The Hitchhiker's Guide to Endangered Species

[bibliogramma]

Last Chance to See, Douglas Adams

Douglas Adams was a brilliant writer and satirist. In Last Chance to See, he recounts several expeditions he and zoologist Mark Cowardine undertook in the mid-80s as part of a BBC Radio documentary on animal species that were threatened with or nearing extinction.

They went to Madagascar, to search for the aye-aye (an endangered species of lemur); to the island of Komodo in Indonesia to look at Komodo dragons (considered a vulnerable species); to Zaire to see gorillas (threatened by poaching, habitat loss and disease) and white rhinoceroses (the Northern White Rhinocerous is critically endangered, with only 13 known living members of the sub-species as of 2007); to New Zealand to learn about Kakapo birds (critically endangered, with fewer than 100 known survivors); to China to find Yangtze River Dolphins (a species now classified as critically endandered and possibly extinct); to the island if Rodrigues in the Indian Ocean to see Rodrigues fruit bats (threatened by habitat loss).

Along the way, Adams recounts all the details of getting to the place where the animals are, dealing with local travel and bureaucratic conditions, learning about the species from local zoologists and consevationists who are tring to save these species, and his encounters with the animals themselves, with all the satire, wit and sense of the absurd that he was deservedly famous for. You laugh, until suddenly you realise that you should be crying, or raging at the threatened loss of all of these marvelous, strange, funny, beautiful creatures.

I urge you to read it, to laugh, to weep, to think.