Barcelona Zoo
Let´s meet Alex Mascarell Llosa , Scientific illustrator and designer at the Barcelona Zoo.
His favourite animals are definitely birds. “ I like them since when I was 20 years old. I’ve never gave them that much appreciation until I began working ith them at the Zoo… then it all changed. I became a birder, a fat birder! Travelling all over to twitch as much species as posible”.
This pasión came from his mother. “She’s been always a keen observer of nature. When she was young she used to spend lots of hours out in the field watching and observing each living being around”.
What happened during Lockdown in the zoo? “ To be honest, some animals have changed a bit their habits as they do not have the input of visiting people around. But the vast majority have not changed their habits and they do much or less the same. Keepers of the Barcelona Zoo work hard and straight to give the animals the maximum wellfare. During this pandemic they’ve had also to deal with the social situation of their friends,… and keep on doing their best to make their animals behave as always been doing”.
We love his ilustraciones, Alex himself is very critical about his own work. “Actually, I’m not that proud of my illustrations. I try not to watch them after publishing or after a publication is out on sale. I allways find that they could be better, and I find all the errors in each drawing”. I try to learn and enjoy drawing each single day. I’d love to draw the 11500 species of birds of the world… but, I guess that this won’t be possible at all. By now, what I want is to keep collaborating with Lynx Edicions, a publishing company based here in Barcelona and specialised in nature books, in their field guides of the world».
Do you think we have learned a good lesson from this lockdown phase? «We have learned that nature is the first and the last shield that protect us from diseases, virus, etc. We are quite aware that breaking balance in nature has a price that we cannot pay at all. Every single human should have became humble when understanding that a really tiny single non living thing, can kill you. But in the other hand our civilisation is allways focused on growing and growing without understanding that nothing in the world can grow forever. Nothing. And if it tries to do it, nature tends to balance the situation. So, nature will suffer more on forthcomming years as new policies to recover from COVID crisis will lead conservation of nature to the last place of our agendas. Its happening right now. I’ve read about some politicians approving mesures to exploit further in nature in order to recover from the global economic crisis due to pandemic. For me, this pandemic has been a short (and dramatic) trailer of the real movie that will end us forever, the Climate Change».