 Hello and welcome to tonight's event from the British Library in partnership with Penguin Live. I'm Brett Walsh from the cultural events department and I'm delighted to welcome you to this event which is part of our nature season, a season of events on nature and the environment. Now tonight's discussion is between Ray Mears and Selena Scott and Ray is going to be talking about his new book which you can buy using the button just above the video. Towards the end of the event we'll also be taking questions so if you'd like to submit a question please do so using the form just below the video here. This discussion is going to be chaired by the fantastic Selena Scott. Selena is a journalist and broadcaster and was one of the first anchor women on UK television. In the 1980s her reports on the Kenyan ivory trade led to an international ban. Selena still broadcasts regularly and is currently rewilding her farm in Yorkshire. So without further ado I'll hand over to Selena and Ray. Thank you. Hello everyone and welcome to this wonderful chat we're about to have with a man who has been something of a hero of mine now for many years. I've always felt that if I ever got stuck in the wilderness the person that I would want by my side is Ray Mears. His knowledge of nature, his knowledge of wildlife is understated and yet almost exhausted. He's been everywhere it seems. He's put himself at the very edge of everything and I'm delighted that he's joining us tonight to talk about his new book. It's called We Are Nature and he's there. Hello Ray. Good evening Selena. Very nice to meet you. Yes, congratulations for all the work you did for elephants and ivory. I think that's people forget but it was really important groundbreaking. Well let's start on that because in your book you have a photograph of a rhinoceros, a carcass lying there, having had its horn taken and I went, yes, I went to Cora to meet George Adamson and filmed the poachers and we caught up with them and eventually George Adamson was killed by the poachers trying to protect the elephants but George Adamson was the kind of man who is very similar, was very similar to you, that he seemed to have no fear whatsoever. And before we talk about this let me just show everyone a photograph in your book. I'll put it up here. Perhaps you can see it. This one here of Ray. Now he's sitting in a canal and look at his posture. He's got his legs in front and he's leaning forward. It's almost like he's sitting on a beach eating an ice cream but look at what he's watching. You tell everyone what you're watching Ray. Well that's a five meter crocodile, saltwater crocodile and in its mouth it's got, I think it was a 350 kilo or thereabouts dead pig, wild pig which it's trying to take away into the shadows to eat and I'm in the way and believe it or not that crocodile made a pretty good attempt at submerging with that pig but having failed to do so it then hissed at me with the greatest menace that I've ever felt from any creature on the planet. It was quite something. Amazing animals. And yet you showed no fear and I know you were asked this question a lot but why are you not frightened of these animals? I think fear is a process of anticipation. I think if you're about to jump out of an aircraft you can think of all the things that can go wrong. When you're dealing with wildlife things happen quickly. So quickly you don't have time to think about them so you respond to what's going on but I think also hopefully you've done your homework and you you have an understanding of the parameters so that you can behave accordingly and that's the secret really is the focus on what you know and not to think about what might be. And that moment I think a lot of people can understand it. That moment when you confront it by something you don't automatically often feel fear but it's afterwards and it's not afterwards that I'm interested in with you. You obviously can control it in a way that other people can't. I mean I remember George Adamson walked out of his compound with meat to feed the lions and he walked out and these big beasts came running towards him and I thought they're going to eat him. They were wild lions and he threw them the meat and he had no fear whatsoever and he did it every night and you in a way exhibit the same kind of courage in that sense. Maybe I'm not sure. I think that was his skill though Selina if for one moment he had hesitated or shown any sort of doubt then the the lions would have perceived him differently and then he would have been immortal danger. So his confidence is a degree of bravado perhaps but it is a very fine line between a weakness that the lions will not tolerate and a strength that they fear or respect. So to come back to this this idea of you confronting these animals coming up against them unexpectedly in the bush and then going back out there again the next day that the control of your emotions is it something that you were born with or is it something that you had to learn? I think you're born with it maybe I'm too stupid to feel fear I don't know but I have to say though with a crocodile is very different to a lion. There's a dialogue that goes on when you confront a lion in terms of body language and posture. A crocodile pays no heed to that. It's simply can I snatch you or not and they're two very different animals. When you say there's a dialogue with a lion but tell me what you say to a lion or what you hear from a lion? Well there's a body language going on it's not natural for humans and lions to come into conflict with each other so we would rather stay apart and maintain some distance and a lion may be unhappy that we have it have come too close to it just as you might have someone stood too close to you on the underground and a lion will behave to provide me in most cases will provide some warning and some indication of that and as long as we pay respect to each other then we can have these encounters and walk away safely and on a daily basis there are safari guides exploiting that dialogue to bring their guests into close proximity to animals for a thrilling experience without coming to any harm. I wouldn't I wouldn't begin to attempt to do that with a saltwater crocodile. They have a much smaller brain they think in a completely different way they're totally reptilian and you'd be in very very great danger. You have you have I know a plaster cast of a footprint would you like to show everyone? This is a cast of an alpha male wolf that I cast in Idaho and you can see I put my hand beside how large that is. It's a special thing this in many ways was the inspiration for the book I've written and I was thinking about what's right. This to me symbolizes a species that we now know we now fear and don't understand and when I made the documentary about the wars in Idaho I filmed with the