Part II: Education of an animal enthusiast
Gerald did not receive a formal education as a youth, instead "the bug-happy boy wandered about his paradise island while conventional education passed him by" [Botting: 56]. He received the freedom of home schooling, mentoring, and encouragement from Dr. Stephanides and other friends of the family.
Gerald's next job with animals came in 1945 as a relief zoo keeper at Whipsnade, the Zoological Society of London's country zoo--a job that began a lifelong association with zoos. At Whipsnade, Gerald learned the business of zoos, came to understand their history and role in society, and developed the ideas that later germinated into the primary mission of his life:
"As I pursued my reading, I began to learn with horror of man's rapacious encroachment upon the world and the terrible devastation that he was producing among animal life. I read of the dodo, flightless and harmless, discovered and exterminated in almost the same breath. I read of the passenger pigeon in North America whose vast numbers darkened the sky, who were so numerous that their nesting colonies measured several hundred square miles. They were good to eat; the last one died in Cincinnati Zoo in 1914. It seemed incredible, almost impossible, that people in charge of zoos should have been so ignorant that they did not realise that these animals were tottering on the border of extinction and that they did not do something about it. Surely this was one of the true functions of a zoological garden, to help animals that were being pushed towards extinction?" [Botting: 92]
In 1946, at the age of twenty-one, Gerald came into the sizeable amount of money that had been set aside for him in his father's will: 3,000 British pounds--a sum equivalent to 90,000 US dollars by today's standards. With this money in hand, he financed his first trip as a freelance animal collector for zoos. The ideals with which he embarked upon the first of his journeys echoed throughout the rest of his life:
"When I left Whipsnade I was still determined to have a zoo of my own, but I was equally determined that if I ever achieved this ambition my zoo would have to fulfil three functions in order to justify its existence. Firstly it would have to act as an aid to the education of people so that they could realise how fascinating and how important the other forms of life in the world were, so that they would stop being quite so arrogant and self-important and appreciate the fact that the other forms of life had just as much right to existence as they had. Secondly, research into the behaviour of animals would be undertaken so that by this means one could not only learn more about the behaviour of human beings but also be in a better position to help animals in their wild state, for unless you know the needs of the various species of animal you cannot practise conservation successfully. Thirdly--and this seemed to me to be of the utmost urgency--the zoo would have to be a reservoir of animal life, a sanctuary for threatened species, keeping and breeding them so that they would not vanish from the earth for ever as the dodo and the passenger pigeon had done." [Botting: 101]
References
- Botting, D. Gerald Durrell: The Authorized Biography. New York: Carroll and Graf Publishers. (1999).
- Durrell, G. My Family and Other Animals. New York: Penguin Books (2000).
