Will Travers interview

Will Barber-Taylor: Hello, and welcome to the Centre Think Tank interview series, In Conversation. As always, I am your host, Will Barber-Taylor. And in this episode of the interview series, I am delighted to be joined by Will Travers OBE, President of the Born Free Foundation. 

Will Travers: Very nice to be on the show, Will. It is not going to get confusing at all with two people called Will on the show.

Will Barber-Taylor: Hopefully not. Well, it is great to have you on. And the first question that I would like to ask you is for listeners who have not heard of Born Free, could you explain what it is and what it is you do?

Will Travers: Sure. So quite fortuitously, my parents, Virginia McKenna and Bill Travers, were chosen to star in the film Born Free way back in the 1960s. In 1964, they went to Kenya to play the roles of George and Joy Adamson in the film Born Free, based on the book by Joy. And the story very simply is two wildlife conservationists in a remote part of Kenya, who release and return an orphaned lioness, Elsa, to the wild successfully against all the odds and all the advice as well.

Anyway, the book was a huge success, and the film was a huge success as well, and it took nearly a year to make. So my mother and father had to get to know and work with lions, not tame lions, not lions from the circus, although a film company tried to start with lions from the circus, but they proved to be animals that just wanted one thing, which was to have their revenge on human beings for their life beforehand. And so they worked with a group of other lions and with George Adamson, who was the technical advisor on the film.

And when filming ended, most of the lions sadly went to zoos and Safari parks. But three, Boy, Girl and Ugas, were successfully returned to the wild by George, emulating the story of Elsa herself. And my mom and dad got fascinated by all of this. My dad made a documentary about it. Started to make more and more documentaries and feature films involving wildlife. One of which was an elephant called Slowly. It is a fictitious story about two people house-sitting at a property in Kenya where there are some unusual residents, which turn out to be three elephants. One of those elephants had been caught as a gift for the London Zoo at the time, we are talking in the late 1960s, and they diverted her so that she could be in the film. And when filming was finished, they asked if they could have her and release her to the wild with the famous Daphne and David Sheldrick. The authorities at the time said that they could, but that they would have to go and get another baby elephant from the wild to honour their gift to London Zoo. So rather than mess with the system, Pole Pole, that is the name of the elephant which means slowly in Swahili, went to London Zoo and ten years later my folks who had not seen her since then heard that she was in trouble, that she had become difficult to manage and that they, the authorities were considering her future and not in a good way.

So they went up to see her. There is a famous photograph of my dad and mum stretching their hands out across the moat at the London Zoo Elephant House, and Pole Pole comes down from the back of the enclosure and stretches her trunk out to touch their outstretched fingers. It is an incredible photograph. And so we launched a campaign at the time to return her to Africa, and although we found somewhere that would be willing to take her, the zoo was not inclined. They said they would move her to Whipsnade. The move failed. She was euthanised in the elephant house after damaging a foot.

And that was the start of our real concern at the time for the right of animals in zoos and who was looking into it and was there any kind of independent analysis and so we set up a tiny organisation with six pounds, called ZooCheck and then a few years later ZooCheck morphed into the Born Free Foundation, the charity that we have today and Born Free sits on four pillars. It sits on a conservation pillar, an education pillar, an animal rescue and care pillar, and a policy pillar. So we span a wide range of activities, some of which I suspect we are going to touch on today.

Will Barber-Taylor: Absolutely. And I mean, it is such a fascinating story, and the research that you do is so profoundly interesting. And the reports that you publish, one of which we are to be discussing in a moment, are very well researched and bring the issue alive for a lot of people. One of the reports that was recently released was on polar bears in captivity, specifically polar bears in zoos in the US, Europe and Asia. Could you explain what prompted the commissioning and writing of this particular report?

Will Travers: Yes, it was two things. Firstly, we have been doing quite a lot of research into public attitudes, and it seems that the public is increasingly disinclined to support the keeping of large, wide-ranging, mainly mammal species in captivity. We are talking about 80, 85, 89 % of those polled independently by an independent organisation are saying that we should not be doing this. And polar bears fit into that.

