Today March 1, 2013, Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente has been awarded an Honorary Doctorate In Memoriam by Burgos University in a landmark event held at the Aula Magna of King´s Hospital, utterly overcrowded for the occasion and featuring the attendance of Marcelle Parmentier, widow of the eminent world class naturalist, two of her three daughters and his grandson.
Marcelle Parmentier, Dr. Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente´s widow, receives from hands of María Teresa Sancho (Professor of Nutrition and Bromatology of Science Faculty, acting as a godmother) the Doctor Honoris Causa In Memoriam academic cap bestowed by Burgos University to the internationally famous divulger of nature and great documentalist and broadcaster on fauna, while Alfonso Murillo Villar (Chancellor of UBU) and every attendant to the ceremony warmly burst into applause with a protracted ovation lasting about two uninterrupted minutes.
Doctor Honoris Causa enamelled medal assigned by Burgos University to Dr. Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente in recognition to his key contribution in both the academic and cultural scopes, along with his outstanding contributions to society.
Marcelle Parmentier holds in her hands the Book of Science she has just been given by professor María Teresa Sancho, while the UBU Chancellor, rest of professors, new doctors and many other hundreds of attendees show their sincere affection and respect, clapping hands with huge intensity.
The Burgos University Aula Magna of King´s Hospital has become an unutterable hearth of highly passionate skin deep emotions and remembrances regarding Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente, an extraordinary man of truly international stature, who was thirty years ahead his time and is currently considered the most important creator of nature and fauna films ever together with Jacques Cousteau and David Attenborough.
granted to the renowned scientist, naturalist and zoologist Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente, 33 years after his death in Shaktoolik (Alaska) on March 14, 1980, when the plane piloted by Warren Dobson in which he was flying together with the camera operators Teodoro Roa and Alberto Mariano Huéscar filming the Iditarod sledge dog race, crashed against the ground, all of them dying in the accident.
The bestowing of Doctor Honoris Causa in Memoriam by Burgos University to Dr. Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente, along with the deliverance to her widow of the academic cap, enamelled medal and Book of Science had been preceded by the handing over of attributes and diplomas to the doctors which got their degrees at Burgos University during the year 2012 (a total of 39), the discourse by Dr. Sara Gutiérrez González in name of her workmates, and the delivery of diplomas to the doctors distinguished with the Extraordinary Prize of Doctorate (a total of 14), and a praiseworthy Laudatio speech painstakingly prepared and given by Professor María Teresa Sancho,
which dealt on Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente´s childhood in Poza de Sal (Burgos), the village where he was born, and his early love for animals; the first time that he saw a Peregrine falcon hunting a duck in the area of the Moor of Masa (near Poza de Sal), an encounter which marked his future as a naturalist and his dedication to falconry reading in depth medieval texts and practicing the hunting with prey birds until turning into a recognized authority in the subject, promoting the National Center of Falconry; his studies of Medicine and Surgery at Valladolid University and of Stomatology at Madrid one; his intense activity when he was 40 years old, training Peregrine falcons to chase away the birds endangering the traffic air in Torrejón de Ardoz; his taking part in the foundation of different organizations devoted to the defense of animals and nature; his great work fostering the creation of the Spanish section of Worldwide Fund for Wildlife and being co-founder, vicepresident and member of the Board of Directors of ADENA, establishing ´The Lynxs´ youth division, which was joined by more than 25,000 youngsters;
Odile
Rodríguez de la Fuente and Marcelle Parmentier visibly touched listening to
Professor Maria Teresa Sancho´s speech on Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente´s impressive background and professional merits
along with his exceptional stature as a communicator. Both the university
professors and new doctors, together with the abundant attending audience keep
an utter silence and pay top attention inside the Aula Magna of King´s Hospital
at Burgos University, where the historical act is being held. The unutterable
context is simultaneously eerie and full
of elation: in the mind of every attendee is highly alive the remembrance of
the aircraft accident in Shatoolik (Alaska) on March 14, 1980, which deprived a whole country of its most important
icon, and brought about millions of people in mourning, but at the same time,
it is very apparent that the imprint left by this unique and unrepeatable man is
huge. Stunningly, his legacy and his memory, 33 years after his death, are very
alive, something within the reach of very few. People haven´t forgotten him,
having a great love for both Félix and his family, which is very tangible in
