| What led you
to dedicate your life to wildlife?
I think most people who become naturalists start as children.
They like to be outdoors. As you grow older, you discover
that you can make a living doing what you like to do anyway.
You go into it because you have a sense of wonder and you
like to be with animals. But as time goes on, you realise
you’ve got to fight on behalf of the animals and habitat,
or they will disappear. So then you spend time on conservation.
Conservation has nothing to do with animals, it has to do
with economics, with society, with politics. Suddenly you
find most of your time is spent on things you don’t
really want to do because that’s not how you started
out. But in the end, the conservation is more important.
You studied gorillas in Central Africa in the late
’50s. Until you wrote about them, gorillas were considered
dangerous “brutes”. What led you to study them?
I didn’t have that perception to begin with. Nothing
was really known about wild gorillas. I went to the University
of Alaska as an undergraduate, and spent a lot of time in
the tundra and the forest with caribou and bears. I knew that
animals try to stay out of your way. If you go quietly near
them, they come to accept your presence. That’s what
I did with gorillas. I just went near them day after day,
which was fairly easy because they form cohesive social groups.
Soon, I knew them as individuals, both their faces and their
behaviour, and I just sat and watched them.
In the early ’60s, you went to India to study tigers.
That was in the Kanha National Park. It was wonderful because
at that time there were hardly any visitors. My wife and I
and our two small sons were there in a little bungalow in
the forest. There were chital around, and barasingha, and
tigers wandering past our hut. It was lovely. Again, I was
dealing with individuals, because I knew all the tigers by
the stripes on their faces. At that time, every Indian forest
officer felt he wasn’t someone until he shot a tiger.
Indira Gandhi helped change that. She said that tigers are
beautiful and must be protected and that took hold. It shows
you that a leader can have a huge impact. India has been trying
very hard to protect tigers. The only place where tiger numbers
are actually increasing is the Russian Far East. But India
still has options. It has plenty of reserves, it just needs
to protect and manage them.
What can the Indian Government do about the
poaching crisis?
Tigers face continual threats – the locals poison them,
sell their bones for medicinal purposes to Asian market countries
like China and Japan. Tibetans have more money and want to
wear tiger and leopard skins to show status. I was in Lhasa
in December 2005, and the shops were full of leopard and tiger
skins. In 2003, the Chinese authorities discovered one shipment
from India containing the parts of 32 tigers, 581 leopards
and 778 otters. But the Dalai Lama has been speaking out forcefully
against the use of animal products, and Tibetans have been
burning skins. The Tibetans are doing it the right way, in
that the social pressure is coming from within.
How do you weigh the dangers of poaching and the international
trade in wildlife products against habitat loss?
It depends on what species you’re talking about. The
tiger is suffering from a lot of habitat loss. The Indian
Parliament is considering a measure that would give each family
living in forest areas several hectares of land of their own
– the Draft Tribal Bill 2005 (See Sanctuary Asia
Vol. XXV No. 4) . That land would then become private rather
than forest land. That will be the end of most tiger habitat
because the government will lose control over the forest.
The threat to habitat is very important in India. The Tibetan
antelope has no habitat problem; it has wide-open spaces.
But antelope are shot by the tens of thousands, and then the
wool gets smuggled to Kashmir where it’s woven into
shahtoosh shawls. An international effort is needed to reduce
this trade.
You first went to China in 1980, and your efforts helped to
establish the Changthang Nature Reserve.
A foreigner, a field biologist, doesn’t establish anything,
the government does. All we can do is get facts and present
them and make suggestions. If governments think our ideas
are reasonable, they may implement them. China’s been
very receptive. In some areas of the reserve, species numbers
have risen, but the whole area is very large, and some spots
are better protected than others. Good legal control and management
are essential. There are people living in the reserve –
nomads with livestock. There as anywhere else, you can never
turn your back. You can never win in conservation, never,
because things change, cultures change. Twenty-five years
ago, the nomads lived in tents and rode horses. Now, most
of them live in huts, have solar panels for electricity, and
have motorcycles. That changes everything.
The way that roads and guns changed everything in India for
tigers and so many other animals.
Yes, and it’s the same in the U.S., you can never turn
your back here. One of the things we’re fighting for
continually is the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. I was
on the first expedition that made a biological survey of that
area, as a result of which it was established in 1960. That’s
nearly 50 years ago, and we’re still fighting to keep
it. Huge amounts of effort, time and money go into the struggle.
You would think something is safe in the U.S. once it’s
established legally. But there’s too much greed and
politics. You have to continue the fight. That’s true
in every country.
The U.S. Endangered Species Act is under
attack by the Bush administration.
This is what bothers me. Here is the richest country in the
world. We cannot protect small areas without fighting for
them constantly. Then you have one of the poorest countries,
Rwanda, where we worked on gorillas. They’ve had genocide,
civil wars – but they’ve saved the gorillas. They
are one of the most crowded countries, yet, they’re
proud of their gorillas. No matter who runs the government,
they say, “we want to save the gorilla.” Some
species in the U.S. are doing well. This country is lucky,
it has a lot of space and relatively low population density.