Nez Pes people first nation tribe in North America and a lot of what we filmed didn't make it into the documentary sadly it was it found its way into the cutting room floor which I was really upset about but one of the things that they told me is that for thousands of years they lived alongside wolves directly competing with wolves for their food so they were a threat to their well-being but they didn't hate the wolf and they didn't fear the wolf they respected it as a great hunter they wished to be as good as the wolf at hunting and they saw it as a brother and there's such wisdom in that attitude and yet when I was making the documentary I found the local population with a medieval hatred of the wolf and really what I would like is for people to take a little bit of time to make their own opinions up about wildlife to learn how to see things more clearly to take a moment to park their fear to one side and to understand what's going on in relationships with wildlife and and just look and see because the moment you do that you discover that these things aren't quite as as we as we like to demonize them they're much more interesting and much more important and they're fellow creatures that we share our planet with and at our lifetimes with. This plaster cast was taken by you and you were in Idaho and you went to sleep but in your book you tell that there's wonderful story of going to sleep on a hillside and waking up and looking directly at the alpha male wolf who was footprint that actually was is. And how far away was he from you? This wolf was only a matter of meters away only a few meters away and you know they say that this plaster takes 15 minutes to set but actually of course it's an hour and a half and yeah we've been filming at a fairly hectic hectic pace so I thought well I've got you know while it's setting I'll I'll rest my eyes so I lay down in the sage brush nearby and just have a little dose of it was it was it was like this time of year so the sun just had that first warmth in it and and then I felt that there was a presence there and I just very carefully looked up and poked my head over the top of the the sage brush and there was the wolf looking at the plaster thinking what's going on what's happening here and I watched it for some time it's not very it's not every day you get the drop on a wolf and eventually I couldn't contain myself anymore I sort of smiled and that was enough movement for the wolf to spot me and we we then had this Mexican standard we looked each other you know directly into the eye and and then the wolf left and was gone in a moment it was I've had a lot of encounters with wolves but in some strange way that was particularly special I'm even more poignant when you think that that wolf uh has was taken off the endangered list that Idaho is now allowed to shoot these animals because they take livestock presumably because as you say they don't people have this medieval theory there's a there's a irrational hatred of the wolf and um four days after that that that encounter this wolf lost protection and the following year I know that it was killed so uh it's very sad but but the wolves are doing really well and the thing is they outwit the hunters there they've learned now that people are dangerous and they they they squirrel themselves away in dark recesses and there is a new status quo coming along as well between the hunters and the wolves it takes time animals are I think it's in many ways far more intelligent than we are they they understand things it takes us much longer to understand our relationship with them than the other way around when you say it takes time isn't that the crux of the whole thing though you you've written lyrically about nature and how we're part of nature but are we really part of nature haven't we really gone past being a part of all of this that we we treat we treat it so abominably we spoil it we shoot it we we do everything we can to make money out of it and you know you your book is a eulogy to all of that but I wonder whether really we've passed the point of saving so much of what we you know what we you and I have grown up with I can understand I can understand that sentiment but I think that I'm encouraged though by the fact that nature has the ability to restore herself incredibly well nature can heal damage if she's given the opportunity and even faster with a helping hand and I think we've all seen that to some extent in this last year of lockdown when we look into the night skies over Britain and now we can see more stars than we could 12 months ago simply because of a reduction in pollution so I think when you see that you you should also have faith that there are other restorative processes in the in the environment taking place at the same time and just you see up I look to come back to Africa again and and George Adams's camp I was in touch with Tony Fitzjohn who used to help with George Adams and I said what's happening in Koran now because he's returned there and he said oh the no elephants and no the the rhinos were shot in the 70s the elephants went in the 80s and now it's just Somalian herdsmen with camels and goats supplying the Arabian market well if you if you lose these big beasts what what hope that you can't replace them you can't replace them fast enough no I have I have great fears for the the megafauna of the planet and particularly rhinos I have a very strong affinity with rhinoceros and it's a terrible thought that within the you know the span of human lifetime now we could lose these species forever and once they're gone they cannot be brought back and that would be a terrible indictment of humans custodian ship of the planet over the last few hundred years but I do think people want to do something about it Selena I think the problem is they don't know what to do I'm not sure I have the answer is it not buying certain goods from certain goods from certain countries yes I mean for example China was always known wasn't it as the one that wanted rhino horn for afrodisiac purposes or whatever they used it for this is true but China has now delisted rhino horn as a traditional medicine and in fact China I've seen with my own eyes China has taken on board the concepts of conservation and they're moving in a much more ecological direction with regards to these issues not just because as a nation they don't want to be accused of of abusing nature but also because there's a ground swell amongst ordinary Chinese people for conservation and that's largely as a result of the documentaries that David Attenborough has made and that that that was really interesting to see I was filming in China last year and they're just setting up their very first national park now that for me was fascinating because we think of national parks as having been there forever but they're actually a