A Conversation with Field Biologist George Schaller

Who is George Schaller? George Schaller has explored the wilderness of the world since 1952. A legendary scientist and master biographer of the planet’s most charismatic species, he has conducted extensive field research with gorillas, pandas, lions, tigers, snow leopards, and jaguars. George’s work has led to the creation of more than 20 parks and reserves worldwide and has inspired generations of field biologists and conservationists. Watch a short video on George Schaller and his work here.

John Davis, executive director of The Rewilding Institute, met with George Schaller at his home in New Lebanon, New Hampshire, to have a conversation that highlights and reflects on George’s work in the field and around the world over the last 70 years. Below is a transcript of the interview.

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John Davis: George, how did you choose places to study? How did you choose where you wanted to study?

George Schaller: Sometimes I was asked. For example, Johns Hopkins University asked me to go to India. They had a program there, and I could study where I wanted. Then the Tanzania National Parks Director asked me to come to Tanzania, so I studied lions and their prey. Some of the areas I selected myself because very little was known about them, and I was interested in seeing what was there.

John: You often just went into an area and started studying various species and then figured out where the important habitats were?

George: I like to sit and watch animals. If it’s an area that has quite a few animals, I look around for a place where there’s still natural habitat. And then I get information on the animals and suggest to the government that maybe this should be a protected area.

John: And you had remarkable success. I’ve read that at least 20 parks and other protected areas owe their existence to your work. How did you do that? How do you take biology and translate that into land protection?

George: Once governments trust you, most governments are fine. I’d come with my wife, Kay, and our children, and we would sit there and talk about what interested the government and what they could do. Then I would give them my data and suggest on the map an area that would be suitable to protect wildlife. Most of the time, they were very cooperative. The total area we helped protect, I once calculated, is about the size of California.

John: Goodness, that’s incredible—about 100 million acres! I live in Adirondack Park, which is in northern New York, and it’s about six million acres in size. It’s the biggest park in the eastern U.S. One of your protected areas, I gather, Changtang, in northern China, is nearly 80 million acres in size. That is huge. But are most of these protected areas really protected? Are the governments maintaining the borders and keeping poachers out, or does it really vary by place?

George: It varies a lot by place. I have tried to go back to visit these areas again. And then I can go to the government, and say: “Look, these are problems; let’s do something.” And they usually do. But it is like everywhere and a matter of money and staff.

John: How did you develop the patience to just watch animals? To sit still and watch, that takes amazing patience and dedication.

George: With the gorillas and the pandas, for example, I’d go to certain groups every day. So pretty soon they look up and see, oh, there he is again, and they do their business. Some just fall asleep. Gorillas got very curious and started investigating me. But the point is, animals learn quickly and are very tolerant if they don’t feel threatened.

John: Does that apply even with, say, cougars? I ask partly because I have wandered thousands and thousands of miles through the American West hoping to see a puma, and I never have. Are they even more elusive than some other big cats, or are cats more wary than other animals?

George: It depends on what you do. For example, if a puma has killed a deer and you give it another deer and another deer, he will get used to eating at this place and used to seeing you at a distance. The animals watch, and they habituate. People think these cats are solitary, but they are part of a community. And the only way to find that out is to find them.

John: Did the U.S. government ever ask you to do studies here or was it usually countries in other parts of the world?

George: Usually overseas, although I had a project in Alaska with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

John: Do you think most of those governments that brought you in are still supportive of conservation studies, or has that changed?

George: I’d have to live there a few months to see attitudes, but in general, governments are aware of population growth and habitat destruction.

John: Do you think the Half Earth or Nature Needs Half concept that E.O. Wilson popularized—that we should protect at least half of Earth’s lands and waters—is a good message to promote?

George: I think people’s minds are not on the world. You have to make a map of each country and say: This area is essential for us to protect.

John: So people are not thinking at the global scale, they’re thinking at the national scale, is that what you mean?

George: That’s what I’m thinking, because that’s the way to get it done.

John: Yeah, we’re not going to implement anything globally, we would do it nation by nation. So we need a “Half America” strategy, perhaps.

George: Yes.

John: Do you think maps are effective tools for communicating conservation vision? Did you say you drew maps sometimes to show what places should be protected?

George: Yeah, in trip reports. But it’s a personal thing. If you just send it in to a government department, it gets filed away and that’s it. Better to find the right person, then go meet them and show them your map of what is important.