Also, polar bears were the first species that we studied and produced a report on. Paul Horsman produced a report over 35 years ago, looking at polar bears in British zoos. And the publicity that surrounded that at the time focused on the fact that there was a huge amount of what we call stereotypic behaviour, abnormal behaviours that are the result of animals trying to cope with unnatural environments. And the zoo is a very, very unnatural environment compared to what polar bears might expect to experience in the wild.

So we thought it is about time to go back and revisit in essence what we were looking into 37 years ago and what has changed now and and sadly little has changed and that is the the damning indictment of what we have been doing by keeping hundreds of polar bears in captivity, 151 in Europe alone, that is the indictment of what we have been doing to polar bears in captivity.

Will Barber-Taylor: Your report calls for a legislative ban on holding polar bears in captivity and urges zoos to phase out polar bears being kept in captivity for good. How long do you think it will take for these aims to become a reality, and how far are you from reaching a united consensus on this issue?

Will Travers: Well, interestingly, in the UK, I would have said we were nearer to that point many years ago, because when we did the first original report 37 years ago, I think I am right, there were either 18 or 20 polar bears in British and Irish zoos. And then that number collapsed. Either the bears died or they were sent away to other facilities. And we got down to, off the top of my head, around two or three. And I thought, well, this is the end of keeping this species in captivity in the UK. But since then, we have had more bears come in, and we now have 12. And so we have gone backwards on this issue. You are right that it is a two-pronged approach. It is persuading zoos that this is not the right thing to do for the species. And it is also looking at the role that the government can play, if not bringing about a ban, which governments are sometimes reluctant to introduce full-on prohibitions – not always, as we may come to, but sometimes they do. So, for example, with dolphins in captivity, there are no dolphins in the wild in the United Kingdom. But in the 70s, there were lots, and then it began to dwindle, and then the government was persuaded to carry out a review, which put in place the minimums that would be required in terms of both the sort of surface size and also the depth of pools if you wanted to keep dolphins, and no dolphin area was willing to invest. So, in fact, in terms of the dolphin story, Born Free was one of the key organisations that took three of the last dolphins from captivity in the United Kingdom and released them into the wild in the Turks and Caicos Islands in the waters around the TNC in the early 1990s.

The same approach could be applied. I am not saying it would be, but it could be applied to polar bears if the government turned around and said, “If you are going to keep polar bears in captivity, you have to have, let us make it up, a 10-hectare enclosure. It has to contain a range of different topographies that replicate aspects of the wild environment that polar bears find themselves in over the seasons, and you cannot have a stocking density of more than, make it up, three animals per enclosure. That would not, in essence, be a ban, but it would set criteria based on the priorities for the animals, and those criteria are unlikely to be met by zoos. So that two-pronged approach is very important. As to how long it will take, well, bears live on average 17 years for males in zoos and 21 years for females. I do not have these statistics in front of me as to the ages of all the bears, but you can see that this is going to take some time to bring about the long-term radical change that we see.

Will Barber-Taylor: Absolutely. And one of those concerns you mentioned in terms of space could be one way to create some sort of restrictions on polar bears being kept in zoos. But one of the great concerns in terms of welfare is the difference in climate between the polar bear’s natural habitat and where they are held, particularly during the summer months. I think one of the countries that you highlighted that seems to be the worst for the polar bears is Italy. How important do you think it is to highlight how unnatural the environment that these polar bears are kept in is? And do you think it can be shown as an example of how encompassing the climate crisis is that polar bears are being removed from their natural habitat and placed into zoos, which are warming up due to the same climate emergency that is destroying much of their natural habitat?

Will Travers: It is a very good point that you make, and there is no easy answer here because the climate crisis that the entire planet faces and that is having an impact on pretty much every single species, every single habitat and ecosystem at an increasing pace, is not something that can be resolved overnight. I mean, we heard only what it was a few days ago from the Secretary General of the United Nations, basically telling us that we have 12 years to get a grip. And if we do not, any efforts to try to reverse the climate crisis trend will be almost impossible.

