• Full Title: Last Chance To See
• Authors: Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine
• Year: 1990
• Genre: Wildlife, Documentary
• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• ISBN 0-345-37198-4 (trade paperback)
• Wikipedia page
• Author’s Wikipedia Page

 

Summary

I sometimes have weird coincidental moments in which I use a word I haven’t heard or used in years, and then it pops up again a few days later in an unexpected place*. Not many days ago, I published a short piece of fiction in which I used the word ornithologist in a humorous bit. It’s one of those words we don’t hear or see every day. And then I picked up Last Chance To See. There it was, on page 180: ornithologist.

(* A few weeks after writing this review, I learned this is called the Baader-Meinhof effect.)

“One of the first things you need to know about Richard Lewis, indeed the thing you need to know about him, is that he’s an ornithologist. Once you know that, everything else more or less falls into place.”

— pg. 180

Outside of this connection, however, Last Chance To See is unlike anything I’ve read in a long time. I was pointed to it by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, in The Ancestor’s Tale, which I reviewed last year. Respecting Dawkins’ science chops quite a bit, I added this to my list and I’m glad I did.

Last Chance To See was published alongside a 1989 BBC radio program of the same name, in which science fiction humor writer Douglas Adams went around the world in search of species that were either endangered or (possibly) extinct. He met up with WWF zoologist Mark Carwardine during the journey.

“My role, and one for which I was entirely qualified, was to be an extremely ignorant non-zoologist to whom everything that happened would come as a complete surprise.”

— Douglas Adams, BBC

“We put a big map of the world on a wall, Douglas stuck a pin in everywhere he fancied going, I stuck a pin in where all the endangered animals were, and we made a journey out of every place that had two pins.”

— Mark Carwardine, BBC

What they found is well worth consideration, and what Douglas wrote about it is well worth reading.

 

What I Liked Least About It

There is nothing to dislike about this book, except: (1) I wish I had found it sooner, and (2) I wish there was more of it. (It’s only 218 pages in the trade paperback edition.)

 

What I Liked Most About It

Adams was the perfect person to write this documentary account. I first read his “increasingly inaccurately named” Hitchhiker’s “trilogy” while in high school and later read his Dirk Gently detective novels with much interest. I had no idea he’d written a wildlife documentary until I saw Dawkins mention it. Adams’ style of often dry and self-deprecating wit gave this nonfiction book a pleasant twist.

It’s a fascinating, entirely true tale in which Adams and Carwardine encounter a plethora of interesting characters, some of them human, all over the world. On the way, Adams is pummeled by insights and epiphanies about the very nature of life, evolution, and being human.

 

More Thoughts

As I read, I couldn’t help but notice it had been 29 years since Adams wrote it (and 18 years since Adams died), and I found myself wishing regularly that someone would update the stories — tell us if these rare creatures they encountered are still around, recovering, or if they’ve finally gone extinct.

And then, as I wrote this review, I learned that in 2009 Carwardine participated in a BBC television followup with Stephen Fry (no relation), in which they returned to many of the same locations to see what had changed. But (1) that was 10 years ago, and (2) I can’t seem to get my hands on a copy to see what they learned.

Following is some original research on the particular lifeforms covered in Last Chance To See. The aye-aye is still listed as endangered, though it has been successful in breeding in captivity. The Komodo dragon is listed as a “vulnerable” species, with its numbers continuing to decline — despite the establishment of multiple reserves and national parks in Indonesia. With only 35 of them in North America, my family and I are lucky to have seen one several times in the Cameron Park Zoo in Waco. The kakapo is still critically endangered, with fewer than 150 known living specimens. The mountain gorilla is also still endangered, with about 1,000 known individuals — up from a low point in 1981. Sadly, the northern white rhinocerous is now “functionally extinct” — the only two living specimens are both female, precluding the possibility of reproduction. (The last male died in 2018.) Despite massive Chinese efforts reported in Last Chance To See, hoping to save the baiji (Chinese river dolphin), current sources indicate that it too is functionally extinct, declared so in 2007. As recently as 2016, some have claimed to have seen baiji in the Yantze River, but these sightings have not been confirmed. The Rodrigues fruit bat is still listed as endangered, with only a few hundred in the wild, but breeding in captivity has been somewhat successful and overall population numbers have risen in recent years.

Two species covered by the BBC radio show (but not in this book) are the Amazonian manatee, which is currently listed as “vulnerable”, and the Juan Fernández fur seal, which was thought to be extinct early in the 20th Century, but is now estimated to number around 12,000.

This information, compiled by me 29 years after Adams and Carwardine traversed the Earth, highlights the ongoing impact of humankind’s ubiquitous presence on the planet. Like hundreds of species before them, these are endangered by our activities — destruction of their natural habitats and food sources, contamination of their drinking water, our addiction to hunting rare creatures, and other factors. While Adams and Carwardine tried to highlight just a few relatable animals, ongoing research points out that currently we humans are one of the primary causes of an ongoing mass extinction event. Some estimate that “one-half of Earth’s higher lifeforms will be extinct by 2100” and many agree that “the current rate of extinction is 10 to 100 times higher than in any of the previous mass extinctions in the history of Earth.”

“It is the sher rate of acceleration that is as terrifying as anything else. There are now more than a thousand different species of animals and plants becoming extinct every year... No one knows how close to the limit we are getting. The darker it gets, the faster we’re driving.”

— pg. 212-213

 

Conclusion

This is a must-read book. I am immediately donating my copy to a local book-sharing cooperative. If you happen to see a copy in a used bookstore or yard sale (it’s long been out of print), get it and read it.

 

 

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