John: Back to biology. How are primates doing?

George: It depends on habitat. Most primates, other than baboons, are forest animals. As the forest goes, so do they. And deforestation continues. Nowadays, if you go walking in the Amazon forest, you can go hour after hour and never see a monkey because they’ve all been shot for food.

John: Is that for the so-called bushmeat trade?

George: Sure, you can call it bushmeat trade, but often it is families shooting them for dinner.

John: And are primates like large carnivores in being relatively slow to reproduce or does that vary a lot by species?

George: It varies by species. When you have these guys walking through the forest with a shotgun, not much the wild primates can do.

John: Is the mountain gorilla much different from the other gorillas?

George: It looks different. Shorter hair and so forth. The mountain gorilla was fun to study because their faces are so distinctive; you could give all of them names. And if I remember, I had 169 gorillas in the area I was working.

John: Can you get to the point where you recognize individuals of jaguars or tigers or other carnivores by their patterns, or are they too similar to our eyes to tell apart?

George: With tigers, I knew individuals who were in my area by the stripe pattern. There were nine tigers where I was working, and I got so I could just look at their face and know who it was.

John: Can you do that with jaguars?

George: You could, but I didn’t spend enough time with jaguars, even though I saw some repeatedly. You can do it from photographs.

John: Did you sometimes feel like you formed a relationship with an individual animal? Or did you try to be more objective and not get emotionally connected?

George: Oh, you get emotionally connected. An animal, too, responds to you individually. If I went with a companion, the animals would get all nervous. That happens now with the mountain gorillas, where people go in big groups and see them.

John: Did you ever worry that forming an emotional attachment with a wild animal would interfere with your scientific objectivity or bias your studies?

George: No. If anything, it’s a positive because you become more intense and interested. Especially if you’re watching a female with a baby and you see it develop and so forth.

John: What were your favorite wild places? What are your favorite wild parts of the world?

George: Certainly the Serengeti is one. I also like to wander around the Himalayas.

John: Do the animals there—like blue sheep and snow leopards—go up really high? Do they go up high in the mountains, or is that just too inhospitable?

George: They go up to 18,000 feet. Above that is snow and not much food.

John: Did you see animals playing much? Wrestling or other sorts of play?

George: Oh yes, gorillas especially play. I’ve seen snow leopards just go and slide down a slope. Much of what you consider fighting, like bashing heads between horned animals, is not serious. It may be testing dominance, but they enjoy it.

John: Almost like playful sparring? And wild animals have fun, just like we do, right?

George: Yes, probably, but it’s hard to know what they’re thinking. Other favorite places included the mountain gorilla sites. They were beautiful. You have the volcanoes above the forest, and you can climb up and see the landscape. Also, India’s Kanha National Park was really beautiful. The government let us have a bungalow, and Kay and the children were there part of the time. We had many deer around, and in the morning, we had to go out carefully and look that a tiger wasn’t sleeping on our porch.

John: Amazing! I would imagine you had encounters with snakes occasionally.

George: Not many. Most snakes are afraid of you. But you don’t want to wrestle a cobra.

John: Were you ever hurt by a wild animal?

George: Not that I know of.

John: Decades of studying these animals, and you were never hurt by them.

George: Right.

John: I believe I remember Rick Ridgeway telling me about a trip he took with you and maybe Jimmy Chin, where you pulled rickshaws way into the Tibetan Plateau. Is that right?

George: I’ve got a whole book about it called Tibet Wild.

John: Is the wildlife still fairly abundant on the Tibetan Plateau?

George: It’s improving again. The Tibetan antelope has the finest wool in the world. Shawls are made from it that can cost $15,000. So they got killed by the thousands, but that’s been pretty well stopped.

John: Do many people live on the Tibetan Plateau?

George: There are communities, particularly on the periphery, but there are big wild areas in the northern part. I took one trip there west to east, and in 1,000 miles of travel, I didn’t see anybody.

John: How were you traveling?

George: By car, with a trailer carrying extra fuel.

John: And you saw nobody else? That’s amazing. Were you on a road or just going through?

George: Cross country.

John: Much wildlife?

George: Scattered.

John: Are there any places you wish you had studied but did not reach?

George: A few. There are quite a few areas in South America that I’ve never visited.

John: How are African lions doing?

George: Outside reserves, they’re not doing well.