very new concept and as we saw with when when Donald Trump was president they're also still vulnerable so it's worth bearing in mind that conservation the efforts for conservation the processes that we enshrine today are still in in their infancy and there's an awful lot of work still to be done to improve that process and to guard the successes that we have achieved I don't know what the answer is for the megafauna I suspect that we have yes to stop people utilizing the resources we have to pursue the poachers and enforce the law but also in some way we need to reach out to the middlemen who control the trade and make them feel as endangered as the animals that they are endangering perhaps there could be reward schemes for interval I don't know but I don't think you can do just one thing we have to do everything all at the same time otherwise we will lose these animals and that would be a tragedy you in your book you talk about using your senses I get the impression that you're not very impressed with most people who got into the wild and and and you you feel that they're not engaging probably enough they're not using the senses that we have been gifted with to really get in touch with nature can explain a little bit about why you feel that we can improve on our senses on the hearing and seeing and all these things how we can train ourselves to use our senses more the thing is we live in a world where we over stimulate our senses so our music is loud and it's it's not subtle it's raucous we bombard ourselves with bright colors and a huge amount of visual stimulus when we go shopping in a supermarket you know the special office come in day glow stars attached to them and even on our roads road signs are displayed at a set height at a set distance from a junction this all makes sense because we want to be certain to see things in nature everything is far more subtle and in fact it's the reverse most things in the world are trying to avoid being seen and unless they're trying to attract amazed and but but what's interesting is if you accept the fact that we are still ourselves wild creatures and that for more than 99 percent of our history as a species we were hunters and gatherers depending on our own sensory perceptions we have hard wired within ourselves the ability to see smell hear touch and feel and intuit to a much higher degree than than we we access on a daily basis and it's been my experience in teaching people to use these these senses that they very quickly we can all very quickly start to access these abilities and as soon as we do we so we see more and we're moved by more of what we see and that improves our our spiritual connection to the environment around us are you not talking though about yourself i mean i if i said to you could you survive if this covid pandemic had wiped out you know huge numbers of people well it has a great degree but if we were forced to rely on nature and on our senses to survive do you believe that you could survive yeah you would find enough to eat you you would know how to do it you would all of that's been the work of my life is to learn how to do these things um but i would but i would before you're going for what but why but why was it why has it been your life's work to know that how to survive when something like this hits us i don't know it found me i mean why do any of us do what we do um something reached out and said in touch me and said this is what you should do and i've just followed my heart i read somewhere that you uh had had an epiphany when you were a little boy going to a safari park and saw a rhino was it or a hippopotamus it was long it was long lead and in the 1960s and in those days you could get very close to the animals and i remember it was a long journey it was a hot day and i was you know tired of sitting in the back of the car and we stopped and um you know i was you know there was the offer of a 99 flake to to to to to me but i was actually enthralled by the rhino i was watching i remember watching a rhino thinking this is amazing what an incredible creature this is and um i've never forgotten that moment and i i feel it now still every time i see one in the wild i still feel that connection to that first one that i saw the other day i was i went for a walk on my farm i was just at the new yorkshire and um i i found something and i was reading your book at the same time and i thought i bet you would know i bet you could survive with this i'll show you see what that is can you see i can't i can't see is it a polished axe it's a polished axe you've got a polished axe a neolithic axe yeah look at that it's it's been polished and honed to a very you could survive with that couldn't you and it's been and you can see it's been used it looks to me like it has some wear on it as well and that that's from the that would have been left by britain's first farmers and they they polished the axes because they needed to fell the trees if you don't polish the axe they tend to break by polishing them they it gives them resilience and um of course they were doing a lot of felling to create fears there you are you see that i didn't know that you've taught me another little lesson today i think that we all would love to go into nature and and find plants and and eat things which are so good for us but we don't know i mean mushrooms we don't know anything about them really and most of us haven't a clue what we should be eating unless we have someone with us who can show us what to to eat and you're an expert in that as well i i know well i i eat wild food to be in a big part of what i do i i would actually say my love for plants has been one of the most important means of communicating with other cultures around the world as soon as you take an interest in botany you have a means to communicate with people who who rely still on plants in other places and they may be slightly different species but the families are similar and they often share properties or similarities in in their uses which is a great way to open up a door to conversations with other cultures which is for me plants have been my love for plants has really helped and so you're dark now if you were left to your own devices what would you like to eat what do you eat in what way i mean i'm i'm just like everybody else i'm i thought you'd go home and eat bark and and and cut kind of resin and have a sip of tea at night time with perhaps a bit of chamomile in it and chill out you know but last week i went out and i drank some birch sap because this is the time of year when the sap flows in the birch and for me that's a little ritual that i i indulge in every year it's almost an elixir after after the winter that makes you feel good you know it just tastes like water but it has some magic feeling on it and that was very special do you have any recommendations