Wallace and Svalbard

You may be forgiven for thinking what's the link between those two as there isn't (to the best of my understanding) any record of the great Naturalist Alfred Russell Wallace going to the frozen north, in fact he's more famous for his trips to the Amazon and the Malay Archipelago

The simple fact is that we had two talks last night and the title reflects the subjects of them both

Julian Carter of the National Museum of Wales led off with his personal account of how he had learned about Wallace during the design and build of an Exhibition that was on at the museum and is now. From the description of that exhibition

On his death 100 years ago, Alfred Russel Wallace was widely praised as the 'last of the great Victorians'. But who was he?

Wallace was many things - an intrepid explorer, a brilliant naturalist, a social activist, a political commentator – overall a remarkable intellectual. In his time, he collected over 125,000 animal specimens, published more than 800 articles and wrote 22 books.

Wallace is most famously associated with co-discovering the process of evolution by natural selection alongside Charles Darwin. Yet we have all heard of Darwin, whilst Wallace has become more of a forgotten figure.

It seems to me that Wallace had a fascinating (if at times stressful) life and contributed to many things such as mapping and surveying the world in addition to his seminal work on evolution.

Joan Andrews one of our past presidents then talked to us about a trip to Svalbard that she and another of our past presidents Tricia Woods took in 2014 and showed a range of photographs of the various wildlife that she had encountered. I was impressed by how close they had been able to get to some Polar Bears, Walrus and many of the birds, and wish I'd been there with my camera

That was the last of our indoor meetings for the season so we will be focused on going out and seeing some wildlife across the summer whilst our 2015/16 programme  is developed - look out for it towards late summer, but please come back here and also take a look at, and join in the other information sources we have on-line and try and join us at one of our outdoor events

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