I think he still wants people to believe that there is hope. But he said, 12 years, so to the middle of the next decade, 2035 is going to be a critical timeframe. You are right, polar bears are in captivity, and I think this is a point that the public resonates very strongly with. I mean, the clue is in the name. It is a polar bear, and it lives in the Arctic. Even with climate change, average temperatures in the Arctic are around 10 degrees in summer, and then, of course, massively lower in the cooler months.

And to imagine that polar bears can satisfactorily live their lives in Italy. There was one case of polar bears in Alexandria, Egypt, living in an outside enclosure, so not in a temperature-controlled environment. These I can only imagine, and I think we can all only imagine how inappropriate that is and how much those bears are out of their comfort zone.

And then on top of that, the polar bears being large and potentially dangerous animals, need what is called in many architectural circles, brutalist architecture – huge, massive architectural constructions, concrete, gunite, steel and the rest of it. And those constructions themselves are intensive in terms of their use of materials that contribute to greenhouse gas emissions. So we have got this strange juxtaposition that here we have a species that is on a knife-edge when it comes to climate change being put in enclosures, which in themselves contribute to climate change.

Will Barber-Taylor: And in terms of climate change and the mortality rates for polar bears, something that you also mentioned in the report, you highlight that the mortality rate for polar bears in zoos is akin to the mortality rate for polar bear cubs from suffering the worst effects of climate change. Given this and the obvious issues with the wild polar bear population, how best can the global polar bear population be sustained?

Will Travers: The fact that the mortality rate in captivity is pretty much equivalent to the mortality rate in an increasingly fragile wild sort of indicates how grim the situation is for polar bears in all circumstances. And in captivity, where there are no threats from lack of food, none of the survival challenges that polar bears face in the wild should be present in zoos because it is a completely controlled human-centred environment with veterinary care on hand, food on hand, water on hand and all those kinds of things. You would have thought that the survival rate would be significantly higher, but it is not. So that again, another indictment of the situation facing polar bears in zoos.

As to the wider issue of climate change, we almost have to step away from the specifics of polar bears, and we have to address ourselves to the wider threat to our planet, including ourselves, when it comes to continued human activities, which are threatening and contributing to the climate change crisis. We have the bizarre situation where, just a few days ago, the UN was talking about 12-year timelines. And we have the bizarre situation where the UK Government, literally in the last 48 hours, is rather proudly talking about their ability to exploit fossil fuels, to continue to exploit fossil fuels.

While we still have that dialogue going on, while we still talk about a short-termist agenda, which is to exploit fossil fuels, and one day they will be overtaken by renewables. But we are not investing in renewables at the level necessary to accelerate the pace of change; we are looking at a very dire projection for the future and a prediction which will affect us all. We are talking today about polar bears, but the consequences will reach everyone. It will affect those island nation states, it will affect seaboard cities, it will affect increased desertification in some respects, we will have more temperature extremes – we experienced some of it in the UK last summer with that prolonged period of very high southern Mediterranean temperatures, which went on for weeks and weeks, if not months – for which we are entirely unsuited and have very little ability to adapt. So we have to get to grips with the fundamentals.

The only way I can see that we can do that on behalf of ourselves and on behalf of the planet is to seriously change the way that we do things, invest significantly in renewables and alternatives to the technologies that pump greenhouse gases into our atmosphere. And we also need to invest in nature. Nature in itself is one of our best allies because of the work that it does unseen and unrewarded in terms of sequestering carbon, storing carbon, and trying to deal with the outputs that human beings are creating. So investing in nature is vitally important. If you ask me the question, What does investment in nature look like? People who understand this far better than I have estimated that we need to spend around 800 billion US dollars a year on our investment in the nature climate mitigation strategy. Now, 800 billion dollars a year sounds like a huge amount of money, but in truth, it is half the US defence budget, half the annual US defence budget.

