Pupils Told Of Animals, “Fine Homes Racket”

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30302, 30 November 1963, Page 15

Pupils Told Of Animals, “Fine Homes Racket”

“It would be an awfully dreary world if there was only each other to look at,” the Duke of Bedford told the pupils of Caslimere High School yesterday afternoon. The Duke, a member of the editorial board of “Animals,” an illustrated magazine about animals, is visiting New Zealand to encourage the protection of animals in danger of becoming extinct. There was a great responsibility to care for and protect animals, he said. Very shortly, if something was not done, there would be no wild animals, left, the Duke said. New Zealand, he thought, had a problem in that it had birds, lizards and other creatures found only in this country, preserved because the country was discovered late. He hoped that reserves would be established and every effort made to protect these animals. The Duke showed the pupils a map prepared by “Animals” showing animals throughout the world at present in danger of extinction. He was also accompanied by lids fibreglass “Dodo.” Now known throughout the world as an animal lover, the

Duke of Bedford has not always been so. His father, of whom he said he had never understood nor had much in common with, “spent his whole life with his birds.” The Duke said he thus developed “such a hatred of birds” that one only had to say “bird" and he was almost sick. This had taken some time to get over.

There were 3000 deer and many varieties of animals and birds, including lamas and peacocks, in the parklands of Woburn Abbey, his ancestral seat, said the Duke The abbey had been open to the public for eight years, and attracted nearly 500,000 visitors a year, he said. Its popularity, which is partly because of extra attractions such as bingo and boating on the lakes, was “driving everyone else in the fine homes racket up the wall, because what we are doing is in such bad taste and it pays,” he said. Opening his home to the public and providing the entertainment it wanted had taught him the great lesson that the greatest joy “is to make other people hapipy,” the Duke said.