Quotes from Mark Carwardine

The scary thing is that in my lifetime, 95 per cent of the world's rhinos have been killed.

To have a huge, friendly whale willingly approach your boat and look you straight in the eye is without doubt one of the most extraordinary experiences on the planet.

China is responsible for a lot of the major conservation issues we're facing. It's the main market for rhino horn. Tigers are being killed for tiger bone wine. They're driving the tropical timber trade and illegal logging in Indonesia, and the trade in tropical reef fish.

The Galapagos Islands are probably the most famous wildlife-watching destination in the world. And no wonder - it's almost impossible to exaggerate the sheer spectacle of the place that provided inspiration for Charles Darwin's ground-breaking theory of natural selection.

Nothing speaks louder than an evocative photograph that stirs the imagination, tugs at the heart strings and engages the mind.

I can't write unless I'm overlooking water.

Wildlife conservation is always a race against time. As zoologists and botanists explore new areas, scrabbling to record the mere existence of species before they become extinct, it's like someone hurrying through a burning library desperately trying to jot down some of the tittles of books that will now never be read.

Don't get me wrong – it's not that I don't like people. Some of my best friends are people. It's just that chimpanzees share too many of our more unpleasant characteristics. They gang up on one another, indulge in office politics, beat up and bully weaker individuals, lie, gossip and bear grudges.

There is something about dolphins. It is difficult to put into words...

In every remote corner there are people like Carl Jones and Don Merton who have devoted their lives to saving them. Very often, their determination is all that stands between an endangered species and extinction.

describing any particular day in Manaus as staggeringly hot and humid is a little like describing one particular sloth as exceptionally upside down. It's rarely anything else.

It's one of those birds which very helpfully calls out its own name when it is flying. "Kea! Kea! Kea!" Birdwatchers love them for that. It would be great if the Pallas's grasshopper warbler would learn the same trick. Make warbler identification a lot easier.

according to figures published by the New York City Health Department, for every person around the world bitten by a shark, 25 people are actually bitten by New Yorkers. So