Durrell Wildlife, founded by pioneer conservationist and author Gerald Durrell in 1959, celebrates its 50th birthday this year. It has become an island icon, though its influence has spread way beyond Jersey. John Cleese explains why he’s a long-standing fan.

Let me tell you how I became involved with Gerry Durrell and his work in the first place. We came here to the island as the Monty Python group in about 1970 or ’71 to film for the television series, and while we were here Gerry asked us to come up and see what was then called the Jersey Wildlife Preservation Trust, or Jersey Zoo for short.

It was one of the most mind-boggling days of my life. Up to that point I didn’t really know anything about conservation and in those days you didn’t hear much about it. But somebody at the zoo showed me a pheasant – a white-eared pheasant, a plump, rather delicious-looking bird – and said it would have been extinct had it not been for Gerry Durrell. I thought that was truly amazing. If you’re asked by Saint Peter at the Pearly Gates why you should be let in and you’re able to put your hand on your heart and say, ‘I saved an endangered species’, he’s going to say ‘Well, come right on in!’ Ever since then I have done what I can, here and there, to help Durrell save species all over the world.

Most regrettably, I never saw Gerry Durrell again. The next time I came back to Jersey, he was away from the island, and I was taken on a tour of the park by the ebullient Simon Hicks, the then fund-raiser for the Trust. Simon couldn’t have planned it better if he’d tried – I actually witnessed the birth of a gorilla! It was Asato, the eighth and last child of N’Pongo and Jambo, names as familiar to people in Jersey of a certain generation as those of their own families.

The next time I visited Jersey, Gerry had already been escorted through the Pearly Gates with trumpets, fanfare and on a red carpet, of course, but by then I was well and truly hooked on Durrell. In 1996 I made part of a feature film there in the beautiful grounds, and donated the proceeds from its London premiere to a Trust project involving the release of zoo-born black-and-white ruffed lemurs into their native forests in Madagascar. In 1998 I did the opening shots of a documentary about that project with Lee Durrell – Gerry’s wife, who is still actively involved in Durrell – in the lemur enclosure, where we had no problem in getting close to the animals: they were all over us, looking for tidbits. 

But my field trip to the Madagascar rainforests to film the released lemurs was a different story – my whole entourage got sick, including myself, the lemurs were elusive, tantalising us with their loud calls from over a hill or behind a tree, but never showing themselves, and the leeches just got fatter and fatter. But on the last possible day of filming, as sometimes miraculously happens, it all came right. We filmed the lemurs who’d been born in a zoo, but had gone wild in the land of their ancestors. The pain and suffering of our expedition was worth it just to catch sight of these magnificent creatures, wild and free.

By the way, that documentary won the Conservation/Environment Award at the Wildscreen Festival, the most prestigious international competition for nature films, an accolade which pleases me no end.

In 1999, its 40th year, the Trust changed its name to the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust to honour its founder and enhance the international profile of its work. Since then Durrell has gone from strength to strength and I’m proud to think of myself as part of the team.

One of Durrell’s major triumphs is its International Training Centre, located next to the main site in Jersey. It started as a twinkle in Gerry’s eye more than 30 years ago when he realised that the obvious place to undertake conservation was in the species’ country of origin, but that the expertise in many of those countries was lacking. So he set about turning his place in Jersey into what he liked to call ‘a mini-university for conservation’, and today it is known as such throughout the world.

So what you see at its headquarters in Jersey is just the tip of the iceberg for Durrell. The overseas work now focuses on ‘TopSpots’, the 200 areas of the world, compiled by Durrell scientists, which have the highest numbers of unique species of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish. Many are islands and mountainous regions where threats to species survival are often more intense than elsewhere, so Durrell has developed a ‘Highlands and Islands’ strategy to prioritise where to apply its expertise.

By 2009 Durrell will have put 30 species well on the road to recovery in the wild. It will have trained more than 1,700 conservationists, both in Jersey and in ‘TopSpots’ from 120 countries and will be working on 40 different conservation projects in 17 countries, which is good news for many more species.

Back at HQ in Jersey, Durrell also follows the good conservation principle of ‘looking after your own back yard’. The natural wildlife of the island flourishes on the site, and visitors can learn about red squirrels and dragonflies, as well as gorillas and spectacled bears. Durrell works with Jersey’s Environment Department to reverse the decline of native species such as farmland birds, rare orchids and a tiny frog known as the agile frog, so named because it can extend its leg until its ankle reaches past the tip of its nose, a candidate for the ministry of silly walks if ever I heard one.

In a nutshell here’s why I’m such a Durrell fan. From the start I sensed that all their activities were informed by an extraordinary intelligence. Then I fully realised why that was. Everything that Durrell does is done from the point of view of the animals. It’s their automatic way of thinking. That is why they constantly avoid the mistakes that come from ego – both corporate and individual.

When undertaking a project abroad, for example, they think of it from the point of view of the animal and the people who live locally, thus avoiding any hint of ‘colonialist attitude’. And from the start, they realised that most of the conservation activities needed to be carried out in the animals’ home country, not in Jersey.

There are so many examples of this acute and flexible intelligence that I could go on at length, but I won’t. So let me just say, ‘Durrell is really smart’.

Visit the Official Durrell website