Talkin' Tigers... 12/11

Dear Cub kids,

In 1933, a little boy named George was born in Germany. As George grew from baby to boy, from youth to adult, he found his salvation in animals, and they found theirs in him. Life took him from the forests of Germany, all over the world, from Alaska to Africa, from India to China, and many, many places in between. On December 2, 2011, George stood with other wildlife protectors on a stage in Mumbai, and accepted a Sanctuary Lifetime Service Award for services rendered to the wild world.

But though George Schaller is being honored for his life’s work, his life and his work are still unfolding.

Here is just a snapshot of George’s adventurous life…

At 14, George and his family left Germany and moved to the United States. During his senior year in high school, George took an aptitude test to help him choose his direction in life. The results of the test pointed George in the direction of interior decoration. But instead of pursuing a life in carpets and curtains, George went to the University of Alaska to study zoology. During summers of fieldwork, George canoed the rivers of northern Alaska, surveying birds. Later, George would compare his summers in Alaska to his childhood years in German forests, conceding about himself, “Essentially, I never grew up.”

Upon completion of graduate studies of Alaska’s caribou, an older scientist asked George a fateful question: “Would you like to study gorillas?” No one had ever studied living gorillas in the wild; they were considered too ferocious, too dangerous. The only things known about wild gorillas had been gleaned after they had been shot. George changed that, moving into a cabin in a flower-sprinkled mountain meadow in the Belgian Congo in 1959. During a year-long study, George discovered and studied eleven gorilla groups and several lone males, and the ecosystem in which they roamed. He achieved what others had thought to be impossible: he studied gorillas on their own terms, alive and fearless in the deep jungles of central Africa. His gorilla studies revolutionized field biology, showing that supposedly dangerous animals could be studied in the wild with little risk.

By 1963, George had a Ph.D. in zoology, a wife, Kay, and two little boys. The family had just begun life in a new cabin, this one in Kanha National Park in India. For three years, as his baby sons grew, George studied tigers, the deer they preyed on, and the beautiful forests and grasslands that sustained them. Embarking on the first systematic, scientific study ever attempted of tigers and their prey, George wanted to unravel the secretive lives of tigers, to learn what effect predator had on prey. While Kay and the boys went looking for tigers on elephant-back, George walked the rolling grasslands and forested ravines of Kanha, sometimes coming face-to-face with his striped quarry as it stalked the herds of sambar, barasingha, chital and blackbuck. After studying the life of Kanha for three years, George realized that tigers were “good” for their prey species, keeping their numbers at levels the ecosystem could sustain. George was among the very first scientists to document the symbiotic relationship between hunter, hunted, and ecosystem.

From India, George and his family moved to Tanzania, studying the lions of the Serengeti, to Pakistan, Nepal and the Himalayas to study the snow leopard, to Central China to study the panda, to the Tibetan Plateau of Western China to study asses and antelopes. He broke new scientific ground everywhere he went, learning about species previously thought impossible to study on their own turf. Everywhere he went, George inspired and enriched the work of fellow field biologists, and looked for young scientists to encourage and mentor.

George’s passion for wild animals and places led him to recognize that they must be protected, and that science could do that best. As fascinating as science is, George said everywhere he went, it must not be undertaken for itself alone, but to ensure the protection of all living things. His insistence that field biology be wedded to conservation might just be his single most important contribution – it led to the protection of over 190,000 square miles of wilderness around the world, an area the size of Spain!

Where in the world is George Schaller today? I don’t know for sure, but I do know that wherever he is, planet Earth is a better place.

Your friend,

Jen

P.S. If you would like to read more about George, I highly recommend: A Life in the Wild: George Schaller’s Struggle to Save the Last Great Beasts, by Pamela Turner.