Last Chance to See
In the footsteps of Douglas Adams
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HarperCollins (2009).
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Hardcover Book with Dust Jacket
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Text from the Front Flap
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Twenty years ago, zoologist Mark Carwardine teamed up with the late Douglas Adams (author of The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy) and together they embarked on a groundbreaking expedition, travelling the globe in search of some of the world's most endangered animals.
Now Mark has teamed up with one of Douglas's closest friends – comic genius Stephen Fry – to see how all those animals have been faring in the years since. In Last Chance to See, and the accompanying major BBC television series, we follow the unlikely duo on six separate journeys which take them from the steamy jungles of the Amazon to the ice-covered mountain tops of New Zealand and from the edge of a war zone in Central Africa to a sub-tropical paradise in the North Pacific. Along the way, they search for some of the weirdest, most remarkable and most troubled creatures on earth: a large, black, sleepy animal easily mistaken for an unusually listless mudbank, a parrot with a song like an unreleased collection of Pink Floyd studio outtakes, a rhino with square lips, a dragon with deadly saliva, an animal roughly the length of a Boeing 737 and the creature most likely to emerge from the cargo doors of a spaceship.
A unique insight into the disappearing world around us, this is their hilarious, entertaining, informative and thought-provoking story.
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About the Author from the Back Flap
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Zoologist Mark Carwardine was born in England in 1959. He co-presented the BBC-TV series Last Chance to See with Stephen Fry and is currently filming a new BBC-TV series called The Museum of Life. He also presented the weekly half-hour programme, Nature, on BBC Radio 4 for many years (as well as numerous other mini-series for Radio 4). An award-winning writer and best-selling author, he has written more than 50 books on a variety of wildlife, travel and conservation subjects – including the original Last Chance to See, with Douglas Adams. He writes a monthly column in BBC Wildlife magazine and is Contributing Editor of Wanderlust magazine. A widely published photographer, Mark has been Chairman of the Judging Panel for the prestigious Wildlife Photographer of the Year Competition since 2005. He worked for several international conservation organizations (the World Wide Fund for Nature, in England; the United Nations Environment Programme, in Kenya; and the World Conservation Union, in Switzerland) before going freelance in the mid-1980s. Mark is an active and outspoken conservationist, spending a lot of time raising funds and awareness for endangered species.
For more information: www.markcarwardine.com and www.bbc.co.uk/lastchancetosee.
'Mark Carwardine will climb mountains, ford streams and penetrate steamy malaria infested swamps just for one glimpse of an animal. Not only that, but he will encourage, belabour and enthuse any large, sweaty unwilling companions who happen to be lumbering at his side wishing there were better phone signals and air-conditioning available.'
Fellow explorer Stephen Fry
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