WHEN Jeremy Madeiros took over as Government Conservation Officer just over a year ago, he understood just how huge a responsibilty he was taking on. The graduate of Merristwood College of Agriculture and Horticulture in Surrey, England had worked under his predecessor, David Wingate, while an apprentice with Agriculture & Fisheries.

He knew the extreme devotion that Dr. Wingate had given to the protection of Bermuda's natural and endemic species. He knew of Dr. Wingate's incredible success in bringing the cahow, a bird unique to Bermuda, back from the brink of extinction. He knew he had big shoes to fill.

This week, photographer TAMELL SIMONS and reporter HEATHER WOOD sat down to talk with Mr. Madeiros about his work, his family and the 38 cahow chicks that he watches over at night.

Q: Were you an inquisitive child?

A: When I was a kid growing up, I was the sort who was the odd one out. While all the others were playing soccer and cricket, I would be under a patch of trees or turning over rocks and coming home with a toad in each hand so it's in my nature.

I was interested from a young age. Although back then there wasn't much information out there on natural history in Bermuda. We knew about the date the settlers arrived and Sir George Somers, but very little else. People in my generation and the previous, if you liked plants and the environment, you were considered to be a real weirdo. It was an alien concept. Now, it's almost an in-thing to be environmentally conscious. People don't look at us as wackos any more.

Q: With such a strong interest, did you fall naturally into the field?

A: Not really. My family owned the old Friendly Store (now Lindo's Supermarket in Warwick) and after I left school, I worked there for six years but even then I would plant cedar trees and (constantly expressed) my concerns about the environment.

Finally one day, somebody said to me, "If you're so concerned, why don't you do something about it?" In 1984 I started in the apprenticeship programme at the old Agriculture & Fisheries - at the bottom - and worked my way up. I've been working with the Cahow Project, really, since then.

I even worked with David Wingate, who introduced me to the cahow and to the finer points of agriculture and plant management. Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think that I would one day (take over that role). I would have been happy just to work and continue to grow my cedar trees.

It's a very humbling experience but it is something that I've worked 20 years toward although I'd be the first to admit that I still don't know everything. There are always new discoveries in this field. there's a constant upgrading of ideas and discoveries.

David Wingate has really been one of my sources of inspiration. He's living proof that if one person is dedicated, vigorous and stubborn enough, he can make a huge difference and can turn around a sad story of environmental destruction.

Q: I've heard your wife refers to herself as a cahow widow, what's that about?

A: As I said, I began with the Cahow Project about 18 years ago. They're noctural birds and every year about this time, around May and June, from Christmas on really, it's (the cahow) busy season. I've been going out to Nonsuch Island several times a week and when the chicks exercise, it's every other night, returning home some time between 3 a.m. and 5.30 a.m.

My wife Leila and I have been married for 15 years. She knows the routine and every year about this time, especially, is a real trooper. We have two young children, Seth, who's six and has a wonderful memory and knows the name of most plants and animals he comes across, and Elizabeth, who's two years old.

It's a difficult juggling act I perform in the sort of field I work in. I'm never totally away from my job. Half the work I do is done on a totally volunteer basis because I believe in it and I have a passion for it and it's work that I know must be done.

I often, for example, get calls at home during the nights and over the weekends about injured birds and then there's all the night watches. It sometimes can get frustrating as I do need time with my family as well. My wife is incredible. She fills in the slack.

(The work I do) I couldn't do without her. She has to take over the job of making sure the kids get to bed on time and watching over the house while I'm stuck on a rock somewhere, so we joke that she's become a cahow widow.

Q: Chicks exercise?

A: Yes. When the chicks are at the point where they have been fed as much as they can be - when they're as big as butterballs - they're abandoned by their parents. As they will be spending nearly 100 per cent of their time in the air, they have to develop their muscles.

There's a period of five to ten nights, when they exercise their wings and flight muscles to get ready for the vigours of flying. They do all of this without parental supervision. There are one or two which are sometimes malnourished and, as a result, are too weak to completely develop their muscles on their own.

It may be that they've been abandoned prematurely or their parents were killed - these, we take in and give supplementary care so they're in a condition so that they can depart. It's the most important journey of their life and they have to be capable of flying for years on end.

Q: The cahow mates for life, produces only one egg each year. So is your aim then to produce a breed of supercahows? Ones that can survive on their own?

A: Rats and other animals which prey on the cahow make it impossible for them to live on the mainland but we can manage the rats and keep other predators off and reproduce a natural environment for them. I followed the efforts of David Wingate who had the hardest battle and now, after 40 years of intensive management, we're starting to see the population increase basically through continued management.

(It's hoped that through our observations we) can get more knowledge about the weight they should be and we're able to spot problems they might have well in advance. It's given us a lot of insight. We're not looking for perfect chicks. We don't want to take over the role of nature. I look at myself as a steward. The last thing I want to see is a species that's reduced to a zoo animal. We're basically managing things man introduced to Bermuda and which are now unbalanced against nature and our endemic species. We're trying to restore that balance.

Q: Say it's 2 a.m., you're alone watching the chicks, there's no moon. Don't you ever worry about the many things that go bump in the night?

A: Not at all. The experience of being out on those islands, in a small way, makes me appreciate what Bermuda must have been like to the first settlers. It's almost a religious experience for me. I've always felt closer to God when surrounded by his creations than when I'm in a building created by the hands of men.

I never feel lonely out there. I get a real sense of being in a place where I feel most at home; a place I feel most comfortable in and I do have volunteers out there with me. David Wingate is still involved in many aspects and we do have dozens of other volunteers also, without whose help all of this would not be possible. Their contribution is absolutely invaluable.

