Last Chance to See Quotes

“Nature admits no hierarchy of beauty or usefulness or importance.”
― Stephen Fry, Last Chance to See: In the Footsteps of Douglas Adams

“Don’t get me wrong – it’s not that I don’t like people. Some of my best friends are people. It’s just that chimpanzees share too many of our more unpleasant characteristics. They gang up on one another, indulge in office politics, beat up and bully weaker individuals, lie, gossip and bear grudges.”
― Mark Carwardine, Last Chance to See

“The fastest extinction in New Zealand – possibly in the entire world – was the Stephen’s Island wren, which lived on tiny Stephen’s Island, in Cook Strait. It was discovered in 1894, when a new lighthouse keeper arrived on the island for the first time. One of his cats caught a bird he didn’t recognise, so he sent the little body to a friend in Wellington, who happened to be a professional ornithologist. By the time the excited friend sent news back that it was a species new to science, the cat had caught another fifteen. And that was it – there were none left. Stephen’s Island wren officially became extinct later the same year. The cat had eaten the first and last of the species, and all the others in between. Its owner, the lighthouse keeper, was the only person ever to have seen one alive.”
― Mark Carwardine, Last Chance to See

“describing any particular day in Manaus as staggeringly hot and humid is a little like describing one particular sloth as exceptionally upside down. It’s rarely anything else.”
― Mark Carwardine, Last Chance to See

“according to figures published by the New York City Health Department, for every person around the world bitten by a shark, 25 people are actually bitten by New Yorkers. So”
― Mark Carwardine, Last Chance to See