Told with wit and enthusiasm, Last Chance to See recounts Adams and Carwardine’s journeys to see the world’s rarest and most endangered animals. The title refers to the authors’ race to see these animals before they become extinct. In their travels, Adams and Carwardine encounter dedicated people trying to save the animals. The authors record their adventures with both the animals and the people they meet.
Some of the animals featured are kakapo (ground dwelling parrot), Komodo dragon, northern white rhino, mountain gorilla, Rodriquez fruit bat, and baiji dolphin (Yangtze-River dolphin). Each of the animals' stories is tragic, but the authors end with a note of hope that the animal will be saved. The authors hope to inspire people to save these animals.
Since the book’s publication in 1990, the numbers of some of the animals have increased. Indonesia now protects Komodo dragons in a reserve. Thirty kakapos were found in an island near New Zealand. They are now protected at a secret place to enable the parrots to breed.
Adams and Carwardine write in the book’s last paragraph why people need to save animals from extinction. “There is one last reason for caring, and I believe that no other is necessary. It is certainly the reason why so many people have devoted their lives to protecting the likes of rhinos, parakeets, kakapos, and dolphins. And it is simply this: the world would be a poorer, darker, lonelier place without them.”
Witnessing a Komodo dragon kill and eat a chicken (excerpts)
“Maybe it was the feeling of cold, unflinching arrogance that so disturbed us. But whatever malign emotions we tried to pin onto the lizard, we knew that they weren’t the lizard’s emotions at all, only ours. The lizard was simply going about its lizardly business in a simple, straightforward lizardly way. It didn’t know anything about the honor, the guilt, the shame, the ugliness that we, uniquely guilty and ashamed animals were buying to foist on it. So we got it all straight back at us as if reflected in the mirror of its single unwavering and disinterested eye.”
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Va. Carper
August 15, 2005