If you look at High Speed 2, I am not going to try to remember the exact details because the plans for High Speed 2 change daily depending on your point of view. But High Speed 2 is going to cost around £100 billion, about $125 billion, roughly 15% of the global annual investment needed to invest globally in nature to shave 20 minutes off the journey time to Birmingham from London. And I guess what it boils down to is this. We have to prioritise. We have to decide what is really important and what is simply desirable. And what is really important is that we and our natural world survive. And to address that issue, we need to put in the resources.

Will Barber-Taylor: Absolutely. I would just like to turn away from the report for a moment to ask about the fur trade, which is something that a lot of people are concerned about. It is something that is often discussed. How best do you think organisations like yourselves and others can pressure the government into ending the fur trade in the UK and more widely throughout the rest of the world?

Will Travers: The good news, and there is good news, is that we banned fur farming in this country, Britain, in 2003. So we have had 20 years without fur farms. But what we did was we effectively outsourced it to other countries. So we import 75 million pounds worth of fur into this country every year.

So we have not ended it. We have just shifted the problem elsewhere. I think the British people are consistently opposed to fur and all the negative impacts that fur has, the negative impact on the individual animals concerned, the pollutants that are involved in the intensive raising of animals for fur, and the possibility that fur farms become hotspots for pathogens and pandemics. There are all sorts of really good reasons why we should move away rapidly from fur. And the power for this not only lies in legislation, but it lies in the hands of the consumer.

And if we do not want it to continue, then we have to exercise our consumer choice. And I would recommend that people who want to do that should go to what is called the Free Retailer website. It is www.furfreeretailer.com, and there is a huge list of companies like Dolce & Gabbana, Prada, Boss, and more that have all moved away from fur. So it is your chance to identify the brands you love and do it with a clear conscience as far as fur is concerned.

Will Barber-Taylor: Another issue that has been discussed quite a lot recently has been rewilding, both rewilding in terms of plants and other forms of trees, but also animals, beavers in some instances, bison and wolves. And in terms of animals, that has, of course, caused a great deal of friction between some advocates of rewilding and some landowners, in particular farmers with concerns about their livestock. Do you think that rewilding can coexist with farming within the UK? And how best do you think we can cross the point that rewilding is a positive thing and should not be seen as a threat, as some people view it?

Will Travers: Well, what, over the last three years, throughout the pandemic, one of the consistent features has been a growing appreciation of nature by us all. It has been one of the things that has helped us remain relatively sane. It has been that space that we can go into and recharge our batteries and recalibrate our values when we are confronted with an ongoing pandemic crisis. A crisis that has, as far as I am aware, come about because we abused nature and our unrealistic proximity to wild spaces and wild creatures. In this case, perhaps from captive situations in China. And I am not pointing the finger at China. I could have said pretty much any country in some respects.

In terms of that coexistence that you talk about. I think that it can be done. I think it is being done. Some amazing places in the United Kingdom have embraced rewilding and sustainable agriculture. Knepp Estate in Sussex is just one example. The Aigas Field Studies Centre in Scotland is another, so we can show that it can be done. We can show that we can still address our targets in terms of domestic food production and be more self-sustaining in terms of the food products that we eat. But we can also enhance our relationship with wildlife. And we are, as my friend Chris Packham says at every opportunity, so I will copy him, that the UK is among the most nature-depleted countries in the world. And that is not something to be proud of. We should be ashamed that we have allowed various practices, not just farming practices, but other practices to run roughshod over our natural world. I am hugely lucky, I live in the Surrey Hills. I live in a designated area of outstanding natural beauty. People come from London and from elsewhere to the Surrey Hills to breathe in and reconnect.

And yet, my community fought for eight years to prevent oil exploration in the Surrey Hills, about a mile from where I live. They were going to put up a huge exploratory rig. They were going to drive 800 to a thousand heavy goods vehicles up a sunken Roman road to service the rig. And if they had found oil on that exploratory rig, I can only imagine how much more devastation would have been caused when they went full-on production. That was the licence for exploration that was eventually pulled by the government, but not until we had done three public inquiries and spent precious resources from a tiny community trying to protect not just our patch, but London children’s lungs out here in the Surrey Hills.

