My Family and Other Animals

I just finished Gerald Durrell's completely enjoyable memoir of his childhood years on the Greek Island of Corfu between 1935 -1939. My Family and Other Animals is Durrell's study of wildlife on the Island as well as a comical sketch of his family. He, his two brothers, sister and mother head off to Greece where the climate is sunny and the culture more suitable to their offbeat personalities. Corfu opens up a world for the author which in turns effects the living planet. Gerald Durrell grew into adulthood to became a naturalist, zookeeper and environmentalist and eventually brought forth a new standard in zoo's. As an adult he eventually founded his own zoo on the premise that they should act as reserves and regenerators of endangered species. This was a new idea and veered substantially from zoos at the time where caged animals were treated more like circus entertainment. The Jersey Zoological Park founded in 1958 evolved into the Jersey Wildlife Preservation becoming a leading zoo in the field of captive breeding, championing the cause of such species as the Lowland Gorilla and various Mauritian fauna. Durrell's policies on a zoo as a preserve built for educating the general public, preserving a species and housing the animal in the least restrictive environment were new ideas for which he paid dearly in criticism and for a period of time even blacklisted from his professional community. By the time of his death in 1995 wildlife preserves, programs to save endangered animals, conservation trusts, and vast programs to educate the general public had been established and his policies are now the standard worldwide. His ashes are buried at the Jersey Zoo with this inscription by William Beebe.

"The beauty and genius of a work of art may be re-conceived, though its first material expression be destroyed; a vanished harmony may yet again inspire the composer; but when the last individual of a race of living beings breathes no more, another heaven and another earth must pass before such a one can be again."