I admire countries like India more – with over a billion
people, it has still managed to save areas for wildlife. It’s
a continual battle for them, but they have a much better attitude
toward animals than Americans do.
Where do you think that attitude comes from?
It has a religious basis. Buddhism, Hinduism, neither one
encourages the killing of animals, whereas in America, they
forget their education. Young school children like animals.
But most kids forget those interests when they become teenagers.
By the time most people in America are working adults, the
environment has become very peripheral. How can people learn
to hold onto their sympathy for and early interest in animals?
Universities don’t do it. We’ve had two people
named Bush come out of Yale University. Both of them have
been ecological illiterates. There’s no excuse for universities
not to teach students about the environment no matter what
his or her future profession is. Our quality of life depends
upon it. You can’t eradicate poverty in a country with
a destroyed environment. The U.S. uses up so much of the world’s
resources. India and China are growing economically –
there’s going to be a real crunch for resources.
How do you respond to the continually resurfacing argument
that all of the attention lavished on megafauna like tigers
and pandas detracts from the needs of other animals?
People respond to animals emotionally. They’re willing
to give funds to help save tigers and pandas because they
feel they’re beautiful. Of course, everything is beautiful
in its own way, but people are not going to give a lot of
money to preserve leeches and tsetse flies. But since tigers
and pandas need so much space, they protect millions of other
species within their habitats. The money that goes to them,
helps all the animals.
Can you comment on the impact of global warming on
the snow leopard? Is there increasing conflict between common
leopards and snow leopards as common leopards move higher
up the slopes that once were the habitat for snow leopards?
As long as snow leopards have prey higher up, they can get
by, and there are already areas where they overlap a bit in
the Himalaya. If it comes to real conflict, the snow leopard
will lose. We tend to think of snow leopards as living in
high mountains, but in Mongolia, they live in low desert ranges.
Global warming may not result in those areas becoming forested
because they’re too dry, but snow leopards may well
find other areas where they can persist away from leopards.
Everything is going to be affected by global warming.
Do you have a wish list as to the location of peace parks?
There are well over 150 peace parks in the world, or at least
parks on international borders. I’m trying to get Pakistan,
Tajikistan, Afghanistan and China to make a peace park in
the Pamirs, a magnificent mountain range where the four countries
meet. This cross-border region could easily be extended beyond
what is currently envisioned. The Pakistan side can extend
across the Siachen glacier into India, which has a reserve
there already. Peace parks are nice because conservation gets
people to talk, even if they don’t like each other much.
The peace park that I’m working on is mainly for Marco
Polo sheep, which have the biggest horns of any sheep, about
1.5 to 1.8 m. long. They’re gorgeous animals.
What do you believe to be the purpose of field biology?
If you want to save the environment, and everybody needs the
environment to exist, you need information. You can’t
protect and manage something unless you have basic knowledge
about it. Field biologists get the information. How big an
area does a tiger use, how much prey does a tiger need to
subsist? The answers help you make plans for the habitat and
the species. The questions that field biologists now ask have
changed somewhat because conservation has become such an imperative.
And you’ve also got to take care of the aspirations
and needs of local people.
What is the role of field biology in the 21st century?
Unfortunately, universities teach less and less natural history.
Field biology is natural history. Universities are dropping
it, saying that we know everything already. We don’t
know anything yet. There are, maybe, a million and a half
species classified, given scientific names. But there are
probably a minimum of 50 million species. How do they interact?
I don’t think we’ll ever really find out how all
the species in a rainforest interact. Will the disappearance
of some species lead to a cascade of extinctions? We don’t
begin to know any of that. Field biologists get some information
on giant pandas, figure out how many pandas there are in a
given area, how much space they need, and then suggest what
needs to be protected. That’s a good first step, but
you actually know very little about the ecology of the area.
Even more essential is the need to figure out how to get the
public involved. You’ve got to reach their emotions.
You can talk about ethics, about the beauty of animals. The
religious community has done far too little. Who speaks up?
The Dalai Lama is the only major religious leader speaking
up loudly. Every time somebody gets up to preach, they ought
to put it in the context of the environment, because the health
of the environment affects everybody.
Who should be the prime target of conservationists
and field biologists?
Everybody has to get involved, either directly in conservation,
or by donating money, becoming an environmental lawyer, or
working to ensure that the corporations we work for don’t
destroy the environment. We’re all implicated –
each of us has an impact on the environment in every action
we take. State governments, federal governments, corporations,
local nature groups – through every level of society,
we have to take responsibility.
How do you respond to people who maintain that environmentalists
want to turn back the clock to force everyone to live in a
more primitive fashion and forego luxuries?
