Bear Grylls regrets the killing of animals on his survival television shows

Bear Grylls has admitted that too many animals were killed during his early television shows in the name of survival. He believes that it is far better to forage for dead animals when surviving under incredibly harsh conditions. During his survival show The Island contestants were featured killing snakes and an iguana. He has also killed rabbits and frogs as part of his expeditions.

Bear Grylls. Photo: Wikipedia.

He regrets the practice now and believes that survivors should live off animals that are already dead. He was speaking on BBC Radio 4. He said:

"I think in terms of survival and food; definitely in the early days we were killing way too many snakes and stuff like that in the name of survival. I've moved so far away from that nowadays. It's always about finding carcasses, bugs and grubs. If you look at great survivors historically they are always the foragers."

He also believes that if you go after big game you take too big a risk and you are using your energy inefficiently. Also, the increased popularity of veganism and vegetarianism has changed his mind. He's taken many stars who are vegan and vegetarian into the wild and he respects them and their views.

And, his position on climate change has changed as well. This is because he has seen far too many consequences of climate change during his travels over every corner of the planet. He said:

"I've seen it [global warming] in every corner of our great planet-extreme one-off weather, freak conditions, totally unseasonal flooding, unprecedented wildfires, polluted broken oceans that are often, I've seen, starting to turn to swamps. Thousands of remote Pacific islands covered, so you can't even see the ground, in plastic and rubbish. Habitat and wilderness starving."

Bear Grylls is influential. He is a big voice on television and I hope that these views are heard. There are still too many people on the planet who see nothing wrong in killing animals for pleasure never mind for survival. And there are still far too many climate change sceptics. There is almost nothing you can do to change their minds. They remind me of the anti-vaxxers who don't believe in vaccinations but they do believe in conspiracy theories. You can't change their mind either. They have rigid ways of thinking and are completely convinced that they are correct when it is clear that they are incorrect.