David James BellamyOBE (18 January 1933 – 11 December 2019)[1] was an English academic,botanist, television presenter, author and prominent environmental campaigner in the UK and globally. His distinctive, energetic style of presenting became well known to UK television audiences in the 1970s and 1980s. Later in life, he made some sceptical statements about climate science.
Bellamy was born atQueen Charlotte's and Chelsea Hospital in London to parents Winifred May (née Green) and Thomas Bellamy on 18 January 1933.[2][3] He was raised in aBaptist family and retained a strong Christian faith throughout his life.[4] As a child, he had hoped to be a ballet dancer, but he concluded that his physique precluded him from pursuing the training.[3]
Bellamy married Rosemary Froy in 1959, and the couple remained together until her death in 2018.[2] They had five children: Henrietta (died 2017), Eoghain, Brighid, Rufus, and Hannah.[4] A resident of thePennines inCounty Durham,[3][6] Bellamy died fromvascular dementia at a care home inBarnard Castle on 11 December 2019, at the age of 86.[2]
Bellamy's first work in a scientific environment was as a laboratory assistant atEwell Technical College[7] before he studied for a Bachelor of Science degree at Chelsea.In 1960 he became a lecturer in the botany department ofDurham University.[8]The work that brought him to public prominence was his environmental consultancy on theTorrey Canyon oil spill in 1967, about which he wrote a paper in the leading scientific journal,Nature.[9]
Bellamy published many scientific papers and books between 1966 and 1986 (see#Bibliography). Many books were associated with the TV series on which he worked. During the 1980s, he replaced Big Chief I-Spy as the figurehead of theI-Spy range of children's books, to whom completed books were sent to get a reward. In 1980, he released a single written by Mike Croft with musical arrangement by Dave Grosse to coincide with the release of the I-Spy titleI Spy Dinosaurs (about dinosaur fossils) entitled "Brontosaurus Will You Wait For Me?" (backed with "Oh Stegosaurus"). He performed it onBlue Peter wearing an orange jump suit. It reached number 88 in the charts.[10]
In the early 1970s, Bellamy helped to establishDurham Wildlife Trust, and remained a key player in the conservation movement in the Durham area for a number of decades.[11]
The New Zealand Tourism Department, a government agency, became involved with theCoast to Coast adventure race in 1988 as they recognised the potential for event tourism. They organised and funded foreign journalists to come and cover the event. One of those was Bellamy, who did not just report from the event, but decided to compete. While in the country, Bellamy worked on a documentary seriesMoa's Ark that was released byTelevision New Zealand in 1990,[12][13] and he was awarded theNew Zealand 1990 Commemoration Medal.[14]
In 2002, he was a keynote speaker on conservation issues at the Asia Pacific Ecotourism Conference.[16]
In 2015, David Bellamy and his wife Rosemary visited Malaysia to explore its wildlife.[16]
In 2016, he opened theHedleyhope Fell Boardwalk, which is the main feature of Durham Wildlife Trust's Hedleyhope Fell reserve in County Durham. The project includes a 60-metre path fromTow Law to the Hedleyhope Fell reserve, and 150 metres of boardwalk made from recycled plastic bottles.[17]
After Bellamy's TV appearances concerning theTorrey Canyon disaster, his exuberant and demonstrative presentation of science topics featured on programmes such asDon't Ask Me along with other scientific personalities such asMagnus Pyke,Miriam Stoppard, andRob Buckman. He wrote, appeared in, or presented hundreds of television programmes on botany, ecology, environmentalism, and other issues. His television series includedBellamy on Botany,Bellamy's Britain,Bellamy's Europe andBellamy's Backyard Safari.[18] He was regularly parodied by impersonators such asLenny Henry onTiswas with a "gwapple me gwapenuts" catchphrase. His distinctive voice was used in advertising.[19]
In 1983, Bellamy was imprisoned for blockading the AustralianFranklin River in a protest against a proposed dam.[16] On 18 August 1984, he leapt from the pier atSt Abbs Harbour into the North Sea; in the process, he officially opened Britain's first Voluntary Marine Reserve, theSt. Abbs and Eyemouth Voluntary Marine Reserve.[20] In the late 1980s, he fronted a campaign in Jersey, Channel Islands, to save Queens Valley, the site of the lead character's cottage inBergerac, from being turned into a reservoir because of the presence of a rare type of snail, but was unable to stop it.[21]
In1997, he stood unsuccessfully atHuntingdon against the incumbent Prime MinisterJohn Major for theReferendum Party. Bellamy credited this campaign with the decline in his career as a popular celebrity and television personality. In a 2002 interview, he said it was ill-advised.[22]
He was a prominent campaigner against the construction ofwind farms in undeveloped areas, despite appearing very enthusiastic about wind power in the educational videoPower from the Wind[23] produced by Britain'sCentral Electricity Generating Board.
