Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Botanist and director of the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, world expert on the Brazil nut, and veteran of Amazon rainforest explorations.
On the island
Eight records
one of the favorites of my children when we lived in Brazil.
remind me of Scotland... my mother used to sing to me when I was a child
New World Symphony (2nd movement)
Vienna Philharmonic (cond. Kirill Kondrashin)
remind myself of the New World
Academy of Ancient Music (cond. Christopher Hogwood)
first orchestral piece in which I played the bassoon in the school orchestra at Morven
Amazing GraceFavourite
appropriate for this... remind me of Scotland
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:29How did you cope when you were marooned in the Amazon rainforest for eight days with no food?
Well, I think I do well on a desert island because of that experience. I proved that I can live off the land. Of course, there's a great more diversity in the Amazon than there would be in a desert island. I think that there we cope by dividing up the different people that were with us to special tasks. I went out with a field botanist who knew the plants, and we collected food from the forest. We had with us two geologists who'd never been in a jungle before, although they were Brazilians, and so we gave them some fish line, which we fortunately had, and hooks and sent them fishing because we thought they could do that and help, and it did help. And some other of the team clearing the runway so that the mess that the plane had made when it crashed was out of the way, so they could send in a rescue plane. Getting everyone organized was the secret to surviving there.
Presenter asks
5:59What world problems are you solving at Kew today?
Well, we're working on all sorts of things. Today it's largely the environment. So we're working on ways to use natural environments more wisely and to conserve the plants. So instead of just having the plants there as curiosities, we want to build up a collection that conserves the rare ones and that we can reintroduce them into the wild.
Presenter asks
The keepsakes
The book
The Natural History of Selborne
Gilbert White
I think I would want something that reminded me of natural history
At what point did the botanist become the environmentalist?
Well, I enjoyed the first ten years really as a botanist only, and I think it was definitely when I was teaching a class in botany in Brazil, a Brazilian class, and I took them to see the impact of the Trans-Amazon Highway on the environment there. And I took this whole class of ten, together with another very good ecologist, Robert Goodland of the World Bank, and we taught together this course in ecology, and we saw the devastating impact that this highway was having because of the unsatisfactory colonization program along it. So we began to think about it and we began to discuss it with the students there. And I could see myself gradually getting more involved in the environmental issues and changing my research interest a bit to do more applied research, to look for solutions for this, rather than just work on the biology.
Presenter asks
22:20You've grown rather fond of the indigenous people of the Amazon, haven't you?
I have indeed. One of the most wonderful things of my work in the Amazon has been all my contact with the indigenous peoples. I've spent a lot of time in fact, I think I visited 16 different tribes of Indians. Initially it was because I was collecting plants in their territory, but then I very soon became interested in the way they use plants and in the way they manage the forest. So I started becoming what's called an ethnobotanist, someone who combines the study of people and plants.
Presenter asks
24:29Was there a point when you thought you wouldn't make it [out of the jungle with malaria]?
Yes, there was. There was one point when I lay down in the forest and thought I can't go on, and sort of reasoning, well, you've got two options, just to stay here or to force yourself to go on. It's wonderful when you are in an extreme condition like that what you can force your body to do. I would have no idea that I could have done that then.
Presenter asks
27:04You came back to two large problems: the storm damage at Kew and Thatcherism demanding a more business-like footing. Did the botanist-turned-environmentalist have to become a businessman?
I did, yes. Fortunately, when I was at New York, I did a lot of fundraising for the programmes there, for the research programmes I was in charge of. So fundraising was no shock to me. And I think that prepared me very well for the need to find support for Kew from other places as well as the government. The government gives us a lot of our funding at Kew, but we do need to find some of it from elsewhere. And that was a new challenge, and that's going quite well. When I came, 95% of Kew's budget was coming from the government, and now it's 83%. That's because we've been successful in private fundraising, not because we've been cut by the government.
“Getting everyone organized was the secret to surviving there.”
“I think it's a good expedition when nothing's gone wrong.”
“I could see myself gradually getting more involved in the environmental issues and changing my research interest a bit to do more applied research, to look for solutions for this, rather than just work on the biology.”
“It's wonderful when you are in an extreme condition like that what you can force your body to do. I would have no idea that I could have done that then.”
“I have faith and I pray and read the Bible and that is sustained me through a lot of the work I've done.”
“I think my Christian faith is the most important thing to me. It reminds me of that, it will remind me of Scotland, and I just would need the skirl of the pipes, too.”