St Mary's Calne
This week, we had the pleasure of welcoming Beatrice Forshall, the author and illustrator of The Book of Vanishing Species to talk to us about endangered species and conservation of wildlife.
A small group of us were lucky enough to have supper with Beatrice where we discussed the journey of her career in illustration and what other areas she had explored, such as photojournalism, which she decided, at university, that was not for her. She she then explained how the illustrating course was better at helping her develop her skills for future employment.
Although Beatrice's work is completely devoted to the conservation of wildlife and endangered animals, when asked if she had plans to go abroad to see such the animals for herself, she explained that preferred not to disturb, and would rather help them from afar. Her work from her artist-in-residence position at the Cambridge Conservation Initiative (CCI) at the University of Cambridge led to some of her pieces being part of the permanent art collection exhibited at the home of CCI, the David Attenborough Building.
Beatrice described herself as having always had a keen interest in animals, dating back to her sculpting animals for selling in the French markets to send the profits to an underappreciated French wild animal association. Such was her dedication, that they wrote to her asking her to join their board! They were unaware, however, that they were contacting an 11-year-old!
After showing us her beautiful print of a striking Asiatic cheetah, Beatrice revealed that there were only 12 left on earth. It was an extremely sobering thought that a strong creature like that (the fastest land mammal) could be left so vulnerable.
Beatrice talked about her three years of writing her book, in which she lived alone and had no contact with any other people and was passionate about how individual actions do indeed help the world as a whole. She does not take aeroplanes anywhere and takes fewer trips which, she explained, made each trip much slower and more meaningful. Her advice was that one person’s habits can encourage others and she very much believed in the ripple effect of ecofriendly actions. Beatrice told us that she wanted to be able to look back on her life and feel that she had tried to make a difference, no matter how small it was, which was very inspiring.
Beatrice Forshall’s hope for the future of planet Earth, and the her positive conviction that nature can recover if humans allow it, was motivating for us and helped us to understand how desperately action is needed.
Honor I, LVI