Saving animals from extinction and Cabbage Patch Kids

The History Hour

BBC

History, Society & Culture, Personal Journals

4.4 • 879 Ratings

🗓️ 2 December 2023

⏱️ 53 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.

This week, the bird that defied extinction. In 1969, a Peruvian farmer Gustavo Del Solar received an unusual assignment - finding a bird called the white-winged guan that had been regarded as extinct for a century.

The American author and conservationist Michelle Nijhuis is this week's guest. She talks about some of the most interesting attempts in modern history to save animals on the brink of extinction.

Also this week, the world's first solar powered home, when Tanzania adopted Swahili and when the world went crazy for Cabbage Patch Kids.

This programme has been updated since its original broadcast. It was edited on 6 December 2023.

Contributors: Rafael Del Solar - son of conservationist Gustavo Del Solar Michelle Nijhuis - author and conservationist Meredith Ludwig - friend of Cabbage Patch Kids creator Martha Nelson Thomas Peter Baxter and George Kling - scientists Walter Bgoya - author in Tanzania Andrew Nemethy - lived in the world's first solar powered house

(Photo: A whooping crane. Credit: Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	The Global Story, with Smart Takes and Fresh Perspective, on one big news story,
0:07.8	every Monday to Friday from the BBC World Service.
0:11.3	Search for The Global Story, wherever you get your BBC podcasts to find out more.
0:17.0	Hello and welcome to the History Hour podcast from the BBC World Service with me Max Pearson,
0:28.4	the past brought to life by those who were there.
0:31.7	This week why Tanzania chose Swahili as the language of independence in a
0:36.3	bit to unify the country. The impact of Néare's policies was to make
0:42.0	Swahili not just a language but a symbol of cultural pride.
0:48.0	Plus from the 1940s the world's first solar-heated house.
0:53.0	If you imagine sort of an elongated flying cheese wedge,
0:56.0	it was unlike anything anybody had ever built before
0:59.0	with a sloping roof and big tall windows on the top and the curious history of the cabbage
1:06.0	patch doll. People were just going nuts I mean people were lining up you know
1:11.9	fighting over getting these dolls because I mean it was just it was crazy.
1:17.0	That's all coming up later in the podcast, but first we're going to Peru.
1:22.0	In 1969, a farmer called Gustavo de Sala received an unusual assignment.
1:28.0	He was asked to find a bird called the white-winged Gowan which had been regarded as extinct for a century.
1:35.0	After years of searching he found the bird deep in Peru's wilderness and in effect he saved it.
1:41.0	Gustavo's son has been helping Ben Henderson unravel this positive piece of ecological history.
1:47.0	The bird is charcoal collards with white outer wings feathers,
1:53.0	red froth, the head is featherless,
1:57.0	it's the size of a chicken.
	...

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