for putting on your face making your skin making your skin glow this year i've learned an important thing and i'm going to invest in a much cheaper webcam very diplomatic right well i think that you you harbor all kinds of hidden potions which we could all really know all about or learn about and and deploy in some way or another now i wanted to to ask you because the book is full of practical information for a girl like me who spends most of her time outdoors the binoculars for example how to get the best binoculars what to look for with the numbers of the binoculars that's been you know wonderful for someone like me but also shoes and footwear clothing you cover all of it in the book why did you decide to do that now what what was the spur to make you put all this down this very practical useful information for anyone who wants to get outside and enjoy nature well i wanted to write about reconnecting ourselves with the with the natural environment and discovering the wildness that's within us but the strange thing is that i think lockdown gave me impetus as well it felt important i wanted to share what i've learned and as you will have seen in the book some of it is all about our senses and common sense approach to finding things as well but equally there are some small details that can really make a difference we don't need very much equipment to see nature or to engage with it but the choices we make are important and particularly having footwear that's quiet so that you you can approach things without making unnecessary noise i think that's really important so yeah i think i think it was i felt a real impetus during lockdown to make sure i share this and that it's not lost i think i think the coronavirus has made us all feel a little mortal at this time so you know i i try to do something practical about that yes everyone's out walking around here they know so many people are enjoying breathing in fresh air and walking but they're not really taking much in you know they can have their heads down looking at where they're going rather than looking around them and and and up into the skies it seems as though that's that's the way they are do you do you find that that's a frustration no it's normal and and it's easy you only have to be preoccupied with something in your life and all of a sudden you become sensually blind to what's going on around you but there are lots of people who do see a lot of things so we have some very good spotters birdwatchers naturalists who are extremely good at seeing things and i just want to open throw that door open to more people so that we we can all learn to see more i mean i could have said a lot more i could have gone into more detail in some areas but i think there's detail enough i think that i just want to give enough that people can go out enjoy and start to fill in the other gaps for themselves because that's the magic is the magic is your own experience but i you teach people here how to walk you teach people yes that you know there's a certain walk you can take which is a stalking walk a stealthy walk you can creep up on on all kinds of creatures if you know how to do it so it's that kind of practical information which is so useful these things we forget how important they are and in in many of the first nations i've worked with who absolutely depend on their ability to hunt with very primitive weapons their ability to get close to things and to notice things is is absolutely vital and these are things they school their children in um so they become very very expert and it's very easy to miss that and not to understand that that's going on now i i always remember driving through the bush we were filming with some kalahari bushman uh some sand uh some uh johansi sand and um we're driving on a on a dirt track or maybe like 30 miles an hour and all of a sudden there was a commotion in the back of the uh the four by four and one of them had spotted the tail of a of a lizard which was a meal and you know how he saw that you know it's just staggering this tiny tiny movement and then they're out of the car and chasing after it for the for their food you know it's amazing and and that taught you and that gave you a kind of a spur did it as well to learn to to absorb that very much it's a role model it sets you an example of what is possible once you understand that that more is possible then you attempt to do this for yourself as well you feel that in the last say 20 years you have become better at everything that you have tried to teach yourself yeah i think i think um i think also as you get older you calm down you become hopefully a little wiser about what you're doing and you you learn lessons and as you mature you constantly reaffirm them and there comes a point in life where you're very confident in what you can do um but it also you realize how short life is as well life is very short i mean if we're lucky we get 80 summers and of course this year many people have had far fewer than that and that's not many years to learn the flammals of the summer uh or the sounds of the winter so you know we all have to really get a shift on if we want to be better naturalists it's it's very hard to tell a young person that life is short isn't it yep yep i was in that category too i'd like you to read an excerpt from your book um and i i've i've chosen it because um i felt when i read it that i was with ray when he was walking through this particular part of the world so would you have you got it there this was um i was i was in um in africa looking for um leopards tracking leopards and um here we go but search as we did uh little i'm sorry here we go since that day i've had many opportunities to track leopards in many different locations my fascination and respect for this animal is without limit i love watching them and i think that of all the animals that i trailed it is the leopard that has the most perfect footprint of all following leopard trails has taken me into some quiet corners that i would never have otherwise found and it is some that i would rather have avoided one young male leopards trail led me up a very small and tightly enclosed dried stream bed either side of me the vegetation was tall thick golden grass with acacia thickets behind the leopard was typically keeping close to the edge of the stream the sun was already warming the sand causing the faint faint leopard tracks to lose their definition rounding a tight bend in the stream there in the middle of the bed on top of a mound of sand i could see a deep foot impression it looked fresh taking care to remain silent i moved forward to check it out it wasn't a leopards track but quite literally the largest lion track i have ever seen what was worrying was that it was perfectly fresh and led across my path obliquely towards the bush over my right shoulder that