the big room. © José Manuel Serrano Esparza
whose fifteen years of life were certainly prodigious and turned him into a worldwide benchmark both as a naturalist and maker of documentary films on fauna, whose cinematographic quality of image and incredible scenes not shot before him will be very difficult to beat in future; his strenuous fight to save endangered species and to instill awareness in civil population and governments on the biological and economic significance of the preservation of those animals and the natural spaces in which they develop; his importance as a pioneer in the defense of the wolf, making a remarkable research on the social hierarchy of males and females in captivity, managing to attain a change from being deemed as vermin to be declared protected species, so avoiding its extinction in the Iberian Peninsula, unlike what had happened in many other European countries; the starting of ´Falcon Operation´ during late seventies, with the valuable collaboration of his wife, making a top-notch work on the breeding in captivity of Peregrine falcons, successfully reintroducing these animals in countries where they had almost extinguished because of the poisoning with pesticides; his contribution to the salvation as species of asturcones horses and Mohor gazelles; his campaign against the exiccation of Daimiel and Doñana, until he secured that they were declared National Parks; his foundation and direction of the Commissison for the Preservation of Cabrera Island; his presentation in 1980 before the highest Spanish authorities of the first Worldwide Strategy for the Keeping of Living Resources and a Sustainable Development; the excellent television programs (Fauna, Blue Planet, Man & the Earth, etc) and radiofonic (The Adventure of Life) on fauna made by Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente, along with the encyclopedias on nature and different zoological species written by him ( Encyclopedia of World Fauna edited by Salvat – 11 volumes- , Iberian Fauna edited by Salvat – 10 volumes- , The Adventura of Life – 11 volumes- edited by Urbión Ediciones, encyclopedic version of the mythical radio programme) and illustrated with gorgeous images in color captured by a great team of photographers, along with outstanding drawings and schemes made by world class drawers like Josechu Lalanda; his famous Countryside Notebooks – 52 volumes in small format- edited by Marín Ediciones, etc; his abundant international awards like the Pearl of Milan and the Silver Nymph of Montecarlo Festival, and what his giant figure meant both for Spain and many other countries all over the world during seventies,
when he became the international benchmark in the sphere of audiovisual documentaries on fauna and nature and also in the field of illustrated encyclopedias delving into those scopes, which he created with greatly handcrafted parameters and including texts featuring great lavishness and depth of information, remarkable scientific rigor and a great deal of explicative sketches.
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Going on with the rundown, she also undescored the key role performed by Félix as one of the experts signing the Foundation Act of the Spanish Society of Ornithology, his graduation in Stomatology in 1957 at Complutense University of Madrid getting the Landete Aragó Extraordinary Award for his thesis ´Protesic Techniques used by XIV Century Falconers´ where Dr. Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente proved the resemblances between the methods used then by the dentists and those ones put in practice by medieval falconers on the feathers of prey birds, his decisive decision in 1960 (year of his father´s death) of giving up the practice of Odontology to wholly devote himself to the study of prey birds and scientific divulgation, his prominent role in the International Congress for the Protection of Prey Birds held in Caen (France) in 1964 where his analysis of the situation of Peregrine falcon in Spain made a sensation and starts a great friendship with Jean François Terrasse and Michel Terrasse (two internationally recognized French falconers), his wedding in 1966 with Marcelle Parmentier, the birth of his daughters Mercedes, Leticia and Odile, his articles in Blanco y Negro magazine on African and Iberian fauna, his deep research into the ethiology of the Iberian wolf, often chased and killed until then (in the same way as the daylight and night prey birds), and to sum up, the great labour of this exceptional man and extraordinary communicator who managed to reach every kind of public, getting amazing audience shares unknown up to that moment, with his radiophonic and television series on one hand and with his abundant encyclopedias on fauna and nature on the other, which marked an epoch and had literally stuck to the radio, televisions and newstands to hundred of millions of people not only in Spain but all over the world.
Likewise, María Teresa Sancho insisted on the seminal role performed by Dr. Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente in the salvation from extinction of jewels of nature like the Iberian Wolf (Canis lupus signatus), the Iberian Lynx (Lynx pardinus), the Royal Eagle (Aquila chrysaetus), the Imperial Eagle(Aquila adalberti), the Peregrine Falcon (Falco Peregrinus), the Goshawk (Accipiter gentilis) and many others.
