INTERVIEW
His passionate campaigning to save the planet has left him fearing for his life but that hasn’t deterred Chris Packham from speaking out. Here he explains how he hopes to inspire the next generation to continue the fight and why he thinks Jeremy Clarkson is a buffoon
Naturalist and television presenter Chris Packham is telling me about the hostility he faces daily for his – often outspoken – environmental campaigning.
‘I got a Google alert last night saying Jeremy Clarkson had been thinking about buying a Land Rover with a relatively small engine, but then he’d seen me on TV saying something which offended him – probably something positive about the environment – so he’d bought a five-litre, gas-guzzling, twin-turbo-charged Range Rover just to spite Chris Packham,’ he says with a wry smile. ‘I mean… what a buffoon. It betrays such a tragic ignorance it has an almost comedic value.
‘I had a death threat sent by email last week that was reported to the police,’ Chris, 62, continues with his trademark, rapid, ultra-fluent delivery. ‘A threat of violence the previous week. On my social media platforms the climate-change deniers, the pro-shooting, pro-hunting lobbies are very active daily. I get a lot of grief from people like the National Farmers’ Union, who’ve promoted the idea that I’m the enemy of the countryside – I support farming in very many ways, but proper farming, not industrial farming with vast quantities of chemicals going into the environment which have toxic consequences.’
Do the attacks upset him? ‘They fuel me if anything. I think of ways of turning them into something positive. A few years ago, as an act of arson, someone burned my gates down outside my house. The burned wood looked beautiful, all iridescent and blue, so we took the gates down very carefully, cut them up and made them into three tables. I’ve had them encased in resin and I’m going to auction one and give the money to wildlife welfare charities.’
It’s a great up-yours response, but still, is he never frightened? ‘There are times when I think the chances of me getting through my life without some considerable violence are…’ he shrugs and tails off. ‘I spend quite a lot of time alone in the countryside with my dogs and you don’t know who’s around the next corner.’
One reason his campaigning can fall on deaf ears, he thinks, is that the concept of global warming can feel so abstract, despite melting ice sheets and a 320% increase in wildfires from 1996 to 2021. Heat waves and summer droughts are causing these devastating fires to scorch through forests more frequently and for longer. More increases are predicted but still, for some, climate change doesn’t feel that close to home.
‘I think for many people it seems to be something which
