An Interview with Dr. David Bellamy
by Russell Johnson
Click for MP3 Audio
(21 min)
Prof.
David Bellamy does bird impressions, trumpets like an elephant, waves
his arms as if swatting gnats and screams "beam me up Scotty!" Looking
like a cross between John Houston and Saint Nick, Bellamy, the UK
television character and founder of the Conservation Foundation is…well… unconventional.
I talked to the hirsute professor twice over the past few years.
Bellamy is the kind of guy little kids run up to and hug. But the
anti-zoo people snipe at him because he thinks zoos are good places to
re-start endangered species. Bellamy wants to breed Asian elephants in
fenced areas of Queensland, Australia. They would earn their keep by
ripping up non-native brush. Its a scheme that brought a crack from Lonely Planet
founder Tony Wheele about what happened when well-meaning settlers
released rabbits in the Outback (bunnies will be bunnies). Which,
of course, also begs the question: Once you have raised your herd of
elephants in Australia, how much energy will it take to get their
fattened butts back to Asia where they belong? Will it be fuel-hogging
C5A transport planes or a ship burning heavy bunker oil? Or, how about
this? Fuel'em up with elephant dung. The world is waaay too
complicated.
Bellamy also said he didn't believe
in global warming, but last year changed his tune after enduring the
slings and arrows of outraged conservationists, and that mass tourist
attractions like Disney World can be good for the planet.
I can hear the
collective hiss of the Antimousification League around the world. But
Bellamy has a point. He claims that Disney benefited the environment
when it turned an ecological nightmare in Florida into a theme park.
"The lake in the middle was so polluted that it had to be drained and
dug out before Tinkerbell came to the rescue and refilled it with clean
spring water, unbottled of course," he said. "The expertise of their
landscape architects not only drew on the biodiversity of the world's
flora to beautify the park … but also restored a great chunk of the
everglades." Bellamy claims that mass tourism, if done right, has the
resources to increase biodiversity and restore environments.
David Bellamy
finally came clean. In the few weeks since we interviewed him, he has
admitted that his data was wrong, that global warming WAS melting
glaciers. The botanist, conservationist and former BBC host got the
scientific establishment's hackles up when he debunked global warming.
His confession, however, was too late to save him. According to New Scientist he
has been virtually banished from conservation organizations he once
headed. Dispite that, you may think he makes great sense on other
subjects. Bellamy is a true believer in science, in the notion that
science can solve earth's problems.
Bellamy says that the real culprits in the tourism development game are
what he calls the "highrise hooligans" who plant their towers in
ecologically sensitive places. "They ruined the Costa Brava," he says.
"Now they are even in Madagascar."
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