By Patrice O’Shaughnessy of the
Tuesday, February 24th 2009, 1:24 AM
He’s an unassuming man, with gray hair, pale eyes and a measured voice. But if not for
At 75, he has devoted half a century to saving endangered creatures and habitats all over the planet. It’s a never-ending task.
“You can never relax, and say something is okay,” he said, and noted a new threat.
The influx of Chinese workers to Africa, he said, has spawned a trade in lion bones, sent back to China for medicinal purposes.
“In Kenya, they put an insecticide in cow carcasses, and they kill off the whole pride,” he said. “There are only about 20,000 lions left in the world.”
Schaller is on the case.
And he says he’ll keep at his conservation efforts “for another 25 years.”
The senior conservationist for the Wildlife Conservation Society, Schaller has an office in the Bronx Zoo, but you’ll rarely see him there.
He visits animals in the wild, living for months or years at a time observing snow leopards in Pakistan, gorillas in Rwanda, lions in the Serengeti, pandas in
We caught up with him at the zoo last week, where he has been a researcher in animal behavior with the WCS since 1966, before he embarks on a round of trips to
Schaller was deemed “perhaps the greatest force for conservation in more than a century” by National Geographic magazine.
His efforts have led to the protection of threatened jungles and forests in Asia and South America, and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.
Discover magazine said he is considered the finest field biologist of our time.
Schaller has spent 50 years up close with exotic animals, tracking them, jotting notes in a small notebook and taking photographs, doing it the old-fashioned way.
He conducted a groundbreaking ecological study of mountain gorillas when he was 25, becoming the first scientist to live in their habitat. Now he is focusing on Marco Polo sheep, notable for their majestic spiral horns.
“Professors said gorillas were too dangerous, but I found them very congenial. They’re big, beautiful hairy relatives,” he said.
“I started out because I like to watch animals; that’s the fun part,” he said.
“Then, you have to worry about livelihood of communities” encroaching on the habitats.”
At 14, after World War II, he came to the U.S. from Berlin with his American mother, and retains a slight German accent. His first field trip was to the Arctic slope in
“The oil companies wanted to drill. Luckily, they didn’t,” he said. As of 2006, “the place is still beautiful .. . no roads, lots of caribou and grizzly bears.”
He and his wife, Kay, “the perfect co-worker,” raised two sons in exotic locales. She still accompanies him on some trips.
“The most wonderful place is Serengeti and Tanzania,” he said. “You literally see a million animals spread before you.”
He writes even more than he travels. Schaller has penned seven books and scores of articles with titles like, “Courtship Behavior of the Wild Goat,” and “Effects of a Snowstorm on Tibetan Antelope.”
On Thursday, Schaller will preside at a symposium at Rockefeller University on Manhattan‘s
It’s a commemoration of his years with the WCS, celebrating his contribution to science. A panel of international conservationists will examine the status of key species and landscapes that Schaller has brought to the world’s attention.
Is he excited about the symposium? He looked a little uncomfortable, and said, “Why do you think I am always overseas?”
Schaller is passionate, though, about his prized project, first conceived in the 1980s.
He envisions the
“We had a meeting of all four countries,” he said.
He has never let war, strife, the political squabbles of humans or borders stop him.
As he wrote in one of his books, “I live in a geography of dreams. …”
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