lion was now somewhere behind me despite being armed with a suitable rifle for defense my main source of protection is always early detection of a threat that defense had already been breached a flock of dark a flock of laughing doves sped past just overhead i could hear every wing beat massively magnified i realized my senses were already in overdrive and i could feel sweat beating on my neck i focused on maintaining a wide field of vision stress can cause perceptual narrowing reducing our ability to detect nearby dangers that would otherwise be obvious moving ever so slowly i made the rifle ready to meet an imminent attack and turn to face the possible threat this was essential if a charge comes it requires split second responses action is quicker than reaction so there is little time to waste realigning position i was acutely aware that a lion charge that a lion can charge that more than 20 meters a second and estimated that the gully wasn't more than eight meters wide i needed to keep my gaze upwards my feet would now have to feel their way as i headed back down the trail my eyes were at ground level of the surrounding bush i strained to see through the vegetation through a tiny hole i spotted a flicking movement deep in the shadows beyond and then again another flick i froze and studied the movement at first i thought it was a bird then my brain registered what it was it was a tail tip a lion's tail the lion was lying down rumper towards me about 40 meters away with each flick of its tail i could now make out a perfect sight of its testicles poking out from behind its hindquarters a comedic moment perhaps under other circumstances more carefully than ever i retraced my footsteps down the stream keeping my rifle up and at the ready maintaining my wide white field of vision in case the lion was not alone i do not think that at any other time in my life i have ever moved more quietly than i did that day but in a strange way i was protected by the very leopard i've been trailing for like all leopards it had exhibited a genius for choosing a quiet path well concealed from sight retracing its root afforded me some of that protection oh i've got ghost pimples you know i mean you're mad of course it's mad listen i've got some lots of questions that have come in that spurred on by that wonderful reading said harrisoners wants to know do you feel we must look to our past ray and our past relationship with nature to ensure our future with the planet have a think about that i think it was i think it was Churchill who said those who would understand the future should pay greater attention to the past and i think that is the case when you look at the statistic of human advancement if you like in terms of technology in terms of population there's been this exponential growth in the human population and our technological technological abilities but at the same time there's been a decline in species and damage to our our ecosystem and at some point we need to wake up and i think we are waking up to the fact that it's actually not about saving the planet it's about saving ourselves the planet really doesn't care whether we survive or not the dinosaurs came and went and so might we but if we are wise and we pay attention and learn from the past particularly if we look at the you know the the core samples from deep in glaciers which give us an indication of the pollution in the environment in the past i believe that that we may discover that our unique ability as a species on the planet fits us for the role of caretaking for the environment in which case we might find that we live more we can live more harmoniously with nature and more happily in the future okay we've got we've got um something here we've got lots of um specific um answers about the beavers for example hi Ray what are your thoughts on rewilding programs in the UK including the reintroduction of beavers or um future suggested plans to reintroduce things like links or even wolves we've talked about wolves thanks i think rewilding i think rewilding is a very interesting concept and there's a lot to be said for it i'm i'm i'm more pro than than con it's early days for rewilding i think there's a still a lot we don't understand as is always the case um in Argyll in Scotland beavers were reintroduced in an absolute textbook reintroduction there was very very good uh local consultation and the the process of rewilding has been a great success and the beavers have provided new ecosystems that we we haven't seen since they were eradicated in the past and that's created an increase in biodiversity and habitat for all sorts of creatures and plants um when it comes to uh reintroducing apex predators um we we're going to need to be very very careful how we go about this because there've been other places where animals have been introduced without cons consultation by direct action and this has caused upset for the local people and um a hatred for the animal that has been reintroduced which is totally counterproductive and um i would love to see some uh more apex predators in Britain i think it would be amazing however i don't think we're ready to do that we currently are not demonstrating our ability to live in harmony with golden eagles and hen harriers and until we can find a way of doing so where we can keep all the the different parties happy when we can find that the medium that the middle ground where the common sense prevails i don't think we're ready to make other um more ambitious reintroductions just yet uh how do you um tips for lighting fires gathering wood poor Maxwell lives in northern island and he's enjoyed wild camping um he tends to avoid damp weather he says but what are your best tips for finding dry wood uh don't avoid the damp well hold on hold on light lighting he asked about lighting wet wood i mean this is such a thing can you light wet wood now you need to find dry wood and there's always dry wood um but you have to find it but i think avoiding the damp weather is is is the problem you need to embrace the damp weather in your training and go out in the worst conditions in the rain and in the dark without a torch and to practice the various methods that exist for fire lighting i've written extensively about until you can do that under those circumstances so let nature be your your your greatest teacher and um that's how i learned by literally going out in the worst conditions and not giving in and staying and suffering until i succeeded and and it's only in that way that you can really um um harden yourself to those conditions for the future uh tricky howl um has emailed uh to say his wife passed away suddenly two years ago and he's far more than ever that been in nature is my go-to place for balance reflection and personal survival what feelings and emotions do you get from being in nature uh i