David Bellamy was the president of the British Institute of Cleaning Science, and was a strong supporter of its plan to educate young people to care for and protect the environment. The David Bellamy Awards Programme is a competition designed to encourage schools to be aware of, and act positively towards, environmental cleanliness. Bellamy was also a patron of theBritish Homeopathic Association, and the UKplastic recycling charity Recoup from 1998.[2]
In Bellamy's foreword to the 1989 bookThe Greenhouse Effect,[24] he wrote:
The profligate demands of humankind are causing far-reaching changes to the atmosphere of planet Earth, of this there is no doubt. Earth's temperature is showing an upward swing, the so-calledgreenhouse effect, now a subject of international concern. The greenhouse effect may melt the glaciers and ice caps of the world, causing the sea to rise and flood many of our great cities and much of our best farmland.
Bellamy's later statements onglobal warming indicate that he subsequently changed his views. A letter he published on 16 April 2005 inNew Scientist asserted that a large proportion (555 of 625) of the glaciers being observed by theWorld Glacier Monitoring Service were advancing, not retreating.[25]George Monbiot ofThe Guardian tracked down Bellamy's original source for this information and found that it was fromdiscredited data originally published by Fred Singer, who claimed to have obtained these figures from a 1989 article in the journalScience; however, Monbiot proved that this article had never existed.[26] Bellamy subsequently accepted that his figures on glaciers were wrong, and announced in a letter toThe Sunday Times in 2005 that he had "decided to draw back from the debate on global warming",[27] although Bellamy jointly authored a paper with Jack Barrett in the refereedCivil Engineering journal of theInstitution of Civil Engineers, entitled "Climate stability: an inconvenient proof" in May 2007.[28]
In 2008 Bellamy signed theManhattan Declaration, calling for the immediate halt to any tax-funded attempts to counteract climate change.[29] He maintained a view that man-made climate change is "poppycock", insisting that climate change is part of a natural cycle.[30][31]
His opinions changed the way some organisations viewed Bellamy. TheRoyal Society of Wildlife Trusts stated in 2005, "We are not happy with his line on climate change",[32] and Bellamy, who had been president of the Wildlife Trusts since 1995,[11] was succeeded byAubrey Manning in November 2005.[33] Bellamy asserted that his views on global warming resulted in the rejection of programme ideas by the BBC.[30][34]
In 2013, ProfessorChris Baines gave the inaugural David Bellamy Lecture at Buckingham Palace to honour Bellamy's 80th birthday.[54] A second David Bellamy Lecture was given by Pete Wilkinson at the Royal Geographical Society in 2014.[55]
^Bellamy, D.J.; Clarke, P.H.; John, D.M.; Jones, D.; Whittick, A. (1 December 1967). "Effects of Pollution from the Torrey Canyon on Littoral and Sublittoral Ecosystems".Nature.216 (5121):1170–1173.Bibcode:1967Natur.216.1170B.doi:10.1038/2161170a0.S2CID4201940.
^McKerrow, Bob; Woods, John (1994).Coast to Coast: The Great New Zealand Race. Christchurch, New Zealand: Shoal Bay Press. p. 77.ISBN978-0-908704-22-4.
