Editing Last Chance to See (section)

{{Short description|BBC radio documentary series}}
{{EngvarB|date=September 2013}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=August 2024}}
{{About|the radio documentary series|the follow-up television series|Last Chance to See (TV series)}}
{{Infobox book
| name          = Last Chance to See
| title_orig    =
| translator    =
| image         = Last Chance to See Harmony front.jpg
| caption       = The front cover of the first US hardcover edition.
| author        = [[Douglas Adams]] and [[Mark Carwardine]]
| illustrator   =
| cover_artist  =
| country       =
| language      =
| series        =
| subject       =
| genre         =
| publisher     = [[Pan Books]]
| pub_date      = 1990
| pages         =
| isbn          = 978-0-345-37198-0
| oclc= 26948233
| preceded_by   =
| followed_by   =
}}

'''''Last Chance to See''''' is a 1989 [[BBC]] radio documentary series and its accompanying book, written and presented by [[Douglas Adams]] and [[Mark Carwardine]]. In the series, Adams and Carwardine travel to various locations in the hope of encountering [[species]] on the brink of [[extinction]]. The book was published in 1990.

In 2009, the [[BBC]] broadcast a [[Last Chance to See (TV series)|television follow-up series of the same name]], with [[Stephen Fry]] replacing the late Adams.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/lastchancetosee/|title=BBC ''Last Chance to See'' – Home – Last Chance to See|access-date=4 June 2009}}</ref>

In 1985, Douglas Adams went to [[Madagascar]] in search of the (possibly extinct) lemur the [[aye-aye]]. The trip was part of a project by the [[World Wide Fund for Nature]] and British Sunday newspaper ''[[The Observer]]'', sending well-known authors to remote places to seek endangered species and write articles for ''The Observer Magazine'', to help raise awareness of ecological issues.  Adams was met in Madagascar by zoologist Mark Carwardine (who was working for the WWF at the time). The ''Observer'' project was successful, and Adams and Carwardine developed a radio series around the same concept for [[BBC Radio 4]]. Carwardine later said:

: "We put a big map of the world on a wall, Douglas stuck a pin in everywhere he fancied going, I stuck a pin in where all the endangered animals were, and we made a journey out of every place that had two pins."<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/lastchancetosee/sites/about/last_chance_to_see.shtml|title=BBC ''Last Chance to See'' – About – Background|access-date=4 June 2009}}</ref>

The journeys undertaken were to see:
* The [[aye-aye]] in Madagascar
* The [[Komodo dragon]] on the island of [[Komodo (island)|Komodo]] in Indonesia
* The [[kākāpō]] in New Zealand
* The [[mountain gorilla]] in [[Zaire]]
* The [[northern white rhinoceros]] in Zaire
* The [[baiji|Yangtze river dolphin]] in China
* The [[Rodrigues flying fox|Rodrigues fruit bat]] on the island of [[Rodrigues (island)|Rodrigues]], [[Mauritius]]
* The [[Amazonian manatee]] in Brazil
* The [[Juan Fernández fur seal]] on the [[Juan Fernández Islands]], Chile