Gerald Durrell - Golden Bats and Pink Pigeons

It’s no wonder that Mauritius attracted Gerald Durrell like a magnet. It was the home of that large flightless bird, the dodo, the definitive symbol of extinction. Gerry had established his animal sanctuary in Jersey, now called the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust or ‘Durrell’ for short, to turn the tide of species extinctions. He started by breeding rare animals so that their kind were not lost forever, but in time he focussed on ensuring the survival of certain key species in the wild.

The Mascarenes, a complex of islands in the western Indian Ocean, including Mauritius, its offshore islets and Rodrigues, were the scene ofthe Trust’s first sustained overseas conservation efforts, where the initial steps were taken with the ultimate goal in sight. Golden Bats and Pink Pigeons records the highlights of this journey, often hilarious, sometimes moving, and animated with great characters, both human and non-human, always described in Gerry’s inimitable style.

Gerry and his assistant, John Hartley (later to become the Trust’s Conservation Programme Director), set out to learn for themselves the plight of various creatures unique to the islands — from the snakes and lizards of Round Island, to the fruit bats of Rodrigues, to the pigeons and kestrels of Mauritius itself — and to see what could be done to save them. The strategy involved setting up breeding programmes not only in Jersey, but also in Mauritius, at a facility which is now named the Gerald Durrell Endemic Wildlife Sanctuary.

Gerry wanted the first ever student at the Trust’s training centre to come from the land of the dodo, so he was on the lookout for promising candidates during those early trips. In fact, the training centre was only a twinkle in his eye at that point, but he had long been convinced that the breeding of endangered species should be done in the country oforigin ofthe species concerned. Thus he intended for the animal sanctuary in Jersey to become a ‘mini-university’ for conservation, whose graduates would return to their homes and put what they had learned into practice.

Mauritius, not surprisingly, is the scene of our first unequivocal conservation successes. The work started by Gerry and John some thirty years ago evolved into full-scale species recovery programmes, and now Durrell is credited with saving more species of bird from extinction than any other organisation.

You will read more about these achievements in the excellent afterword by Toni Hickey, Senior Bird Keeper at Durrell, which brings me neatly to my final thought here. It is about the remarkable commitment and selfless hard work that our staff, like Toni and her colleagues, undertake to follow Gerald Durrell’s dream.

These men and women, plus the graduates ofour International Training Centre — yes, Gerry did indeed set up his training centre — are collectively referred to as Durrell’s.

I think a brief explanation of this book is called for. It describes two separate trips that I, my assistant John Hartley and my secretary Ann Peters made to the enchanting island of Mauritius. My reasons for going there were twofold.

I established the Jersey Wildlife Preservation Trust some years ago to help endangered species by breeding them in captivity. This we have done with great success, but it became obvious to me that really the animals in question should be bred in their country of origin. The problem was that in most of these countries there were no personnel trained in the delicate art of wild animal husbandry. The trust, therefore, set up a scholarship scheme whereby we give financial assistance to students to come to us for training and then return to their countries to set up captive breeding programmes. To inaugurate the scholarship scheme, as the Dodo was our symbol, it seemed appropriate that a Mauritian student should be the first to benefit. I therefore went out to discuss this whole business with the Mauritian Government. At the same time, I wished to see some of the endangered birds, mammals and reptiles and to find out if we could in any way help the Mauritian Government in their efforts to save them. This is the story of how we set about it.

When you are venturing into a new area of the world for the first time, it is essential — especially if you are an animal collector — that you do two things. One is to get as many personal introductions as you can to people on the spot; the second to amass as much information as possible, no matter how esoteric or apparently useless, about the place that you are going to. One of the ways you accomplish this latter is by contacting the London Embassy or High Commission of the country concerned. In many cases, this yields excellent results and you are inundated with maps and vividly coloured literature containing many interesting facts and much misinformation. In other cases, the response is not quite so uplifting. I am, for example, still waiting for all the information promised me by a charming Malay gentleman in the London High Commission when I was going to that country. My trip there was eight years ago. However, the response you get from the Embassy or High Commission generally gives you some sort of a clue as to the general attitude prevailing towards life in the country concerned.

Bearing this in mind, I hopefully rang up the Mauritian High Commission in London when it was finally decided we were going there. The phone was answered by a charming young lady with a most attractive Asian accent.

‘Hallo,’ she said, with interest, but cautiously, not divulging her phone number or identity.

‘Is that the Mauritian High Commission?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ she admitted at last, rather reluctantly, ‘that’s right.’

‘The Mauritian High Commission?’ I repeated, making sure.

‘Yes,’ she said, more certainly this time, ‘Mauritian.’

‘Oh, good.’ I said, ‘I was hoping you could give me some information as I am very much hoping to go there soon.’

‘Go where ?’ she asked at length.

I knew that Mauritius was fairly remote but this, I felt, was too much. However, this was my first introduction to the charming illogicality of the Mauritian way of life. Eventually I did receive from the High Commission a small booklet containing, amongst other things, slightly out-of-focus pictures of Miss Mauritius 1967 lying about on beaches which could have been situated in Bognor or Bournemouth, for all the evidence to the contrary. Reluctantly I went back to the books of the early naturalists and more up-to-date zoological and geographical tomes for my information.

The Mascarene Islands, of which Mauritius is the second largest, lie embedded in the Indian Ocean, east of Madagascar. Forty miles by twenty, Mauritius gleams in a million tropical greens, from the greens of dragon wing and emerald, to delicate dawn greens and the creamy greens of bamboo shoot. All this is encrusted with a rainbow of flowers from the great trees that flame like magic bonfires of fragile violet-shaped magenta blooms, lying like a thousand shed butterfly wings among the grass, which itself can be green or yellow, or as pink as the sunset.

In the dawn of the world, Mauritius was formed — when the great volcano pustules were still bursting and spilling out fire and lava. In a series of cataclysmic convulsions, the island was wrenched from the sea bed and lifted skywards, the hot rocks glowing and melting so that cyclone and tidal wave, hot wind and great rains, moulded and fretted it, and tremendous earth shudders shook it and lifted it into strange mountain ranges, churning the tender rocks as a chef whips egg whites until they become stiff and form weird peaks when lifted up on a fork tip. So the strange-shaped mountains of Mauritius grew; miniature mountains all under 3,000 feet, but as distinctive, unique and Daliesque, as if carefully designed for a stage back-drop. A multitude of coral polyps, as numerous as stars, then formed a protecting roof round it and contained the lagoon, which encircled the island as a moat encircles a fortress.