Lee McGeorge Durrell - Brief Biography

Brief Biography

Lee was born in Memphis, Tennessee, and showed an interest in wildlife as a child. She studied philosophy at Bryn Mawr College near Philadelphia before enrolling in 1971 for a graduate programme at Duke University, to study animal behaviour. She conducted research for her Ph.D. on the calls of mammals and birds in Madagascar.She met Gerald Durrell when he gave a lecture at Duke University in 1977, and married him in 1979. In December 2005, Lee Durrell handed over a large collection of dead animals (which had originally been collected and bred by her husband Gerald Durrell) to the National Museums of Scotland to aid genetic research of the critically rare species.

Lee Durrell moved to Jersey and became involved with the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust (then the Jersey Wildlife Preservation Trust). She accompanied Durrell on his last three conservation missions:

• Mauritius, other Mascarene Islands and Madagascar (1982) (account in Gerald Durrell's Ark on the Move)
• Russia (1986) (account in Durrell in Russia, co-authored with Gerald Durrell)
• Madagascar (1990) (account in Gerald Durrell's The Aye-Aye and I)

She became the Honorary Director of the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust after the death of Gerald Durrell in 1995. She was instrumental in getting the Jersey Wildlife Preservation Trust renamed after Gerald Durrell, on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the Jersey Zoo. She is also a member of various expert groups on conservation, and is fondly called "Mother Tortoise" in certain areas of Madagascar due to her work with the Ploughshare Tortoise.