I'm luckier than my grandfather, who didn't move more than five miles from the village in which he was born.

I'm luckier than my grandfather, who didn't move more than five miles from the village in which he was born.

People talk about doom-laden scenarios happening in the future: they are happening in Africa now. You can see it perfectly clearly. Periodic famines are due to too many people living on land that can't sustain them.

The more you go on, the less you need people standing between you and the animal and the camera waving their arms about.

I just wish the world was twice as big and half of it was still unexplored.

We keep putting on programmes about famine in Ethiopia; that’s what’s happening. Too many people there. They can’t support themselves — and it’s not an inhuman thing to say. It’s the case. Until humanity manages to sort itself out and get a coordinated view about the planet it’s going to get worse and worse.

I like animals. I like natural history. The travel bit is not the important bit. The travel bit is what you have to do in order to go and look at animals.