| Re: How to Promote Conservation?
Nil nisi bonum and all that but I was one of those not too enamoured of the man. I have to admit that I didn't watch much of his stuff because I found him so irritating. But his heart was in the right place even if his brain didn't seem to be.
You have a good point about enthusing youngsters but, as your paragraph notes, they can become enthusiastic about smaller things *and* they can sit still for ages watching something interesting.
My real objectionS: his programmes seemed to have more of him than of the animals (I'm all for the Attenborough mode of just appearing when essential although even he seems to have been forced into a more prominent role by the TV execs); he concentrated on large vertebrates rather than the more numerous and important invertebrates; he treated animals badly - much better to sneak up and watch a snake than swing it around in the air .....
[quote=Imaginos]Irwin's enthusiastic style has also come in for criticism in some places (for example Germaine Greer in today's Guardian). Which brings me round to the thread title. Consider this: which is more likely to get a youngster out from in front of the Playstation and interested in the world around them; Steve Irwin jumping into a tree to catch a Green Mamba, or Cwis Packham po-facedly telling you that if you stay really still for a few hours you might get a photo?
As a kid me & a mate went out into the countryside regularly to catch Common Lizards (sadly a real rarity in the same haunts now-only 15-20 years later) by hand, handled spiders, slugs and no-end of other creepy-crawlies. (We didn't have anyone like Steve to look up to, but I'm sure we'd have been shouting Crikey!, or Strewth, what a Beaut, if he had been around then). Imagine, then, my appalled surprise when the directive came down from above that for our National Insect Week bug hunt we were instructed to tell the kids not to touch anything of course we ignored this directive and were repeatedly treated to the sight of, initially reluctant, young boys & girls picking things up in order to get a closer look & fully appreciate the beauty of their fellow inhabitants of the planet.
QUOTE]  |