She grew up with pet tarantulas and cockroaches, and accompanied her stepfather, naturalist Chris Packham, on research trips. Now a conservationist and presenter, McCubbin discusses the passion and fear that inspired her new book
– among other things – lives half the time in the Highlands with her boyfriend, wildlife cameraman James Stevens, who she met at a Springwatch wrap party. If you want to catch her anywhere less remote, it’ll be at her stepfather Chris Packham’s place in Southampton.
In her new book, An Atlas of Endangered Species, which is illustrated by Emily Robertson, McCubbin alights on 20 species that are in danger of extinction, ending with humans. If this sounds stark – and, yes, it is stark – the message is more practical. If the small army of scientists, rangers and conservationists dedicating their lives to the species in her book can make the gains she describes, well, the rest of us might actually achieve something if we would just get a move on.
Before her second glacier trip, though, there was the trip to the big cat sanctuary on the Isle of Wight. McCubbin was 12, and her mum and stepfather had split up, “but they’re really good friends, and she’s always put my relationship with Chris first”. McCubbin went along because Packham was opening one of the enclosures.
Living among these tame tigers was a turning point for McCubbin – but not because it informed her relationship with wild animals, as you’ll know if you’ve seen her nature programmes. She’s much more in the David Attenborough than the Terry Nutkins mould. “Humans seek relationships, from one another and from other animals,” she says, “but I respect wild animals enough to not develop a very strong bond so they become habituated to people.
She then got a job on Al Jazeera, presenting Earthrise. On one episode, she went behind the scenes with Extinction Rebellion, shortly before its major actions. “Direct action is necessary,” she says. “It’s the only way that change has ever been made.” I like people who come at activism via a cause, not ambient left politics, like me; they look more respectable, and a bit less wet.
Most UK wildlife pros live in Bristol, McCubbin says, because that’s where the BBC’s natural history unit is. But she and her boyfriend decided that “rather than be where the people are, and being sent out to the wildlife, live with the wildlife and then come back and contact the people.” They have pine martens and badgers in their garden, and spring and summer are beautiful because of the ospreys. “I need to be near wildlife and nature.
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