Mark Carwardine

There are two books about the project: Last Chance to See, which he co-wrote with Adams (1990), and Last Chance to See: In the footsteps of Douglas Adams (2009). He is a leading and outspoken conservationist, and a prolific broadcaster, columnist and photographer.

• Name — Mark Carwardine • Born — 9 March 1959 • Known for — Conservationist, zoologist, presenter, photographer and author • Website — www.markcarwardine.com

Carwardine has written more than fifty books. Most recently he has written the ground-breaking Handbook of Whales, Dolphins and Porpoises (Bloomsbury 2019) and wildlife photography eBooks (2020). In 2009, he wrote Last Chance to See: In the Footsteps of Douglas Adams (HarperCollins). This is a sequel to the best-selling book, Last Chance to See, which he wrote with the late Douglas Adams (author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy). A new edition was published in 2020 to celebrate its thirtieth anniversary. Other books that Carwardine has written include Mark Carwardine's Guide to Whale Watching in North America (Bloomsbury, 2017), Mark Carwardine's Guide to Whale Watching in Britain and Europe (Bloomsbury, 2016), the award-winning Shark Watcher's Handbook and Eyewitness Handbooks: Whales, Dolphins and Porpoises, which is the best-selling cetacean field guide ever published (nearly a million copies in print). Carwardine also writes a monthly column in BBC Wildlife magazine, and has written hundreds of articles for newspapers and magazines.

In 1989 the BBC Radio 4 series Last Chance to See and the subsequent book (1990) described eight expeditions by Carwardine and writer Douglas Adams to find and report on some of the most endangered species around the world. These were the aye-aye in Madagascar, the Komodo dragon in Indonesia, the kākāpō in New Zealand, the Amazonian manatee in Brazil, the Yangtze river dolphin in China, the Juan Fernández fur seal in Chile, the northern white rhino in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the Rodrigues fruit bat in Mauritius. Carwardine also presented the weekly half-hour radio programme Nature, on BBC Radio 4, for many years. He has also been the presenter of many other programmes for BBC Radio 4. In autumn 2009, he joined forces with Stephen Fry to present a follow-up to the original Last Chance to See with the late Douglas Adams. This was the six-part BBC2 television series, also called Last Chance to See, which concerned the very same endangered species as in the original and how they have fared twenty years on. The series not only updated the situation with most of the endangered species featured in the original series but looked at some new ones, including the blue whale in Baja California, Mexico. In spring 2010, he co-presented The Museum of Life (BBC2, 6 episodes), which explored the pioneering and often surprising research work and wildlife collections of the Natural History Museum, in London. On BBC2 in October 2010 there was an additional Last Chance to See special by Carwardine and Fry about the northern white rhino, Last Chance to See: Return of the Rhino, which followed the re-introduction of zoo-raised rhinos into the wild. Also on BBC2 on 7 November 2010 Carwardine and Fry co-presented Stephen Fry and the Great American Oil Spill about the effects, four months after the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

Carwardine was a founding director of the wildlife travel company Discover the World. He now runs his travel company, The Whale Watch Company www.whalewatchcompany.com, specialising in whale-watching tours and wildlife photography trips.