would say all of the same all i would agree entirely with that i think nature is for me it's it's my credo i guess it i find um wisdom and truth and there's no prejudice in nature nature just is and it's a very good good place to go and reflect on uh decisions and the world and everything i find i'm just digressing i find that uh nature is so cruel i thought everything eats everything else yeah i know if i go out you know every day i find a poor little thing that's been eaten dead i i don't see it i don't think nature is cruel at all um i think that um nature just is and creatures on a daily basis have to demonstrate their right to survive and um and i think that you know life is not without risk we try very hard to remove risk and um i mean i think you can see that in europe recently with um scientists being afraid of the AstraZeneca virus uh vaccine when actually the the risk of a problem was so minuscule compared to the problem that we're facing um perhaps they'd lost sight of the fact that no that you can't live without risk and it's accepting that and embracing it and acting within natural forces that's important um gem uh has said evening really a fantastic talk love the book question besides the elephant what's the strangest thing you've sent tracked strange thing i've sent tracks hmm that's a very good that's a very good question um i never actually found it there was something i followed for um half a day in a rainforest and i could smell it in the trees above me but i never got to see what it was and it had a strange odor that was slightly slightly sweet um but it but um but also very animal it wasn't bats and it wasn't flowers that attract bats it was definitely a creature that was moving in the canopy but i never saw it but it was i think it was following me um it maybe i had a curiosity i got a question here which um is all about scouts and uh british girl scouts um it's it's from nan nanarism well this is an email address so i haven't got her name a few years ago friends in the british boy scouts british girl scouts enjoyed a weekend with you on behalf of scouts everywhere i'd like to thank you for your contribution to the outdoor education comfort and inspiration to scouts around the globe would you consider a relaxing thank you weekend canoe exhibition expedition in the u.s with some local scouts and also what's next for your favorite what's next for our favorite adventure mental so there you are so thank you would you consider a thank you weekend canoe exit expedition in the u.s with some local scouts number one and then what's your next adventure i definitely consider it it's just obviously the problem is usually time so um i i i love working with scouts i think it's the most amazing organization and very underestimated and i also like the concept of scouting and i hope that people who read the book will go out and become nature scouts looking looking out and looking out looking out for the welfare of our wildlife um what's next for me um i'm writing some more at the moment i've got two other little projects i'm working on which you'll have to wait and see um and i'm very much enjoying uh writing um and then it'll be back to teaching this year so that's great and then i should have been on a lecture tour at the moment salina we had to cancel that because of covid i know a lot of people were very disappointed but the good news is we are going to take that out on the road from february next year so you can look out for that and that'll be at theaters all around the country my goodness your energy levels must be you know stratospheric if you do all of that let me say that i i actually really like i cherish those opportunities because when you work in television you talk to a lens when you're on tour you're talking directly to people and it's much it's much it's wonderful you've um a question here about your favorite book about nature you in your in your um thanks the back of the book you mentioned jane goodall of course but what is your favorite book i think my favorite my favorite book on nature actually is written by hunter and um and that's uh it's jane corbett writing about the man-eating leopard of rudra priag i think it's one of the greatest books written by a naturalist and i think a lot of naturalists force shy of him because he was a hunter but of course he helped to save the tiger and he played you know this there's jim corbett national park today because of him and his writing and if you're a naturalist and a tracker the detail that's in his books is i mean the veracity is just amazing and uh they're wonderful reads someone who's just 15 said wants to know what your opinion on man-eating moorlands is he says i presume it's a boy i'm 15 and your work inspires me massively yes it's called jack gaskell there you are yes jack who's 15 well these i'm no expert on managed moorland but i know that um one of the things that's really interesting about managed moorland is this conflict between grass shooting and hen harriers and i think we have to remember that the hen harriers are there because the moor is managed and provides an opportunity for them we've got so many questions to ask you i mean it just goes on and on um what are the current day naturalist you admire well and recommend we listen to uh who would who else would you recommend we listen to rod you how i really like the work of i i really i i really like the work of simon king i'd like to see him back on on television that would be really good they're extremely good naturalist um and with many many good wildlife presenters and um yeah i think everyone makes their contribution and i think that's good we need lots of different opinions and and diversity because no one person has the answers when it comes to nature and um so i i we need as many as possible i would say there's a good one for you what do you do when an elephant charges this is um mr lakenzi i i teach travel safety and this is a question i found it difficult to answer there you go very difficult question well i can tell you what calahari bushman do they tend to laugh at elephants and talk to them and um and they bang pots together to keep them from coming through their villages but the real danger of course is an elephant in must the thing about an elephant you need to be out of sight and downwind of it and that's the key thing is you need to act swiftly to get out of the way um you can't climb a tree because they can pull you out of the tree or they can push the tree over the most important thing is to maintain distance if you're actually in a in the situation where you are really being charged um you may have to stand your ground but there's a difference between a mock charge as i'm sure you know saline and a real charge and the real charge comes with ears back and head down but in the book i i've put in a lot of detail of