Q: To have such patience with tiny creatures you must have grown up in a house of animals?

A: I did always have lots of pets. I was raised in a house with lots of cats and, from time to time, one or two small dogs. My mother was a great cat lover. We had one stray cat that somebody dumped off and in short order had several litters of kittens. It's only in the last few years that the last has passed on.

My grandfather was a great bird lover and it's probably one of the things that steered me in the direction of being a bird lover myself. He was a wonderful carpenter and would build huge aviaries and had lots of citrus fruits and vegetables. I would love to go to his house every weekend so I could explore the woods and his big cedar trees. It was one of the things that helped me develop my love and respect of the land and nature.

Q: What do you find most fascinating about nature and her powers?

A: Nature is incredibly robust. It really has the ability to come back from almost nothing if you give it that nudge; that helping hand. Nature has such incredible recuperative powers. It's amazing that we can see areas come alive again after being nearly totally destroyed; that animals can come back from near extinction.

It shows that it's most important that we set aside living space - a natural environment that's not concrete, asphalt, steel and glass. People have become totally alienated from that idea and think we don't need nature any more but we are still complelely dependent on it in the long run.

It involves every native and endemic plant and animal. There is more of a threat that the actual habitat they require is not good enough to protect one animal. For example, the panda, if we don't protect the mountains that grow the bamboo that they need to survive and the land itself we'll end up with animals that only exist in zoos.

Q: What is there not enough of in Bermuda? What, in your opinion, are we lacking as an island?

A: There's not enough open land in Bermuda. The island is now almost one big development area and plainly so out of balance. Have we saved an equal amount of area of Bermuda that we can rely on to attract visitors and to enable residents to get away and relax a bit?

To accommodate the needs of the future, parks and nature reserves need to be expanded. There's not all that much left. We've been saying this for decades and it's really becoming a matter of urgency. When people come in on aircrafts all they can see are a sea of white roofs. There's probably only five large areas left that aren't in imminent danger of development which leads to overcrowing and social problems.

It means that any wild life is confirmed, like a little oasis, in a sea of development. If you don't increase the area to give them more breathing space and buffer zones we will lose those species or have them decrease to extreme rarity or extinction.

I'd rather put my stock in things such as that, things that make a difference in the long term. I look around Bermuda, at all the ostentatious homes. There are no modest houses being built any more, there aren't any Bermuda cottages and it's all so far beyond what people need.

We've almost turned materialism into a religion. People have really lost sight of those things that were perhaps a lot simpler, but a lot more important in life - family, respect for land and neighbours and respect for animals and the individuals they share the island and the earth with.

Q: Are there any other species that are threatened with extinction at the moment?

A: The cahow is well known. The longtail, or the white-tailed tropicbird, is in the middle of a fairly steep decline at the moment. We've been carrying out surveys over the last couple of years, repeating work that was done in the1970s and found that the numbers have declined by one-half to two-thirds. It's plain that, if we extrapolate ahead, in 30 years they could be as rare as the cahow. It's our national bird and the only remaining common seabird. The thing now is to find out what we need to do. The Parks Department is stretched so thin as it is now, it's an impossible task to keep up with all the work that's being created for us unnecessarily but, obviously, the main thing is education.

We've got to stop people from dumping trash on rocks, from stuffing their garbage in the nearest hole in the rocks which are, most often, the longtails' nests. At Ferry Point Park, we constantly find food containers, fishing lines, bottles and I'm sure it's because people just don't realise that April through June is the nesting period for the birds.

It's not a difficult thing to do. If you take containers or anything else into a park or a nature reserve, just take it back out. You've gone to enjoy it and you're now ruining it for everyone else, not to mention all the animals and plants that live there.

Q: Do you do the school chat circuit?

A: I always try to make time for schools if they request lectures and talks on Bermuda's natural environment. It's hard to get grown-ups to change their bad habits and, really, what we're saving is for the next generation of Bermudians to enjoy.

I think that even from a young age, children are mature enough to understand that if they want to enjoy Bermuda when they're older, they have to start taking care of it now. I think that increasing their knowledge of Bermuda's wildlife and nature (will help them understand that).

For a long time, I felt like I was talking to emptiness, but it seems to have turned around a lot. Kids today have a much greater environmental consciousness, so much more than their parents. We've come to the ludicrous situation where a five-year-old kid probably knows five times as much about protecting the environment as their parents.

Q: Do you travel much as a family?

A: My wife and I took (one last fling) before our children were born. We joined a research ship in Antarctica and spent two months going through 40-foot seas and 60-knot winds while seeing some of the most incredible wildlife and scenery in the world.

But for our first time away as a family, we went to Disney World this year which was great for the kids and for me to see them enjoy it. One of the kids' favourite parts was the Animal Kingdom which was great as I was somewhat in my element there.

Q: Do you live by a motto or a creed?

A: I love to work in beautiful, wild areas. I am very fortunate and privileged because I can work in some of the last unspoilt bits of Bermuda. It gives me an idea of what Bermuda used to look like and the fact that I'm having a hand in restoring them to a pristine state is something I find very enjoyable and deeply satisfying.

I was one of the last generations of Bermudians who actually enjoyed the last bits of open countryside. Children today don't have that option. I've seen some of the most loved playgrounds of my youth destroyed one by one.

All my former play haunts have now been taken over by condos and "Do Not Enter" signs so my motto is to always try to leave the earth in as good a condition as you found it, if not better.