John: When you were studying in a particular area, did you make a point of trying to talk with local people?

George: There are very few studies of animals and a lot of studies of people. I visited people and chatted about wildlife and so forth, but I wasn’t focused on helping the communities.

John: I would applaud you for focusing on wildlife, but I assume that in learning about wildlife you could get some knowledge from the local people.

George: Yes, I would get information and read, talk about hunting and so forth.

John: Did it often seem like the local people were knowledgeable about wildlife, or did they often have misunderstandings, or did it vary a whole lot?

George: In general, they are knowledgeable about wildlife around them. But usually they don’t have much interest, unless a wild animal comes and eats their livestock.

John: What’s your feeling about hunting?

George: I think that hunting for subsistence is okay. Hunting just to brag about a bigger trophy, that time has passed.

John: Did you ever study in Mongolia?

George: Oh, I took a lot of trips to Mongolia. I was studying snow leopards and the huge herds of Mongolian gazelles, among other things, as I described in my book Into Wild Mongolia. The fortunate thing in Mongolia is that there are very few people in some areas.

John: That is good. Are the traditional cultures there remaining traditional?

George: More than in most countries.

John: Did you find over your decades of studying that as tribal or traditional cultures modernized, they became more destructive of wildlife?

George: I don’t know, but there are more people, and they need more land. And many areas where people live, agricultural land is very scarce. People are very poor and try to find a way to survive.

John: So poverty can lead to exploitation of wildlife?

George: Of course, yes.

John: So government programs that address poverty could help wildlife?

George: Some governments do give money to the poorest people, but most of the world’s poor people remain poor. If they took some of the billions of dollars they spend shooting rockets at the moon and Mars and gave the money to people, it would be more useful.

John: Of course. There’s not much money going into ecology, is there?

George: Not compared to what it needs. We don’t really even know what’s out there yet, do we? Most of the undiscovered species are small.

John: Didn’t you discover two or three new species of large mammal?

George: One mammal, one lizard.

John: What was the mammal?

George: It was a barking deer.

John: Is that the one called muntjak?

George: That’s a general term, like barking deer. But this was a giant muntjac (Muntiacus spp.), bigger than the regular one.

John: And this was in Southeast Asia?

George: Yes.

John: What was the lizard you found?

George: I don’t remember the lizard’s name. All I know is I collected it, and the museum reported it as a new species.

John: That’s amazing.

George: Not really. With small creatures all over the world, you can find many new species.

John: Of the many large mammals you have studied, which ones would you say are doing relatively well and which ones are doing poorly? Which ones are in the most trouble?

George: Gorillas live in very small areas, and the ones I studied in the Virunga Volcanoes of Uganda, Rwanda, and the Congo, now they’ve increased back to their former numbers because of better protection.

Tigers are in big trouble because all the body parts of tigers are used in traditional medicines in China. They’re difficult to protect because if you kill a tiger, you can make $500. And as a poor villager, that’s worth your while. Besides, tigers kill livestock. You have an excuse. They killed my cow.

John: The sale of body parts of wild animals for traditional medicine is a big problem for wildlife in many places. Is there an effective way of addressing that problem? Could we put pressure on the Chinese government to crack down on the trade?

George: Yeah, but even if it’s illegal, if you make a lot of money from it, people will still take advantage of it.

John: And are there places where a controlled market may work? I think there’s debate with elephants about whether there should be a complete ban on the trade of tusks or whether there should be a carefully regulated market.

George: It’s very difficult to carefully regulate killing in the backcountry.

John: What about trophy hunting? I don’t like the idea of trophy hunting at all. But I have heard arguments, including from a couple of friends who’ve done conservation work in Africa, that if you can charge a lot of money for trophy hunting, and then put the fees toward land conservation, it might actually have a net positive effect.

George: The problem is, the money is given to the government rather than the communities. Not enough trickles down to the communities. But private NGOs are sometimes involved in paying local people. If a tiger kills a cow, the landowner gets paid for the dead cow and agrees not to kill the tiger, that sort of thing.

John: Are tigers doing okay anywhere, or are they in trouble everywhere? Is that a tragedy we may see, the extinction of the tiger, or is there still hope?

George: There’s hope for tigers in specific, small areas. What is more difficult is to keep those small populations connected with others so they don’t suffer from inbreeding.

