Friend of the earth

From childhood birdwatcher to global eco-campaigner, Dr Stuart Butchart has been on quite a journey. Since becoming disabled, his travels have become even more adventurous. He talks to Sunil Peck about hair-raising river crossings, close encounters with gorillas and his battle to keep the planet and things which live on it alive

I had to cross a hundred metre-long rope suspension bridge over a raging torrent and then trek for several miles through lowland swamp forest in the middle of the rainy season. I knew that there was no wheelchair access and I couldn't do it on my own. The reaction of local guides I asked was 'you can't possibly go there, it's hard enough for people who aren't in wheelchairs'. So I had to appear super-confident and say that I did this sort of thing all the time and that it was standard procedure - while worrying that they were right and it was going to be impossible."

Dr Stuart Butchart is telling me about one of the first trips he made as a conservation scientist after becoming a wheelchair-user after being shot in the back by bandits in Guatemala who stole his camera and binoculars in January 2001. It was to see a rare species of bird called the Grey-necked Picathartes. He remembers approaching the trip with trepidation, but also being driven by the determination to succeed.

"It took us a week to get to the breeding caves (it normally takes people a day and a half) and involved scrambling up cliff faces, squelching through muddy swamps, and crossing rivers balancing one wheel on a plank of wood with the other held in mid-air by the guides below who were up to their necks in raging water."

Dr Butchart is Global Research and Indicators Coordinator at BirdLife International, a global partnership of national environmental organisations like the UK's Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB).

A rare breed himself, Dr Butchart is one of a tiny handful of disabled conservationists. He says that shortly after becoming disabled he found out about another wheelchair-user who ran a conservation programme in Cambodia.

"To know that someone was doing that kind of work in a developing country where I knew how challenging and wheelchair unfriendly it could be was definitely an inspiration to me. A few years ago I met him at a conference and it was fascinating and fun to swap experiences."

Now aged 38, his interest in biology was initially sparked by his grandfather who showed him a grey-brown Spotted Flycatcher in the garden when he was six.

"Then I started exploring the areas around where we lived in Lincolnshire and discovered some gravel pits when I was eleven or twelve. I'd cycle there and crawl under barbed wire fences to watch wildlife and learn about the species that were there."

But his conservation career began to take off when he was studying zoology at university and he organised conservation expeditions in summer holidays to Indonesia, Peru and Paraguay where he saw for himself the devastation being inflicted on the planet for the sake of financial profit.

It was a trip to Paraguay in 1992 which opened his eyes to what he describes as the "parlous state of the planet".

"Most of eastern Paraguay was once covered in rain forest that went all the way down to the coast in southeast Brazil. Over 98 per cent has been destroyed, so all that's left are tiny patches in the middle of large cattle ranches. We were working in these fragments of forest and every time you came to the forest edge you could see the devastated landscape beyond with just a few stumps of trees looking like skeletons left from where the forest had been burnt and cleared. The land had been cleared to graze cattle for beef exports, largely to Europe."

He went on to study for a PhD where he specialised in animal mating systems before going to work for BirdLife International.

Dr Butchart has spent the last few months on secondment to the United Nations Environment Programme, where he's been working with scientists from universities and organisations around the world to compile a report on the extent to which governments have met targets set in 2002 to cut the loss of the planet's wildlife by 2010.

He's the lead author of the report and his findings are discouraging to say the least.

"The rate at which nature is being destroyed has been more or less constant for the past few decades. Although we're putting in place some appropriate responses, they are woefully inadequate. We've lost 20 per cent of the world's mangroves in the past couple of decades, 30 per cent of our sea grasses and even common species like the farmland birds I remember from my childhood have declined by almost 50 per cent in the past 30 years as a consequence of agricultural intensification."

But at a time when so many people are worried about cuts to public services and losing their jobs, is the environment really that important? Given his background, you'd expect Dr Butchart to say that it is. But he does put forward a compelling case.

"We have no right to destroy nature and remove the opportunity for future generations to enjoy and benefit from it. But equally important are the huge economic consequences. We rely on biodiversity for a huge range of benefits, including provision of clean drinking water, pollination and pest control for our crops, raw materials like timber, and a major contribution to regulating our climate and mitigating disasters – mangroves protecting coastal communities from tsunamis for instance. And these benefits are worth 30 trillion dollars a year. We can't afford to lose them.

Anyone who works in conservation has to be an optimist according to Dr Butchart, and he says that the situation is definitely redeemable as long as we act quickly and substantially scale up our responses.

"There are plenty of examples that show that we can turn things around. In recent years there are 16 bird species that would have become extinct globally were it not for conservation actions that staved off threats and helped to build up their populations. The rate at which the Amazon is being chopped down has been halved over the past decade through tougher legislation too."

Although Dr Butchart frequently travels abroad for meetings, conferences and workshops, he has fewer opportunities for field trips than before his injury. But he grabs the chance to experience wildlife for pleasure whenever he can, even though he is not always sure what adventures this will lead him into.

Take his trip to visit the mountain gorillas in Volcanoes National Park in Rwanda.

"The gorillas are completely habituated to people, being guarded all day long and visited by tourists daily, so they normally ignore visitors. But when I went, they'd never seen a wheelchair before.

You're supposed to stay a few metres away from them to avoid the risk of disease being transmitted from humans to the gorillas. But one female kept coming forward and was fascinated by my chair. At one point she came and touched my foot and then sat back down and scratched her head. It's easy to anthropomorphise these things, but it did look as though she was wondering what on earth I was doing there sitting in a wheelchair in her territory high up in the mountains in a totally inaccessible rain forest. Then the male came over - the heaviest and most powerful individual known in any gorilla family group in the world. He stood a few feet away and stared right into my face. At that point the guides and guards nervously hooked their arms underneath mine to pull me out of the chair backwards in case he became aggressive. But after eyeing up me and my titanium chair, he relaxed, grunted and pushed his way past me."

When his busy schedule permits, Dr Butchart volunteers for the Back Up Trust, a charity which runs skiing, sports, drama and other courses for people with spinal injuries. His disability has also led to a friendship with the BBC journalist Frank Gardner who like him sustained spinal injuries after being shot.

Frank Gardner describes Dr Butchart as an inspiration whose advice was a source of support during his rehabilitation.

"Once we met up I was immediately impressed by his can-do approach and obvious determination to continue enjoying an outdoor active life as well as his pursuit of birdwatching in far-flung places, an interest which we share.

Like others I have been fortunate to meet, Stuart makes light of his injury and gets on with living life to the full."

Dr Butchart's immediate priorities are to continue to strive to make a difference for the planet with his scientific and conservation work, seeking to raise awareness, change government policy and halt the decline of biodiversity.

The next significant milestone on that quest will happen in Japan in October when governments will convene once more to agree on how to tackle the loss of biodiversity over the coming decade.

He says he has no plans to traverse any more rope suspension bridges in the near future, but is looking forward to a trip in August to the Pantanal in southern Brazil which is a swamp the size of France teeming with wildlife.

"We should see some interesting birds and mammals there. It's the best place in the world to see jaguar. You can go out in dugout canoes to find them resting up on riverbanks in the heat of the day, and can sometimes get pretty close to them. I'm looking forward to it."