Ray Mears: We'll struggle to survive climate change

[n2doc]

14 November 2009 by Sanjida O'Connell

Ray Mears has inspired millions around the world with his television programmes about bushcraft. The self-taught, self-deprecating Mears is an optimist who would like people to feel confident that they could survive in the wild. Even so, he doesn't think most people would make it through a global climate crisis, as he tells Sanjida O'Connell.



You grew up in an urban part of Britain. How did you become interested in wildlife and nature?

The area wasn't very urban when I was growing up. I was right at the edge of London's green belt, a place of trees and rare species. I found fungi like morels in spring, and rare plants such as toothworts and wild cherry in the woods. It was only a 20-minute walk to the North Downs. Having all that on my doorstep, how could I not be interested in nature?



You've said that you spent a lot of time studying bushcraft in academic libraries when you were growing up. Do you do much research now?

As with any subject, it gets harder to find the answers as you get deeper into it. I still do a lot of work in some areas and it's worth it. Two things concern me. There is so much spurious information about plants out there, a kind of New Age simplistic view of botany which doesn't take into account the chemicals in botanicals. The other area is anthropology: knowledge from indigenous peoples, whose lifestyles are vanishing. I use all possible sources of information - books, experts, as well as following my own instinct, which has proved to be good. Instinct is an unconscious reading of empirical signs, and the more involved you are in a subject, the more you know how and where to prioritise research and the better your instincts become.

more:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20427341.000-ray-mears-well-struggle-to-survive-climate-change.html

[Joe Chi Minh]

1. We love watching his programmes. My wife will say, "Has he made a fire yet?"

Which, as you'll know, he always does; is bound to, if it comes to that, what with cooking-ranges being in such short supply in the wilds.

But he's such a personable bloke, it's just good hearing him burbling on enthusiastically in the background, about what a store-house of food the tundra and deserts really are, as he erects a shelter from branches, moss, etc, and munches unspeakable insects and vegetation.