GOLDEN BROOCH WITH FAR-REACHING ADDRESS PRONOUNCED BY MARCELLE PARMENTIER, DR. FÉLIX RODRÍGUEZ DE LA FUENTE´S WIDOW
Marcelle Parmentier (with her daughters Odile and Mercedes and her grandson sitting on the nearby bench on her right as seen in the image) delivered an unforgettable address in which she mentioned the comprehensive list of amazing achievements attained by Dr. Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente between 1966 and 1980, with his excellent documentary films on fauna Wings and Claws (1966), Safari in Eastern Africa (1972), his comments in the productions Wild Life and Blue Planet (1970-1973), his lovely radio series
© José Manuel Serrano Esparza
The Adventure of Life (1973-1980, broadcast weekly by RNE and reaching the figure of 350 programmes, of which one of them, the audio version of The Sacred Mountain, was even launched into market by CBS in 1974 as a vynil record featuring top-notch sound quality) in which Félix spoke on different species of mammals and birds without any written script, finding always the most suitable words, with a tremendous mastery of Spanish language comparable to the one featured by an academician) and very specially
becoming the world benchmark in this scope, getting gorgeous image quality applying filming parameters more pertaining to Hollywood superproductions, on being the first using 35 mm Mitchell BNC, Mitchell S35R in BNCR mount (providing a very accurate view of what is exactly being shot and optimized for getting amazingly steady movement registration and razor-sharp images, with a rotating turret with capacity for three different lenses, 3 phase 50m and 60 cycle 24-25 fps motor and crystal variable speed 4-120 fps motor) and Arriflex 35BL cinematographic cameras with Angenieux zooms and Carl Zeiss primes, together with an exceptional sound quality achieved through Nagra III NP and Nagra 4.2 Hi-Fi recorders, managing to tell stories about animal behaviour never seen before, with his unique and inimitable style, along with wholly improvised comments, highly lavish in content, without any script, full of passion and steadily displaying a tremendous level of knowledge and very comprehensive and accurate vocabulary with which he knew how to reach everybody, since he was also a top-notch communicator.
the wonderful TV series Man and The Earth (Venezuelan Series -18 chapters-, Iberian Series -92 chapters- and Canadian Series -14 chapters- ) with exceptional music by composer Antón García Abril, which was astoundingly successful, being watched in 40 countries by more than 800 million people, and becoming between 1974 and 1980 a worldwide turning point in this kind of documentary films on nature and fauna, with unparalled definition, loads of detail, vivid colours, drama and scenes shot from a lot of different angles, with some legendary chapters like The Yanomamos, A People of the Jungle, My Friend The Otter, Searching for Orinoco Indians, Operation Anaconda, The World of Jaguar, the Brave People, The Lost Paradise, The Sacred Mountain, Nahanni, The Frozen Cemetery, Kluane, The Lake of Beavers, Iditarod 1 and 2, The Iberian Wolf, The Iberian Lynx, The Royal Eagle, The Goshawk, The Peregrine Falcon, The Imperial Eagle, The Night Prey Birds, The Egyptian Vulture Breaking an Ostrich Egg, etc.
Besides, she outlined the likewise top-notch breakthroughs accomplished by Dr. Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente within the editorial sphere, with his works World Fauna (also known as Encyclopedia Salvat of Fauna), started in 1969, prologued by Konrad Lorenz, made up by 12 volumes, edited by Salvat Ed. and of which nothing less than 18 million volumes sold in Spain and 22 millions in thirty million volumes in 30 other countries all over the world, which makes up a total of 40,000.000 volumes sold, an unprecedented success in this domain, being translated into 16 languages; Iberian Fauna (still currently the reference work in its sphere, made up by 10 volumes, in which as always, Félix displays his exceedingly deep knowledge and inextinguishable passion and love for Nature and its species), and his famous Countryside Notebooks (1978-1979), a further remarkable success in small format, launched into market by Editorial Marín, translated into four languages and made up by 60 countryside notebooks featuring 52 pages each, merging highly informative texts with gorgeous drawings and schemes about every species dealt on by Dr. Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente (those Countryside Books also exist currently in a digital version for iPad and other tablets, available both in Spanish and English, and featuring great scientific knowledge, 3D animations, photographies, dynamic maps, real sounds, illustrations and excellent texts, along with the added chance of enabling the geolocation and sight of a number of species of animals, that has been made by the Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente Foundation and is called iFelix, in what makes up one of the most significant initiatives of faunistic and environmental divulgation with state-of-the-art computer science and infographic technology developed hitherto within this scope, and are a very valuable and useful learning tool for biologists, naturalists and lovers of animals as a whole).
