Corwin packs Chapel for naturalist talk

Jamie Rosen and John Palmer Assistant Features Editor and Features Editor

At age six, Jeff Corwin realized he was a naturalist. When he walked in his grandmother’s house with a garter snake hanging on his arm by its teeth, he refused his grandmother’s order to “get rid of it,” justifying himself with a classic response: “Because I love it,” he said at the Chapel.

Corwin’s first encounter with this snake “electrified” him, and his goal since has been sharing his enthusiasm with others. “[I knew] I would be the Johnny Appleseed for snakes,” he said. After spending his childhood trying to expose unsuspecting friends and family members to snakes, Corwin has revised his mission: to share information concerning biology, conservation, and sustainability with the natural resource-consuming public.

Many young fans in the Poughkeepsie community joined students, faculty, and staff in the packed Chapel for Corwin’s March 28 talk. The presentation began with often humorous film clips that showed Corwin in precarious situations with dangerous animals. The audience cheered with delight and the laughing children sounded like echoing birds deep in the rainforest. Afterwards, Corwin shared anecdotes about his experiences filming his shows “Going Wild With Jeff Corwin” on NBC and “The Jeff Corwin Experience,” on Animal Planet.

Corwin said it was a long road to the television celebrity he now enjoys. For years he created short videos of wildlife and submitted for review. It wasn’t until he temporarily gave up his dream to go back to graduate school that his videos received network attention. Ten years ago, Disney expressed interest in Corwin’s idea.

Corwin’s new show on Animal Planet, “Corwin’s Quest,” will take a global approach to themes in nature, such as teamwork and animal locomotion. Corwin will focus on documenting animals in their natural environments to provide viewers with an idea of what it would be like to be that animal. For example, film crews spent time 80 to 120 feet above the rainforest floor to capture the way orangutans move in their habitat. In the same vein, Corwin documented 250,000 fire ants moving together as a colony in Costa Rica, working together to consume everything in their path.

Corwin ended the night by answering audience member questions, many of which came from children and concerned his “favorites.” One older participant asked, “Do you watch Wild Boys on MTV?” to which Corwin replied that he hopes “they’re weeding themselves out of the gene pool.” More seriously, Corwin explained his problems with keeping pets and the reasons why his own show has steered away from hands-on experiences with animals and more towards observation. This approach is consistent with Corwin’s philosophy to leave animals to thrive in their natural environment.

Corwin offered not only advice to be more sustainable but also advice for life in general. This advice helped him get through graduate school and establish a name for himself in the world of television: “Really love what you do,” he told the audience, saying that life was too short not to enjoy each moment. And second, “Don’t let anything get in the way.”