<
https://www.positive.news/society/chris-packham-on-why-hes-angry-yet-hopeful/>
"Cycling up to Chris Packham’s New Forest house, I’m brought up short by a pair
of seriously heavy-duty security gates. The reason for their presence is right
there beside them: a charred post, which is all that remains of the old wooden
gates that stood here before. Gates that were burned to a crisp when masked men
blew up a car in an arson attack one night two years ago.
It followed months of death threats and intimidation, the likes of which
prompted the BBC to allocate him a bodyguard while filming
Winterwatch. Such
hostility is widely seen as a response to the naturalist’s relentless and
outspoken campaign against the illegal persecution of birds of prey, and the
wider destruction of the nation’s wildlife.
So now we’re sat over a cup of tea at his kitchen table, looking out at the
sparkle of early winter sunshine over his garden, and I ask Packham how he
coped with such a frightening direct assault. He gets up. “I’ll show you,” he
says, and heads into the lounge.
He’s pointing to what looks at first like a rather 80s-style black coffee
table. Peering closer, I realise it’s a sealed block of charred wood. “After
the attack,” he explains, “I looked at the gates and thought: ‘Wow, that burned
wood is actually very beautiful.’” So he carefully cut them up into three
table-sized chunks, had them encased in resin, gave one to a friend, is
auctioning another off for charities “who oppose the views of the people who
burned the gates down”, and is keeping this one as a memento. Why? “Because I
knew I had to turn it into something positive.”
That doesn’t lessen the shock of the attack: he was at home at the time, heard
the explosion, saw the flames. And on police advice, he had to spend thousands
of pounds installing new security. But as he said in the aftermath: “You burned
down the wrong gates … I cannot let your intimidation sway me from my course.”
It’s that combination of righteous outrage, refusal to be intimidated and, on
screen at least, a relentless search for positive potential in our wildlife,
which characterises Packham’s approach to his work – and which, along with a
breezy, joshing TV style, perhaps lies behind his success. He’s been on
Britain’s screens more or less non-stop since the late 80s, when, wearing the
clothes and attitude of a bleached blond punk rocker, he injected a newly
irreverent energy into nature programmes for kids through series like
The
Really Wild Show and
Go Wild!"
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