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She also elaborated on Félix´s great mettle and personality, which began to shape during his childhood in Poza de Sal (Burgos), his native village, where he started stimulating his perception and watching ability, building up remembrances and experiences of his steady contact with nature into his prodigious memory, his abandonment of Odontology to wholly devote himself to the study of living creatures, delving into the research of animal behaviour, his stage as a hired professor of Ethiology at the Veterinary University of Madrid, and how enriching was his medicine degree was for him throughout his professional career.
Likewise, she described Dr. Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente´s global keynote regarding the world as a planetary macrosystem ruled by the huge complexity of life phenomenon, where species can´t survive in unbalanced habitats, and the proved fact that any human intervention within one of the systems has often a ripple effect on all the others, in such a way that the aftermath of human pressure and the uncontrolled and eager exploitation of natural resources are unpredictable, accelerating the climate change, and not giving time the species to adapt to it.
Marcelle Parmentier also spoke about Félix´s full
understanding as to the ruthless decline of the planetary ecological system, laying
down for himself an unwavering aim during his life: the establishing of a New
Awareness, with which to educate human beings, defined by an ethics of
preservation of the world surrounding us, awakening in the society an atavistic
sense of belonging to a grandiose whole which life is, by grasping what we have
and can lose if the massive plundering of nature and its different species is
not curbed, being the disappearance of the topsoil another of his great concerns.
Therefore, being cognizant of the influence of the
large media in society, Félix masterly used television, radio and every written
means like encyclopedias and books to convey his message, of which the wondrous
TV series The Man and The Earth was its greatest exponent, with 130 chapters
spread all over the world in a number of different languages and which was elected in 2000
by the Academy of Arts and Sciencies as the Best Production in the whole
history of Spanish Television.
She also explained the innovative approach with which Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente tackled the making of his Encyclopedia Salvat of Fauna, following a zoogeographical classification scheme instead of an alphabetic one, which was commonplace till then.This colossal work also became quickly an outstanding international sales success, being translated into 16 languages, with 18 millions of volumes sold in Spain and 22 millions being sold in other 30 countries all over the world, which makes a total of 40,000.000 volumes sold, an unprecedented editorial milestone in this sphere.
But first and foremost, Marcelle Parmentier, highly thrilled, underlined in her address the extraordinary gifts of Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente as a communicator creating a mental flux between him and his millions of people audiences and an everlasting indissoluble link, as well as having been able to change the mentality of a whole country, having as most important goal the new generation who could use their youth and energy to turn the ideas into realities and build the foundations of their own future, so he deemed that his greatest challenge as a communicator was to work as an umbilical cord between the scientific world and the civil society, so as to generate a pressure hub over the world of Politics and Economy to be able to put back the Planet Earth and its Biosphere (increasingly spoilt by the pollution and massive looting of its resources) on the right track, looking after both nature and its fauna to the utmost.
A nowadays utterly valid message of future by Dr. Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente in defense of Nature, its zoological diversity and environment, which anticipated in some decades to the current concern about the ecological preservation in the five continents, with a scientific and cultural legacy featuring a great love for nature and its biological diversity whose knowledge can be exceedingly profitable to both adults and particularly the youngsters of upcoming generations.
After around one minute of applause, once finished her address, Marcelle Parmentier, her daughters Mercedes Rodríguez de la Fuente, Odile Rodríguez de la Fuente and Félix´s grandson abandon the King´s Hospital Aula Magna of Burgos University, in the middle of demonstrations of affection and respect by the abundant attending public.
