Last updated 14:12, Wednesday, 18 June 2008

In the movie Jurassic Park, Sir Richard Attenborough plays a billionaire who recreates long-extinct dinosaurs using DNA from a mosquito trapped in amber.

Terry Bowes with Wendy the Cumberland Pig

Sadly, it all goes horribly wrong as creatures escape, kill each other and are eventually abandoned by the scientists so there can be two disappointing sequels.

Swap Hollywood for Cumbria and Sir Dicky for a bearded bloke with his sleeves rolled up and grubby jeans and instead of Jurassic Park you get Jurassic pork...

Terry Bowes is the Attenborough character, but instead of a mosquito in a glossy ball of amber he found his DNA sample on an old hide of the extinct porker.

Instead of the film’s hi-tech multi-million dollar research laboratory, he and some friends were getting grubby in farmyards playing cupid as they paired off different breeds.

And rather than working on a south sea island isolated from the rest of the world by hundreds of miles of open sea, he’s just off the A6 close by Penrith, at the back of the Pottery centre.

Terry is well-known for his work at Wetheriggs Animal Rescue and Heritage Centre and admits his research on the pig is taking the idea of conservation one step further than usual.

Saving threatened and rare animals is one thing, but reinventing a species?

“I had read about the Cumberland pig and thought it was a real shame that it died out,” he explains.

“I have always had an interest in conservation and reviving a rare breed is part of that.

“I thought it would be a good idea to use the science available to revive the Cumberland.”

Now, after five years of research, trial and error and selective breeding, he claims he has successfully recreated the Cumberland pig.

The last genuine Cumberland died on a Bothel farm in 1960.

Terry says that Wendy, just six months old, is a 99.6 per cent DNA match to the Cumberland porker of old.

With her white skin, coarse hair and floppy ears she looks the part, grunts the grunt and even walks the weaving walk of the original.

Terry admits that initially he was just aiming to breed a pig that resembled the old Cumberland – a looky-likey.

But that changed with a phone call out of the blue from someone who had an original Cumberland hide that could be sent off for DNA testing and genetic mapping.

Terry refuses to say who made the call or where the hide is kept, but its sudden appearance was crucial.

“We had already started the breeding process when this person heard what we were trying to do and sent us a sample of the hide,” he says.

“We sent it off and I was amazed at some of the results. We had started wrongly for a start!

“The test showed that there was a Polynesian pig in the ancestry, which was probably introduced into the county via Whitehaven.

“It also showed there is some Tamworth in there, which is surprising because they are prick-eared, rather than floppy.”

There is also some wild boar, Welsh pig and Gloucester Old Spot in Wendy’s make-up.

So Wendy is really GM food... Terry flinches at the idea. “We are using natural genes, not introducing anything unnatural – we are not even using artificial insemination.

“Even with the DNA there has been a lot of trial and error and mixing and matching of the different breeds.

“A lot of our friends have eaten a lot of pork.”

When Wendy was born, Terry was not expecting such a close match.

“I did not get very excited,” he admits. "She was one of only two, the other died soon after birth and she was really weak.

“We sent her DNA off along with some others and I got quite excited when the results came through!

“I’m not relieved, because we are nowhere near where we want to be, but at least we are heading in the right direction.

“I think we can home in another percentage point or two.

“It will be another four or five years before we get to the point where we will have enough of the breed to send on to farmers for raring and they will never be a commercial pig because they mature too slowly.”

Terry has spent most of his working life in zoos up and down the country, caring for and conserving wildlife.

It almost cost him his life on one occasion.

“I was a young lad and working in Yorkshire when I was bitten by a Monocled Cobra,” he smiles.

“I was put in one ambulance and the serum from Liverpool was put in another ambulance and we met on a motorway service station.

“I don’t know how close I was to death...it was my own silly fault, familiarity breeds contempt, but it taught me a big lesson,” he adds, fishing out a tarantula spider and gently placing it on my palm....

He came to Cumbria five years ago to manage the South Lakes Wild Animal Park at Dalton-in-Furness and only opened the Wetheriggs centre two years ago.

But it is already home to almost 500 creatures, from farmyard goats, sheep, hens and pigs to giant Burmese pythons, young Eagle Owls, tarantula spiders, iguanas, Serengeti land snails, Water Dragon lizards, a blue and gold macaw and even three skunks.

Walking past the pens and stepping over the very free range pair of young Tamworth pigs, he introduces me to the menagerie.

He’s had fun with the names he has given to some animals, but the back stories range from the strange to the silly to the downright sad.

Cyril the swan (nice swan Cyril) was brought in after being battered and bloodied by other swans.

The South American Rheas are called Chris and Lady Di (you work out the joke).

The Harris Hawk, like many of the animals, came through the police.

They confiscated it from a man who was hunting with it as he drove along in his car.

The police caught him after he filmed himself and put it on YouTube.

Some animals will be found new family homes (following all the necessary checks), some will go to farms, some to zoos and others will stay at the centre under an adoption scheme where visitors can pay from £25 a year towards the upkeep of the animal and visit it as often as they like.

Terry is a bubbly character, with as many ideas for the centre as he has corny one-liners.

But man’s endless mistreatment of animals and casual disregard for their welfare must depress even him surely?

“People depress me, but we see both sides of society,” he puckers.

“People give us donations and provide homes for some of our animals.”

As part of his conservation work, he takes creatures and mini beasts out to schools.

His ambition is simple: “I’m trying to teach the conservation message and stop a lot of what is happening around the world. I’d like to put myself out of a job.”

There must be one more movie to be made from one man’s obsessive desire to regenerate an age-old extinct creature – but who would play Terry?

Sean Connery...Jack Nicholson...Sir Dicky?

Terry laughs: “Probably some untidy scruffy youth.”

If you have information about the Cumberland pig or want more information about the animal centre, contact Terry Bowes on 01768 889121