Congratulations on the publication of your memoir, Natural Causes. What made you decide that now was the time to write a memoir about your experiences as a wildlife filmmaker and environmental activist?
Thankyou Ella. I think my career coincided with a sort of Golden Age for wildlife film-making. I graduated from Film School (CalArts) in 1980, a year after the first Broadcast of David Attenborough’s Life on Earth. That seminal series alerted television commissioners all over the world to the potential of wildlife programming and this created opportunities for independent producers like myself. There was a twenty-year boom. I became Chairman of the newly-formed International Association of Wildlife Film-makers and was able to meet and be friends with a host of very talented people. I probably knew almost all the significant cameramen and women working on nature programmes in the world. We all seemed to be working on stories that had never previously been filmed and this felt like a bit of history that ought to be told.
You are evidently a natural storyteller, both in your writing and documentary films. After a lifetime of working behind the camera, you have written a book that includes yourself as a subject. How did the creative and writing process for Natural Causes differ as a result of this, or were there parallels to the processes you use for writing your films?
As a naturalist, I think I have learned to take “self” out of the process of filming. The pressure to obtain a rare piece of footage or to film a sequence that has never been captured before can create a predatory urge. It may sound a bit flaky but I think animals can feel that hunting vibe. I think I’ve been most successful when I’ve been calm, gentle and patient and when my ego has been dampened down. Writing a book about my life is obviously a more self-centred activity. But I don’t think the book is really about me. It is about an idea that I’ve tried to follow, an idea of trying to share the importance of nature. I am just one of the connecting threads. Mind you, it is fun telling stories about one’s own life.
One of the key tenets of your book is the idea that small decisions and persistence can change the course of your life, and perhaps even the world. Your book is a moral tale, encouraging people to ‘keep taking small steps, never to stop and to try and find happiness in the things that matter’. This message is particularly aimed at young people. Why did you feel that it was important to make this message such a prominent part of your book? And why did you particularly want to target young people with this message?
Some years ago, I was asked to give a talk to a group of highly motivated science graduate students in Amsterdam. What could I possibly say to them that would be of use? So I decided to tell them about three case-histories from my own work where my efforts, however modest, seemed to have made a difference, where a nature reserve was declared, a law changed, political action mobilised. The point was that you don’t have to be “an important person” to change history a little bit. I have found that the step from youth to old age is quite a short one, just a handful of years in the life of our planet. I still remember being intimidated as a youngster by the achievements of the giants that had gone before me and the seeming impossibility of ever realising my own dreams. I would like to encourage young people not to feel that way, to know instead, that if you keep your eye on the trail it will lead somewhere. I also promised to write a “Book of Hope” for my children and this is the best I could do.
You write about the various film cameras and equipment you have used, their qualities, the lessons they taught you, and their limitations. Access to equipment, and their cost, can often be a limitation for people trying to get into filmmaking. Do you have any advice to people affected by such limitations, who are trying to get into the wildlife filmmaking industry?
Access to equipment has always been a barrier that separated the amateur from the professional. Access to good ideas however is unrestricted. There’s never been a better time to tell stories in pictures. All you need is a smart-phone. My best friend’s son was film obsessed. At the age of eight he was wandering around with a cheap mini-digi camera recording little scenarios. He never stopped. Now he’s in his thirties and his latest film has been nominated for an Oscar. So again, I would say to any young person, don’t be intimidated. Look all round you for stories that interest you and find a way of telling them with your phone or any sort of camera that can record a moving image. If you do this, you’re a film-maker. When I was in my teens I filmed half an hour of footage of a very rare bird. A famous producer invited me to visit him and show him the scenes but I was too shy. I thought they weren’t good enough. This was a mistake. I now suspect he would have been impressed, not by the footage, though it was actually fine, but by the fact that I’d filmed it and had the courage to let him see it. It’s good to be humble but don’t be paralysed by it.
You have travelled around the world, and your book details the many places you have visited, the wildlife you have encountered, and the change you have fought for in some of these places. Of all the work you have been a part of, do you have a particular place, animal or environmental project that resonates with you the most?
