David Bellamy, botanist, naturalist and broadcaster, passed away yesterday.
Bellamy was a wonderful enthusiast and advocate for nature. Back in the late 1960s to the early 1980s (at least) he was one of the most notable broadcasters on environmental issues. A characteristic voice (much imitated), bags of knowledge and great enthusiasm marked him out.
I hardly knew him but he did write the Foreword for my first proper book, Birds and Forestry (with Roderick Leslie, Poyser, 1989). I’ve re-read that Foreword today, for the first time in many years, and it still reads well. Here is an extract;
Forests are, or at least should be, renewable resources providing raw materials for a number of industries and worthwhile employment in what are often remote , job poor areas. And when planted and managed with rare and foresight they should provide good habitate for an importanty cross sect5ion of our wildlife.
David Bellamy in Birds and Forestry, Poyser 1989
That still seems pretty sensible.
It’s noticeable that today, all the mentions of Bellamy have included the fact that he got climate change wrong – quite a long time ago. Well, he wasn’t the only one to do so, and I don’t think that was the only thing that he got a bit wrong; he was rather keener on gamekeepers and what they do than I am, for example.
But taken as a whole it would, surely, be impossible not to feel that the environmental legacy of David Bellamy is massively positive. He was a force for good overall, and that is how we should think of him today and into the future.
[registration_form]The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones
Julius Caesar, Act 3, Scene 2
I agree. Few people are without flaws and Bellamy was undoubtedly a great champion for nature who was not afraid to stand up for what he believed in.
On climate change, I believe he was influenced by a study on glaciers, that was later discredited.
At least he admitted his mistake, when this was proved flawed.
Support for moorland gamekeepers,came as the present intensification was just getting into its stride.
He was justified in his belief that management for grouse had, in many cases, prevented the further destruction of the uplands by
other land uses.
The price of his falling out of favour with the television hierarchy, was
paid for by a generation of children, unenthused by plantlife, and
things that hide under stones.
Trapit – thanks.
The detail might be wrong but I think we should thank the eminent field botanist, Dr Francis Rose, for originally spotting the young Bellamy’s enthusiasm for nature. Impressed, Rose encouraged him to aim for a university education and eventually offered David a place at Imperial College London to read botany. Then it was Rose who later suggested a PhD on peat bog mosses. Rose also noted Bellamy’s acting potential and was highly influential in getting the young scientist’s first TV appearance. Eventually, it was those mosses growing on deep mires and Bellamy’s performances among them that caught the public imagination….
I was in my town library many years ago (1992) and was dithering about what book I might like to read when I saw there was a copy of ‘Bellamy’s Ireland’. I was excited and picked it up to take a look. My heart sank when I saw it was about bogs – places with lots of dead mosses in water that becomes peat, these had never interested me although I knew well preserved human bodies were occasionally pulled from them. Very reluctantly I decided to give the book a go on the basis DB had written a couple of really good ones before so this might be OK.
It was an absolute revelation and very, very quickly indeed I saw why he was so incredibly enthusiastic about them and even though much went over my head, which was a poor reflection on me not him or his writing, I absorbed a lot about fen peats and bog bursts and the unusual distribution of the Rannoch rush, insectivorous plants and what looked like offerings of butter placed in the bogs by pre christian peoples…and so much more. An absolute classic and I wish every person in the country could somehow be forced to sit down, turn off the telly, mobile and ipad, and read it – nature is so amazing that when you can see it properly or someone else does and is a superlative communicator so you can do it secondhand, then ‘even’ moss is fascinating.
I worry that his very strong persona as a TV personality will obscure what an extremely clever man he was – his affability and enthusiasm becoming detrimental to his ‘authority’as a serious scientist. That would be a terrible crime, as would letting his later life shenanigans detract from a tremendous body of writing and programs that probably nobody has surpassed in terms of interweaving nature, our impact upon it and how to reduce it. Sadly these are almost always compartmentalized so we have a population that can be fascinated by a documentary on rainforests then goes out and buys mahogany toilet seats. His work should have been the template for nature related documentaries, but it was the exception and we’ve suffered from it.
Well said, Les, especially your last sentence.
And do I remember the complete absence of music accompanying his TV programmes? It certainly feels like that, given the clever ways he wove great science into all his narratives – there was no need for anything else to maintain our rapt attention. Francis Rose once said of the student Bellamy, he’ll either make a good scientist or a good actor. Of course, he became both and the resulting synergy of those two attributes really had the Heineken effect on the otherwise ignorant and disinterested.
The irony is that he lost the respect of many of us Yorkshire folk when he appeared for the peat extraction industry in the public enquiry into peat extraction on Thorne Moors and the rest of the Humberhead Levels. My recall of that is that he was made to look a complete prat over it, as he was very poorly prepared.
Then there is his support for the wildlife crime industry ( National Gamekeepers Organisation patron) and a climate change denier.
Yet he inspired many of us with his marvellous programmes about plants.
Could you please tell me if david s series (you can’t see wood)from 1984 was ever released on dvd thank you John vernon