signs body language signs particularly for the elephant that you can read and that there's one thing one sign of stress that is often forgotten to mention and that's when they put a crease across their ears that makes their ears look like one of those head dresses that the egyptians use the pharaohs would wear and it's a very subtle sign and of course most people confronted with an elephant are not looking at these details but it's these little signals that the elephant's giving to say i am massively stressed by your presence if you spot that soon enough then you can back off and give some space that's the key thing and if you want to know all about must you should read reyes book it's the best description i've ever read about an elephant in must uh the signs and the smell and the everything else uh is it is it an elephant no it isn't it's a cat isn't it a big cat you have to narrow your eyes because you don't want your eyes to shine when you're faced with something leopards leopards don't like eye contact leopard leopard may attack you if you make strong eye contact with it and yeah i love leopards they're the most amazing animals if you've ever been close to a to a leopard you never forget it that it's it's like being next to a power station a substation you can feel the energy of the animal pulsing from up without it it's it's really something and where was that you've seen various leopards you've seen snow leopards in china but which one do you remember most i'm doing better well the common that's the common leopard there's no leopard i haven't been close enough to do it to tell you i saw snow leopards last year which was amazing and they're close more closely related to tigers than to than to leopards i've never seen better camouflage on any creature if you literally if you take your eye off of it for a second you can't see it again it's just astonishing a lot of people feel don't they that if they're confronted with a wild animal it's always going to come for them it's always going to grab them it's always going to kill them and and your book says firmly right through that's not it at all that's never it unless there's something else going no and it's very unusual there are only a few animals that would come to get you you know most things attack because you've got in the way you've misread the indications of signs that they're giving out or you you come between their food or or they're young and you may well have done that unwittingly but most mostly animals really want to give you a distance and they give us warning as well in most cases not always but what is your favorite wild place i'm not going to tell you because if i do then it may cease to be wild but i have favorite wild places is it tell me which continent well i've bought favorite places on many continents unfortunately but i really like large forests so the boreal forest means a lot to me is the largest plant the forest on the planet and when i'm there i feel totally insignificant that i i feel like it's one organism rather than many and it's the intactness and the scale of that that landscape that makes it so special and it gives me the opportunity to reflect what we've lost in other places too Jason has wants to know i know a number of South African rangers and they suggest that the only way to preserve the rhino is to allow people to hunt it to give it a value and therefore an incentive for landowners to have them protect them is this a view you align to or would you prefer an alternative option i i don't i don't feel that we need to hunt rhinoceros to give them a value the rhino is a different problem to the elephant if you to collect ivory the elephant must be killed but rhinoceros the in many places the horns have been cut off to devalue them so that uh they have no value to the poacher and there is a um a suggestion that that horn could be sold as diamonds are in a regulated way into the black market so there's no black market the big problem is one of the problems that right rhinos have encountered is since there's been a total prohibition of trade in rhino horn the value on the black market for the horn has massively increased and directly related to that the the poaching has increased as well so it would seem that while we try to suggest to people in other places that perhaps it would be better to find alternatives to using rhino horn for dagger handles or for medicine um it may be that we can manage the demand that it does exist regardless of our wishes by controlling a trade in the horn and i think there's great sense in that but it's absolutely true that wildlife will only survive into the future if it has a financial value and we need to embrace that right now straight away and work to find a way because you know if you're if you're a farmer in africa and you're living very close to the bread line and an elephant comes into your fields your children go hungry um so you have to find a way for that farmer to benefit from the presence of of the elephants and interestingly i saw projects in china um where elephants are protected and compensation is paid to farmers who lose their crops so there are ways these things can be done and we need to we need to look to those solutions and embrace them it's not a bit of a cop-up for these african dictators or even leaders in african nations who are looking for money and they say right well if you give us the money you know we will protect the elephant and then there becomes this kind of black market economy anyway going on it's the it's the corruption isn't it so you know that is too big an issue for us to discuss i have very strong opinions on that but at the end of the day we have to be hopeful and some of the very very best conservationists i've encountered are of course local conservationists from small communities who are being funded paid and trained as rangers and i've also had the opportunity to to interview members of the kenyan wildlife service who themselves had been poachers and i always remember talking to one of these men and him telling me that his family was so proud of him that he was now wearing a kenyan wildlife service uniform and not a poacher and i think we should have faith in that that's a nice story tim winwood uh if you could be any animal in nature other than a human what would you want to be oh that's a very very good question um i think i think a leopard i think it's uh it's good at telling the world not to mess with it and they do do very well um it's either that or or something so small that i could disappear and hide from humanity i don't want to be a pangolin would you i wouldn't want to be a pangolin sadly no what's happening to pangolin is just appalling and again these these animals are being killed for their scales and for their flesh in huge numbers they're the most docile of creatures they're a wonderful