hoopy frood.

Some useful links

Another Chance To See homepage:

http://anotherchancetosee.blogspot.com Post about the lecture, “Parrots, The Universe and Everything” (with link to video):

Click here MJ Simpson’s Planet Magrathea website (news about Hitchhiker):

http://www.planetmagrathea.com/ BBC News report on the death of Douglas Adams:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1326657.stm Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund:

http://www.gorillafund.org/ Save The Rhino International:

http://www.savetherhino.org/


Douglas and Mark visited about a dozen animals for the book and radio series of "Last Chance To See". Here's a list of the main "characters"...

NORTHERN WHITE RHINO
MOUNTAIN GORILLA
KAKAPO PARROT
BAIJI DOLPHIN
RODRIGUES FRUITBAT
AYE-AYE LEMUR
KOMODO DRAGON
JUAN FERNANDEZ FUR SEAL
AMAZONIAN MANATEE
MAURITIUS KESTREL
THE PINK PIGEON

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