George Schaller
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George Beals Schaller (born 1933 Berlin, Germany) is a mammalogist, naturalist, conservationist and author, and is recognized by many as the world's preeminent field biologist, studying wildlife throughout Africa, Asia and South America. Growing up in Germany, Schaller moved to Missouri as a teen. He is now the director for science for the Bronx Zoo-based Wildlife Conservation Society.
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[edit] 1959: "Year of the Gorilla"
Schaller is perhaps best known for his landmark field research, begun in 1959, on the mountain gorillas (Gorilla beringei beringei) of the Virunga Volcanoes in Central Africa. Little was known about the life of gorillas in the wild until the publication of The Mountain Gorilla: Ecology and Behavior in 1963 that first revealed to the general public just how profoundly intelligent and gentle gorillas really are, contrary to then-common beliefs. Schaller has more recently recounted his epic two year study in The Year of the Gorilla, which also provides a broader historical perspective on the efforts to save one of humankind's nearest relatives from the brink of extinction.
The famed American zoologist, Dian Fossey, with assistance from the National Geographic and Louis Leakey, followed Schaller's groundbreaking field research on mountain gorillas in the Virungas. Schaller and Fossey were instrumental in dispelling the public perception of gorillas as brutes, by demonstrably establishing the deep compassion and social intelligence evident among gorillas, and how very closely their behavior parallels that of humans.
"No one who looks into a gorilla's eyes - intelligent, gentle, vulnerable - can remain unchanged, for the gap between ape and human vanishes; we know that the gorilla still lives within us. Do gorillas also recognize this ancient connection?" Schaller later mused, when interviewed by National Geographic.
[edit] Preeminent naturalist
After publication of The Mountain Gorilla, Schaller was a research associate at Johns Hopkins University until 1966, when he became a Research Zoologist for the New York Zoological Society and professor at Rockefeller University. He later served as Director of the Society's International Conservation Program from 1979 to 1988.
Schaller's conservation efforts have led to the establishment of five of the world's wildlife reserves, including the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in Alaska, which is now threatened by oil speculators. In 1988, Schaller began collaborations with the Chinese government in studying wildlife there. His efforts helped establish the Chang Tang Nature Reserve, one of the world's most significant wildlife refuges. At over 118,000 square miles, roughly the size of Arizona, Chang Tang was deemed "One of the most ambitious attempts to arrest the shrinkage of natural ecosystems," by The New York Times.
In 1994, Schaller and Dr. Alan Rabinowitz were the first scientists to uncover the rare saola in Laos. Later that year, Schaller rediscovered the Vietnamese warty pig, once thought extinct. In 1996, he located a herd of Tibetan red deer, also thought extinct.
Schaller is one of a few prominent scientists who argue that bigfoot reports are worthy of further study. A 2003 Los Angeles Times story describes Schaller as a "Bigfoot skeptic", but also reports his opinion that scientists don't bother with researching the subject before they "write it off as a hoax or myth. I don't think that's fair."[1] In a 2003 Denver Post article Schaller said, "There have been so many sightings over the years ... Even if you throw out 95 percent of them, there ought to be some explanation for the rest ... I think a hard-eyed look is absolutely essential". Schaller was perhaps proven correct, when homo floresiensis was discovered, although the 'little foot' turned out to be a hobbit-sized hominid.
In his 1972 work The Tree Where Man Was Born, author Peter Matthiessen described Schaller as "single-minded, not easy to know", "a stern pragmatist" who "takes a hard-eyed look at almost everything", and "lean and intent", and in 1978's The Snow Leopard notes that by that time some considered Schaller the world's finest field biologist.
[edit] Publications and awards
Schaller has written highly acclaimed books on African and Asian mammals, including Serengeti Lion: A Study of Predator–Prey Relations, The Last Panda, and Tibet's Hidden Wilderness, based on his own pioneering studies, and supported by long-term observations of species in their natural habitats.
Schaller has also written hundreds of magazine articles and dozens of books and scientific articles about tigers, lions, jaguars, cheetahs and leopards, and on wild sheep and goats, snow leopards, giant pandas, rhinoceroses and flamingos. His four decades of field research have helped shape wildlife protection efforts around the world.
Schaller's conservation honors include the Guggenheim Fellowship, and the World Wildlife Fund's Gold Medal for his contributions to the understanding and conservation of endangered species. Schaller has also been awarded the International Cosmos Prize, Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement and he was the first recipient of the Wildlife Conservation Society's Beebe Fellowship. Schaller's literary honors include The National Book Award for his book on the Serengeti lion in 1973.
Schaller figures prominently in Peter Matthiessen's The Snow Leopard, in which Matthiessen accompanied Schaller on his trip to the Himalayan region of Dolpo, one of the most remote and last of the pure Tibetan cultures remaining on Earth. Schaller's trip was to study the Himalayan blue sheep, and possibly glimpse the elusive snow leopard, an almost mythical animal rarely ever spotted in the wild. Schaller was one of only two Westerners known to have seen a snow leopard in the wild since 1950 until the snow leopard was captured in the wild on film for BBC's Planet Earth. Schaller is referred to through most of the book as "GS".
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- BronxZoo.com - History of the Wildlife Conservation Society
- WCS press release - WCS biologist George Schaller reports surprising increase in Tibet's wildlife
- UnMuseum.org Dian Fossey and the Gorillas of the Virunga Volcanoes