thing to see in the wild and it breaks my heart that there are stupid humans who would see the demise of this creature actually mark has mark betty's emailed in to say it's you know talking about the pangolin because pangolin of course has been implicated in the covid pandemic the use of pushing these little creatures in with other creatures that markets what is the covid pandemic taught you about the human race what lessons have you specifically well that's really interesting that's really that's really it would be very quick i could very quickly find some negatives i could i could point my finger at very poor leadership or all sorts of things but i'm not going to i think what i've learned from covid is that within a year of going in lockdown we can develop a vaccine and roll it out to nearly half of the population of the united kingdom you know there's 68 million people in britain that's an achievement i mean that's amazing and it just shows you that when we decide that something is important and we put the funding behind it we can solve problems that we have incredible brains and when the political will is motivated we can achieve anything and that makes me think that there is the possibility in the future that we can fix the environment too and mark has won that's the follow-up question that mark has predicted with this if you were the prime minister for the day what would you change to allow us to reconnect and protect me i'm not sure i'd have to give long thought to that that's not an easy i don't think that's a question you can answer off the cuff prime ministers have to balance a lot of different issues what i would say though is i think i i i wish that our politicians saw in problems opportunities because to me that's what makes a good leader a good leader sees a problem and and sees in it an opportunity to make something better and and that's i think the key thing a good leader looks at the problem and sees the opportunity to improve things would you like to see more national parks for example in britain no i think i think we've got a national parks national parks aren't the whole solution we also have a remarkable areas of outstanding national beauty what i think we could do is work harder at connecting the green spaces in the country so we could increase our corridor corridors between reserves i mean some great work in in east anglia connecting different nature reserves there creating these wildlife corridors these these small things which we could achieve quite cheaply have a large effect for the benefit of wildlife and biodiversity the most important thing of all i think that i've learned about nature is biodiversity is everything and each of us in our own way in our gardens or whatever can help to increase biodiversity by increasing habitat opportunities for wildlife and in so doing not only in in enrich our experience of nature but also ensure our own survival into the future it's a it's salutary to think that we produced a man of the stature of john muir for example who was born in dunbar and like you used to go off into the hills he went into the lamomere hills and went off to america and established all the largest parks one of the largest areas of wilderness for the american people the gift that john muir gave the americans was you know unfathomable actually and yet in this country the lamomeres are covered in windmills and uh were they're not valued they're not valued as they should be valued and we seem to be like this we all seem to be on the back foot when it comes to nature and protecting species in this in on this island do you not feel that we over these years wiped out through through just not thinking about it wiped out a whole ecosystem which we could have protected i think there are a lot of things you could say like that but at the same time i feel that there is a change in the air now and um i think ecological ecological issues are no longer window dressing for politicians the it it affects not just votes but the ecological problems that we are experiencing have a financial impact on humanity as well it would help if your little book was given to every child in school as a manual you know because it's all there for them and i think it would inspire and help another generation who you know we need to hand the baton on don't we is that that's the most important thing at the moment we need to hand the baton on but i don't want us there sorry go ahead no i can't you're you're breaking up you're slightly you're doing your number again sorry you're breaking up i i don't i don't think we should be handing the bill to the next generation they seem to be being handed a lot of woes and negativity and the key thing is we need to accept that humanity has made a lot of mistakes but we do learn from mistakes and um i think there is the opportunity for us to learn for them from the mistakes of the past to shape a better world in the future to me the key thing is not to look at the woes but to look at the potential good that we can do and i think that the lockdown has really shown us that i think people have come out of their houses they're in in particularly in our urban areas and they've gone to green spaces and they as you said earlier they they've breathed in they've drunk in the fresh air in those places and been moved by it emotionally moved by it and this is the key thing we need to look to the advantages of improving our environment our ecosystem our involvement with nature uh and and and move towards uh you know there is a potential natural nirvana ahead of us if we reach for it but we need to have skills don't we we need to have the skills to do it i have a little farm and i i i'm in a higher level scheme and i drew my little best to to bring nature back to the weight it used to be say 20 or 30 years ago we've got otters here now but i find that when i reach out to ask anyone for help the skills aren't there which is why i feel that you know your book which lays out those skills so um simply in many ways you know is a vital handbook and uh yeah i suppose on that note ray i i i hope you will go around the schools and hand them out to school children because it is a it is an excellent manual to teach children how to touch smell here intuit and then go out and explore the natural world thank you very much a massive thank you to ray and selena for that discussion and thanks to all of you at home for watching this event was presented in partnership with penguin live and you'll find a link below the video to sign up to their newsletter this was also part of our nature season so if you enjoyed this event please do have a look on our website um to find more events like this and finally if you do want to buy a copy of ray's book please remember there's a link in the menu above thanks again for watching and uh good night from the british library