Is the average American, who has so much material abundance
compared to most of the world’s population, happier
now than he or she was 75 years ago when people didn’t
have so many gadgets? There are a few things like antibiotics
that have made a huge impact. But we don’t really need
all these material things. The waste is horrendous. It’s
possible to cut down on consumption and still keep a good
standard of living.
What do you think the role of the World Bank has been in terms
of the environment?
The role of the World Bank is very mixed – some good
and some not so good. They make loans to countries, they encourage
countries to take loans, and then in order to repay
the loans, countries use their land to grow crops for export,
instead of for local people. Or they cut timber for export
to repay debt. The World Bank has also pushed dams and other
projects that have been environmentally very destructive.
Does field biology benefit from more involvement of women?
In many countries, there are probably as many women as men
in field biology now. When I hire a field biologist, I don’t
think in terms of looking for a man or a woman. Though actually,
you often get more enthusiasm and strength from a woman in
the field than from a man. These days, women seem to be more
adventurous than men.
There’s a strong emotional component to your work. Can
you describe what it was like to see your first tiger or gorilla
or panda?
You read all this nonsense about how scientists are not supposed
to get emotionally involved in what they do. I couldn’t
possibly imagine doing good work without being emotionally
involved, because in the field, you often live under miserable
conditions. It’s either very hot or very cold or very
wet, and the local people don’t know what you’re
really up to, and your coworkers may not be interested in
being miserable. So you’re working under conditions
where a very strong internal drive is essential to keep the
work going. I have different reactions when I see different
animals. With gorillas, these are old acquaintances sitting
there, and you come to feel you know them. With a tiger, it’s
a very different feeling. Tigers are probably the most beautiful
creatures. But if you meet the tiger on foot, it rather concentrates
the mind. You’re looking very carefully at its facial
expression and so forth, trying to figure out what it’s
thinking. Different species elicit different responses.
Would you share some of your tiger memories?
I remember coming very close to a tiger that was sleeping
on a rock. The poor animal was startled too. I went up a tree,
and it sat down below and looked up. If you make a mistake
like that, most animals give you the benefit of the doubt.
Sometimes they don’t, sometimes they eat you! I’ve
never felt seriously threatened, though in retrospect, one
realises something could have happened. You try to evaluate
things quickly enough to see how you can defuse the situation.
Another time I was in a little tree in Kanha on a moonlit
night. There were four tigers below, a mother and three nearly
full-grown cubs. As I sat watching, a big column of stinging
ants came up the tree. Before I knew it, I was covered with
them. What to do? There were all these tigers right near by!
I took a big leap off the tree and ran like hell to get away.
I don’t know how the tigers reacted, I didn’t
stop to find out. They may not have known I was there until
I leaped down from the tree. They can smell very well, but
they don’t use that sense in that way.
Over the span of your career, how has the situation for wildlife
improved and worsened?
You never give up hope. You always keep fighting with hope.
For so many areas and so many species, you try to focus on
something you feel you can accomplish, and you fight for that.
When I studied lions in the ’60s, they were everywhere.
Nobody thought they could be in trouble. There’s just
been a major meeting to discuss the future of lions because
their numbers are dropping so drastically. They’re being
shot and poisoned because they’re around villages, and
people are moving into areas that used to be woodlands. We’re
fighting more and more for just little fragments of nature
and little isolated populations, which bring problems in themselves.
How do you cope with the sadness of this work?
There are so many things you can still do. I’m very
lucky to work for the Wildlife Conservation Society. As long
as I can find money, I can work where I want. So I pick areas
where there’s something that intrigues me, something
that is remote, something that’s not crowded with field
biologists, something where I feel I can do something useful.
There are a lot of countries that don’t really have
any field biologists. There are dozens of them in Kenya, so
the government doesn’t really listen to them. If I go
to a country like Tajikistan, the government listens. They
may not do what I suggest, but at least I have access. Most
people don’t enjoy being out in the field. It’s
not that pleasant often, and they prefer to be in an office.
Even in the U.S., most field biologists are within a two-hour
drive of a McDonald’s! That’s very different from
being in the middle of nowhere for months.
If you could wave a magic wand, what would you wish
for?
I think I would change the human gene, the human mind, so
that everybody would wake up in the morning with a land ethic,
to be concerned, to love and respect the land they live with.
Sanctuary reaches a lot of people, so it has a tremendous
impact and is very important in engendering that land ethic.
It has interesting articles, excellent photos and it raises
awareness on issues people don’t normally think about.
There has been a wonderful change in India since my first
visit in 1963. Back then, there was really no one doing solid
field biology. I remember one biologist doing quite a bit
of work on rodents. But over the years, India has built a
wonderful core of field biologists, one of the best in the
world. This is nice to see in a country. They can handle their
own situation, they don’t need foreigners to go over
and show them what to do. In fact, one is lucky to be able
to go to India and work with field biologists there. |