Adjoining area to the Aula Magna of King´s Hospital at Burgos University. Few minutes after the end of the solemn act. Marcelle Parmentier talks to Emiliano Aguirre (friend of Dr. Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente, whom he met in Madrid during sixties) and starter of the Pleistocene site of Atapuerca, whose excavations he led from 1978 until his retirement in 1990, creating the great team of specialists in different fields made up by Juan Luis Arsuaga, José María Bermúdez de Castro, Eudald Carbonell, Ignacio Martínez Mendizábal, Ana Gracia Téllez and others, who in 1992 found in the Bones Chasm the most complete and best kept human skull in the Mankind fossil register, featuring an antiquity of 300,000 years and belonging to the Homo Heidelbergensis species, and two years later, the group made up by Aurora Martín, Jordi Rosell, Carlos Lorenzo, Montse Esteban, Marina Mosquera and Artur Cebriá discovered the fossil remnants of six members of 800,000 years old Homo Antecessor, the first hominid species in Europe, in the TD-6 level of the Great Dolina, verified by the presence of the mouse Mimomys savini and a further analysis of the Aurora stratum of the location made by Josep María Parés, who proved that the inverted magnetic polarity of the Earth reflected in the sediment in the moment in which such level had deposited.
The preeminent paleonthologist, Prince of Asturias Prize 1997 to the Scientific and Technological Research and Member of the Royal Academy of Exact, Physics and Nature Sciencies was another of the many personalities of both cultural and scientific sphere who attended to the investment of Dr. Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente as Doctor Honoris Causa in Memoriam by Burgos University.
Dr. Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente. His huge audiovisual, bibliographic, faunistic and ecological legacy, along with his influence are still very present, 33 years after his death in Shaktoolik (Alaska) on March 14, 1980, to such an extent, that amazingly, his figure and significance grow up more and more every day with the elapse of years. A Giant of XX Century, great friend of Konrad Lorenz and Jacques Cousteau, and a visionary man whose exceptional human stature always matched his international dimension as a naturalist and worlwide benchmark as a creator of documentary films on Fauna and Nature, whose global quality in a number of differents sides, richness of content, sharpness and realism of image, drama and visual and conservationist impact perhaps won´t ever beaten, as proved by the DVD discs of The Man and The Earth.
In this regard, the extraordinary series The Man and The Earth,
highly professionally digitized frame by frame to DVD by Divisa Ediciones in 2007 (from the original 35 mm reels shot between 1974 and 1980) and which provides a much better quality of image and sound than the pieces and chapters of it available online, keeps on being a remarkable sales success and
is a wonderful audiovisual experience not only for lovers of nature and fauna but also for scientists, biologists, ethiologists, etc, who have the chance of relishing a true audiovisual home theatre experience this treasure on 42" or larger plasma, LCD or LED screens, with superb definition and contrast of image, depth of colours and exceedingly comprehensive chromatic nuances, along with a very wise depth of field distribution during the scenes, some of them truly impressive and which go on being the benchmark in its domain, like the hunting of a hare by Taiga the Goshawk (for whose shooting was necessary a stint of six months),
the Acoustic War between Night Prey Birds and Rodents during the Darkness of the Night, the Iberian Wolves in full run filmed in slow motion, the lightning stalkings of rabbits by the beautiful Iberian Lynx, the hunting of wild doves through claw impact in full flight by Peregrine Falcons which dive from a great height at a speed of 400 km/hour, the plungings of Kingfishers into the waters of the Rivers in Iberian Peninsula, the worldwide famous capture of a very young moufflon on top of a mountain by a huge Royal Eagle which takes it flying with the upper area of the ungulate´s head pierced by its talons (with a tremendous pressure of around 200 kg/cm2 almost instantly killing the prey in the beginning of the flight), until reaching its nest (the complete sequence was filmed with three different cameras from a number of angles), the very dangerous rescue of very Big Anacondas in the Venezuelan jungle, the first shooting of the Yanomamos (a people of the Orinoco forest that had never before made contact with persons from the ´civilized world´) showing their life and habits, The Sacred Mountain (filmed in the north area of the Amazonian region of Venezuela, with images of the summit of the great Autana Hill, an impressive 1,300 meter high Tepuy - id est, a natural rock outcrop with the shape of an enormous monolith- whose fauna and flora have been isolated from the rest of the world for millions of years, with lavishness of carnivore plants, endemic species and a dazzling landscape), the Frozen Cemetery (one of the most frightening documentary films of the series The Man and The Earth, where Dr. Félix Rodríguez de la Fuente manages to solve the scientific riddle regarding the death of one hundred Dahl sheep 2,000 years ago inside Grotte Valerie in the NorthWest territories of Canada - and whose skeletons have preserved undamaged because of the very low inner temperature- with a very dramatic outcome), the wonderful Canadian landscapes of Nahanni and Kluane ...
© Text and Indicated Photos: José Manuel Serrano Esparza.