It goes back to this point I made earlier, we have to make and choose our priorities. If our priorities are to have a healthy, vibrant, green ecosystem around some of our big urban areas, then we must prioritise that and not allow that kind of quiet, gentle nibbling away at the edges of it, diminishing it, making one exceptional case after another. Because at the end of the day, once you add up all the exceptional cases, “oh, but it is only this one and oh, but it is only this other one,” we do not end up with what we originally wanted. We end up with something far less.

Will Barber-Taylor: Absolutely. Well, thank you for taking the time to speak to me, Will. I have one final question for you. What more do you think that governments around the world can do to ensure that wildlife is protected both from direct interference from humanity, such as via trophy hunting, but also from the direct and indirect consequences of humanity’s use of fossil fuels and other things that damage the climate? Do you think that it is one particular law that could be agreed with various governments around the world, or do you think it is a series of measures that would need to be agreed upon that could best protect wildlife?

Will Travers: I think it has got to be the latter. I think that we have, in a sense, the tools. We have the Convention on Migratory Species. We have the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora. We have the Convention on Biological Diversity. We have a new Pandemic Treaty in the process. We have these grand global agreements, and we struggle to come to the right conclusions whenever meetings are held. But then the problem is that even when, as has happened at the recent Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework Agreement, which was agreed only in December, three months ago, where is the political will and the resources to implement what has been agreed?

So one of the biggest challenges we have is not that we do not have the laws, but that we do not have the international agreements. Do we have the muscle to make it happen? Sadly, that has been lacking on pretty much every front, including the climate change front as well.

I think that the move towards a “One Health, One Welfare” world, where we consider the whole basket of health, not just human health, but animal health, ecosystem health, planetary health, marine health, terrestrial health, where we consider health in the round, and we do not take measures in one direction. If it has negative consequences for another, it is a very important, massively interesting innovation in our thinking, just in the last few years. And at the end of the day, I have to say it, I have become less reliant on the government, and I have become more reliant on people. And the people listening to this interview have choices. They have disposable income, and they have things they want to do. And as I said earlier, there are the things that they might regard as essential, and then there are the things they might regard as desirable.

I will just give you one example. When the pandemic came along, Born Free took a step back and said, “Can we afford, not financially, but in the context of our planetary health, to continue to do business the way that we have?” And we reviewed all our travel, particularly our international air flights to our projects around the world. And we decided to cut our international air travel by 75%. Not by 5%, 10, 15, but by 75%, and that meant rethinking the way that we manage our projects. And, we have managed to stick to it.

I have, since 2020, made one business flight and one personal flight, and I cannot see it returning. And I will certainly never return to the days when I used to go – well, I will go and see the minister in this country for 10 minutes – because that is all the time that he or she can spare for me. If it is important enough to them, we will get on a Zoom call, we will get on a Teams call, and we will have that conversation, and we will make it work. So it is time for us to turn our thoughts and values into action, and if enough of us do, it will have the transformative effect needed.

Will Barber-Taylor: Well, from one Will to another. Thank you so much for taking the time to record the interview with me, Will. If people want to find out more about the Born Free Foundation, or want they read the Polar Bear report that we were discussing at the start of the interview. Where should they go to find out more about Born Free and to read the report?

Will Travers: I would welcome them to come to our website, which is www.bornfree.org. We also have social media channels on Twitter, on Instagram, on Facebook, on LinkedIn and our latest foray into social media, which is TikTok. So there are multiple ways that you can find out what we do. If you like what you see and you want to be part of the family, and this is a very family-driven thing, I do not mean just blood. I mean, we think of ourselves as a family of like-minded individuals who have shared common values. If you share those values, then come and be part of the family as supporters..

Will Barber-Taylor: Fantastic. Well, I hope that people listening will certainly do that. Thank you once again for coming on.

Will Travers: My pleasure.

Note: This interview has been edited for grammar, clarity, and flow. The original recording is the final and definitive version.