Honestly…they all resonate with me. Wherever I find nature, and that’s nearly everywhere – a patch of water, a little greenery – I find a connection. But there are some places and sights that move me beyond words. One is Svalbard. Named Spitzbergen , pointy mountains, by the intrepid Dutch sailors who went there 400 years ago in their wooden shoes and clammy woollens to hunt whales, Svalbard is a land of quiet. After you leave the last little settlement and sail north towards the Pole you see no more signs of humanity, just empty landscape, ice and, if you’re lucky, a white bear measuring its infinite tread around the Polar Circle. Then there’s Africa and at its heart, the Serengeti, one of the last almost intact ecosystems, defined by the movement of the wildebeest and their attendant predators. And finally, the tiger, the most beautiful animal on earth, a nine-foot, orange cat, striped with black and rimmed with white, that can disappear like smoke into a puff of bamboo.
Are there any places, animals or environmental projects that you would have liked to have filmed or been a part of, either in the past or in our current climate?
I’ve never been to Australia. Years ago, I was booked to shoot some sequences there for the BBC Mammals series but for scheduling reasons the trip was cancelled. Although I was disappointed, I always assumed another opportunity would arise but it never did. Australia’s fauna is so special. I feel incomplete as a naturalist never to have seen a wild kangaroo, or a duck-billed platypus ducking and diving in the Murray River, or a koala shinning up a forest eucalyptus. My wife has been quite recently. She stayed in a winery in New South Wales and said that in the early mornings she could watch the kangaroos weaving through the vineyard. I think to sit with a glass of beautifully made Australian wine while a gang of jaunty kangaroos bounced past would be a pretty joyous experience.
You show great respect for different countries’ policies and approaches to nature. Are there any lessons that you think Britain should learn from other countries regarding attitudes towards the natural world, or wildlife preservation?
When I was a child at school, we were told that there were 425 million people in India. Now there are 1.4 billion. Yet India has retained almost all its large animals. In amongst the teeming humanity there are elephants and rhinos, bears, wolves, cobras and pythons, tigers and leopards and even lions. Indeed, India has fifteen species of cat. Even Africa only has ten. How can this be? The answer, in part, lies not so much in good science or advanced conservation policies but in the Hindu reverence for all life. Like western doctors, whose Hippocratic oath requires them to “do no harm”, Indians on the whole don’t kill things. One of my friends there told me that, as a child, he killed a snake in the family garden and had to endure a week-long religious cleansing process to expiate the sin. Bringing this back to the UK, one could, for instance, exhort all participants in minority blood-sports like shooting never, under any condition, to harm or harass a protected species.
Your career has been about wildlife and the natural world. But your book shows that it has also been about people, companionship, and connection. It explores human loss and grief, peace and joy, and the interconnectedness of everything in life. How do you recommend that readers continue to stay in touch with nature and this ‘state of grace’, particularly in an increasingly digital world and with growing climate crisis concerns?
Despite our wars and our crises, this earth that we share is still an exquisitely beautiful globe. Everywhere at night, it looks out on a wide bowlful of stars. In late summer and mid-winter that bowl comes alive with meteor showers, a free light-show for everyone. You have to tune in. For me, being back in nature is a little like returning home after a long spell abroad. You suddenly understand the conversations in the supermarket queue. When I walk the dyke through the polders every morning I pick up on the incessant chattering of a whole other world. The curlews are calling because they’ve moved from their breeding grounds and are keeping contact, checking they’re in the right place. The gathering sand martins are whittering in low-flying agitations, preparing for the massive southerly journey ahead. The crows are clearly talking to each other in long, deliberate calls. About what? Probably the dead goose out in the marsh. The tiny wren is reasserting his huge personality with a song so loud that, were he the size of an elephant, I’m sure he’d crack the earth’s core. These are not my birds, they are yours. Try every day to find something natural that seems beautiful to you, look at it and ask a question. Why has the spider built its web there? Why does the bee visit this flower and not that one? You may never know the answers but the questions mean you are connecting. You are connecting with what a part of you will one day become.
Stephen Mills is the author of Natural Causes: The Wild Life of a Wildlife Filmmaker, published by Chiselbury. Ella Beales is a Historical Researcher, Archivist and Public Historian.
