High school students inspire world-renown conservationist Professor David Bellamy
THE passion and knowledge of the Queensland’s Sunshine Coast’s next generation of biodiversity ambassadors has left a lasting impression on one of the world’s greatest environmental campaigners, Professor David Bellamy, OBE.
The Uk-based environmentalist tours the world educating audiences that biodiversity is the key to our planet’s survival.
While in Noosa for a series of talks, Prof Bellamy was also special guest at the Sunshine Coast High Schools’ Biodiversity Conference that saw senior high school students from six regional schools workshop the biodiversity issue and present their findings at the nearby Global Eco Asia Pacific Tourism Conference.
These young ambassadors for biodiversity were certainly impressed by Prof Bellamy’s presence - but not nearly as impressed as he was of their youthful dedication, passion and knowledge.
“The first picket line I ever stood in was to stop a development cutting down trees,” Prof Bellamy told his young audience.
“You know, just 300 years ago our only power source was from the sun, then we discovered fossil fuels, then came the motor cars and the chainsaws.
“Your region of Noosa is a most amazing piece of real estate, you have a recognised biosphere here where you can see sugar gliders in your backyard. We can’t do this in England because we’ve lost so much of our natural habitat,” he said.
Eco-tourism
Prof Bellamy also explained the importance of conservation in relation to eco-tourism and the value of ecotourism dollars to a local economy.
“The Noosa region gets 1.7 million visitors a year, and our Lake District in England gets 23 million a year.
“The Lake District is another recognised Biosphere - buildings aren’t even allowed.
“To get the right balance in an environment, you have to have the right things in the right place - and Noosa is the right place,” he said.
“A biosphere reserve is a region where people live in harmony with natural history - this is the answer to all the world’s environmental problems,” Prof Bellamy said.
“In this Noosa Biosphere there are whales, gliders, koalas, so much more - it is very special, a wonderful coastal world that hasn’t really been heard about.
“A biosphere must be studied that diversity doesn’t disappear, that your grandkids can enjoy it.
“A biosphere reserve will bring in more and more tourists, so community leaders and businessmen should ‘brand’ it as something really special,” he said.
The Noosa region is one of 531 global biosphere reserve sites recognised in 102 countries.
Prof Bellamy told the dozens of biodiversity student ambassadors at the high school workshop that ‘you’ve got the whole world in your hands’.
“And after listening to your talks today, I can honestly say that my job is done and now I can retire because the world is in good hands,” he said.
Profile
so so
Britain’s world-renown botanist, environmental campaigner and broadcaster, Professor David Bellamy, OBE, has had a love affair with Australia ever since he was a little tacker growing up in London’s East End.
Born in 1933, the now 78-year-old remembers his neighbour, ‘Uncle Bainbridge’ returning from a trip to Australia with a gift for the youngster - a toy sailing boat from Kangaroo Island.
“Since that time, and I was only about six or seven, I have always been fascinated with Australia.
“And (years later) Kangaroo Island was the first place I went to when I visited Australia.
“I’ve now been to this country more than 30 times,” Prof Bellamy said.
His most notable visits to Australia involved the long and hard-fought battle to save Tasmania’s Franklin River from being dammed.
He was arrested (along with Australia’s first Green MP, Dr Bob Brown) in the 1980s protesting the dam proposal in front of a television audience of millions and spent his 50th birthday in Hobart’s Risdon Prison.
“In fact, the first Member of Parliament I ever kissed was an Aussie - that was (former Victorian Premier) Joan Kirner.
“She was the Minister for Conservation, Forests and Lands (1985-88) and I was in Australia because at that time Victoria was leading the world in conservation initiatives and I was protesting against the Franklin Dam. Joan Kirner reminded me of
‘Carbon dioxide is an airborne fertiliser. How can farmers grow increasing amounts of food without a rise in carbon dioxide? . . . The once-starving people of parts of the Sahel and Sahara deserts have returned to farm their lands, thanks to the shade of trees that now grow on some 300,000 square
klms of their tribal lands, thanks in great part to rising levels of carbon dioxide,’ - David Bellamy.
(former British Prime Minister) Margaret Thatcher back then because she talked to me and asked the right questions about conservation and saving our planet,” Prof Bellamy said.
Prof Bellamy was in Noosa to address a four-day Global Eco Asia Pacific Tourism Conference and host environmental workshops at a number of regional schools when Acres interviewed him. And he thoroughly enjoyed his chance to chat with the general public about biodiversity and the Noosa Biosphere - Queensland’s first Biosphere Reserve recognised by UNESCO in 2007.
His rare visit to the Sunshine Coast was sponsored by the University of Queensland and Acres Australia.
Biodiversity is Prof Bellamy’s passionate catchcry. Forget global warming and the climate change debate, he says. Biodiversity is the key to our planet’s survival.
