Fry has whale of a time

Stephen Fry and Mark Carwardine have been talking exclusively to Wanderlust about filming forthcoming TV series Last Chance To See.

The two retraced the journey Carwardine and writer Douglas Adams undertook 20 years ago for a radio series and accompanying book.

They chose six species of the eight featured in the original series. “To retrace the steps we decided to pick a mix – so if there were two birds, we chose one. And we wanted a geographical spread. And the success stories as well as the ones that had gone wrong. So there was a good general overview,” Carwardine said.

They chose the kakapo in New Zealand, the aye-aye in Madagascar, the northern white rhino in Africa, the manatee in the Amazon, the Komodo dragon in Indonesia and the blue whale in Mexico.

Sadly one animal has become extinct in the time between the two series – the Yangtze river dolphin.

A more pleasant surprise was the number of local people featured in the original series who were still actively involved in conservation efforts.

“That’s one of the key things in conservation that gives me any hope at all; that there are these absolutely dedicated individuals who devote their lives… to protect one species. And there are many examples around the world where conservation groups haven’t saved the species but one or two individuals have,” Carwardine told us.

You can read excerpts of the conservation in the August/September issue of Wanderlust magazine, on sale today, or read the full interview here on wanderlust.co.uk

>>Read Mark Carwardine's Wild World column from Wanderlust magazine