Lady Tarzan and Ibadan Zoo

The History Hour

BBC

History, Society & Culture, Personal Journals

4.4 • 879 Ratings

🗓️ 20 January 2024

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Max Pearson presents a collection of this week’s Witness History episodes from the BBC World Service.

We’re going wild for animals this week. We find out how the Ibadan Zoo became one of Nigeria’s biggest tourist attractions during the 1970s. Our guest Harriet Ritvo, professor of history at MIT, looks back across the centuries to reveal the fascination that humans have always had for animals. And more on the environmental campaigner who became known as Lady Tarzan for her fight against illegal logging in the forests of India.

Plus, we hear from a journalist tortured in Iran's notorious Evin Prison in the wake of the 2009 protests against the Islamic regime. Also, why hundreds of thousands of Moroccans were ordered into the Spanish Sahara by their king. And finally, more on the Bolivian president who went on hunger strike to try to save his country.

Contributors: Peaches Golding - wife of zoologist Bob Golding Professor Harriet Ritvo – professor of history at MIT Marcela Siles - daughter of former Bolivian president Hernán Siles Zuazo Seddik Maaninou - TV cameraman Francis Gillies – North Africa expert Maziar Bahari - journalist Jamuna Tudu – environmentalist nicknamed ‘Lady Tarzan’

(Photo: Imade the gorilla at Ibadan Zoo. Credit: bobgolding.co.uk)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Unmissible stories from around the globe from the BBC World Service.
0:05.0	My happy place, this is who I am.
0:08.0	Search for the documentary, Lives Less Ordinary,
0:11.0	and amazing sports stories, wherever you get your BBC
0:15.0	podcasts.
0:17.6	Hello and welcome to the History Hour podcast from the BBC World Service
0:27.8	with me Max Pearson, the past brought to life by those who were there.
0:31.6	This week the Indian woman nicknamed Lady Tarzan
0:35.5	for fighting off illegal loggers. We would confront the mafia in the forest many
0:39.7	times. They would threaten us and said this is our forest and if you create obstacles to our work it will not be good for you.
0:47.0	Plus why Iran's 2009 election sparked millions of people to protest on the streets of Tehran.
0:53.0	The Bolivian president who went on hunger strike in the 1980s,
0:57.0	and the Moroccans who faced an army in a bid to take back Spanish Sahara for their king.
1:02.0	Once the march started, I got carried out. in a bid to take back Spanish Sahara for their king.
1:02.8	Once the march started, I got carried away and I started crying and shouting with emotion.
1:08.5	I could see men and women advancing.
1:11.0	They were willing to become martyrs to defend our territory.
1:15.0	That's all coming up later in the podcast, but we're going to begin with a couple of items
1:19.0	highlighting characters from the past who displayed a positive attitude towards our environment and ecology.
1:26.1	Back in the 1970s, Nigerian families went wild for one of the country's biggest tourist attractions,
1:32.4	a zoo. Now zoos don't always enjoy the best
1:35.8	press, but for a while the Ibadan Zoo achieved a very special status in the hearts of a nation,
	...

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