And Prof Bellamy is a man who speaks from experience. His 60-plus year career includes 22 years as a university lecturer and professor in England and 20-plus years as a BBC documentary-maker and broadcaster with more than 400 wildlife films to his credit.
There is probably not a corner of the world that he hasn’t travelled to, researched, studied, raised money for or campaigned with.
His conversations and reminiscences are full of vivid accounts of research expeditions concerning all creatures great and small - and fundraising projects to help the populations of third-world countries.
Snapshot
As a small snapshot of his work, Prof Bellamy has searched for rare snub-nosed monkeys in the Himalayas, trekked the North Pole, dived in the deepest trenches and most remote atolls of the world’s oceans, walked Africa’s ‘old slavery road’ in the Niger Desert to raise money for the Fort of No Return, been on the ground in Bangladesh to raise money for orphans, and helped school children plant 200,000 trees in Britain.
Prof Bellamy was a trustee of the World Land Trust from 1992 to 2002 and during that time the trust helped purchase and protect 100,000 hectares of tropical forest in Belize, Central America; several thousand acres of forest in Costa Rica and the pristine island of Danjugan, with its tropical forests and important fringing coral reef in the Philippines; and protect a threatened wilderness area near the Valdes Peninsula in Patagonia.
Butterfly sanctuary
He is currently working towards opening a huge butterfly sanctuary ‘Butterfly World’ featuring 10,000 butterflies (next to London’s Heathrow Airport) just when some pundits predict the world is going to end - December 22, 2012.
“The most clever animal I have ever lived with was the tortoises in the Indian ocean. Each giant turtle (and there were 472 living on the isolated atoll) is a solar-powered, lawn mower and so integral to the survival of their species and their habitat,” he said.
Prof Bellamy has immersed himself in his life’s passion of understanding this planet, its biodiversity and the inter-relation between all plants and animals. Preventing the loss of habitat around the world is his life’s mission and he tirelessly campaigns for man to live in harmony with nature.
He believes that global warming is part of a natural cycle and there’s nothing we can actually do to stop these cycles.
“The world is now facing spending a vast amount of money in tax to try to solve a problem that doesn’t actually exist. And my opinion is that there is absolutely no proof that CO2 has anything to do with any impending catastrophe,’’ he said.
‘I truly have never worked a day in my life - when what you do is your passion, you never think of it as work’
- David Bellamy
“Mother Nature will balance things out, but not if we interfere by destroying rainforests and overfishing the seas. That is where the real environmental catastrophe could occur. I’m sceptical about man-made climate change.
“There’s absolutely no proof that carbon dioxide will kill us all. It’s not a poison. It’s the most important gas in the world. Carbon dioxide is an airborne fertiliser. How can farmers grow increasing amounts of food without a rise in carbon dioxide?
“This world of ours is in a fairly appalling mess. We have known this for quite a long time, but decades of knowledge hasn’t really slowed down the destruction of sustainable lifestyles, tropical forests, coral reefs and other seriously threatened habitats.
“The once-starving people of parts of the Sahel and Sahara deserts have returned to farm their lands, thanks to the shade of trees that now grow on some 300,000 square kilometres of their tribal lands, thanks in great part to rising levels of carbon dioxide,’’ Prof Bellamy said.
“We are never going to save the world by begging bowls,’’ he said.
The secret is the maintenance of biodiversity across the planet. Saving vast areas of rainforests and wilderness areas from being ‘flattened’ and turned into agricultural land to feed the growing world population.
Great rainforests in countries such as Ecuador, the Amazon Basin and Indonesia are under threat.
On a less grand scale, Prof Bellamy also enthuses local populations that they can make a difference in their regional areas.
‘We are all capable of making
a difference . . .’
For example, he is renown for his conservation work with more than 620 holiday parks across Britain.
Under his lead, these parks hosted the David Bellamy Conservation Award for their work in protecting and enhancing Britain’s natural environment.
Prof Bellamy said the variety of work done by these parks was “phenomenal’’ - from the creation of new wildlife meadows and woodlands to the construction of solar-powered shower blocks and energy-efficient lodges made out of recycled plastic, parks are active across the country.
“These days I travel the world and meet people who are fed up and sick and tired that our values are disappearing,’’ he said.
“But we are all capable of making a difference. Mankind must live in harmony with the environment and protect our wildlife habitats, so that we will survive as a species.’’
Reducing the use of energy, water and other resources; reducing, reusing and recycling waste products go hand in hand with conserving the environment.
And this old environmental warhorse will never retire from this important conservation work.
He is on too many environmental and humanitarian boards to stay under the radar for any length of time - and since his work is his life’s passion - retirement isn’t an option.
“I truly have never worked a day in my life,” Prof Bellamy said.
“When what you do is your passion, you never think of it as work.”
- Wendy O’hanlon.