John: Are any countries implementing region–wide wildlife corridor systems? My mentor Dave Foreman was always preaching about the importance of big wild Cores connected by Wildlife Corridors and buffered with multiple–use areas, a Reed Noss model of conservation. Is that being implemented in Asia or Africa, or anywhere?

George: Tanzania is trying to implement it. These days, most countries have some biologists who have had training overseas; in fact, with enough training, they don’t need foreigners and may not want foreigners.

John: Is it often better if the studies can be done by in-country people?

George: Most definitely. It’s nice to have somebody check up on things, but what would you think in your protected area in upstate New York, if suddenly you had six Chinese show up saying: “I’m going to do research.”

John: That would really upset some local people. Would you tell me a few of your favorite wildlife experiences?

George: Since we were just talking about them, I’ll mention a mountain gorilla experience: I got them used to me enough that I liked to climb a low branch of a tree and sit so I could look down into the brush at them. One day a female with her baby climbed up and sat next to me on a branch.

But what you don’t do is stare at gorillas. You move your head so they don’t feel threatened, because a stare from either humans or gorillas is a direct threat.

John: Now is that true with other animals too, or just primates?

George: Haven’t tested it in most, but any staring makes animals nervous. Try it with a dog.

John: I will.

George: And the same with pandas. I followed some pandas day after day, until they all looked up and off, like there he is again. Then I sat down, and sometimes a panda would sit 50 feet away and fall asleep.

John: With the pandas, I don’t suppose it would work to put out food because they’re just eating bamboo, right? So how did you get them used to you?

George: Just by being there.

John: So sometimes is just sitting quietly the best way to see animals?

George: Yeah, don’t get too close to begin with. But if they want to make a decision and come close to you, that’s fine.

John: Did you find that you were less likely to see animals if you were moving, if you were walking, than if you were sitting?

George: In a lot of these areas, you can follow animals by the broken brush, by droppings, and so forth. And, you learn.

John: With snow leopards, did you ever get any of the cats accustomed to you, or is that a very different animal?

George: That’s very different, but again, there were ways to get close. For example, there was a female with two cubs, and she had a kill. I stayed far enough away, so she didn’t flee from the rocks where she was. I gave her more goats, and moved slowly closer. I stayed a whole week with them. Sleeping out at night with them.

John: That’s amazing. I suppose on most of your trips you were camping?

George: In some places, like in India, the government let us use a lovely bungalow. And in the Congo, in the gorilla area, there was a decrepit shed, which Kay and I moved into. So there’s usually something, which especially helps in countries with a lot of rain and snow. But if the weather is reasonable, all I need for the night is a sleeping bag and a snack.

John: We want to see jaguars come back into the United States, as well as increased numbers in northern Mexico. But one challenge is that while males still cross the border, females are about 100 miles to the south. Might females somehow get across that distance, or is that longer than you would expect a female jaguar to travel?

George: Those jaguars are probably in a more-or-less settled community. So if a female has young, and a male grows up, he’s not welcomed by the resident male who has that territory. So the young males tend to move off to find their own place. Whereas the females don’t need to.

John: So a basic paradox with cat restoration efforts is that the young males tend to disperse, but the young females usually do not.

George: It depends on the local situation, but if they’re part of a community, why would the females disperse?

John: It’s very interesting you talk about the communities, because you don’t hear that very often. As you said earlier, people tend to assume that pumas and jaguars are solitary animals, but they actually are part of communities?

George: Yeah, and tigers, too. Tigers wander through an area, squirt urine against a tree, claw the tree… This is all a signal to the next tiger that comes past. And this says, so and so has been here.

John: Do females do that scent marking as well?

George: Males more, but yes. That’s one way of maintaining community stability, of knowing your neighbors as long as they’ve been there.

John: For jaguar recovery to succeed in the United States, what do you think we would need to do? Do you think we need to physically move some females north? Active reintroduction should be considered?

George: If it’s done right. You can’t just take them and dump them.

John: Maybe how Rewilding Argentina did it in Iberá is a good way to consider?

George: Yes, get some animals from zoos.

John: You were part of a conversation with Mark Elbroch and his Panthera colleagues, and they were talking about the feasibility of restoring cougars to the northeastern United States. I’m a big advocate for that. One of my main goals in life is to see pumas back on the ground before I die. Would similar guidelines apply?

George: You can’t just dump them, because that’s like if I took you to the Amazon and dumped you. What do you do? Right. We’ve got to have some reason to stay in that area.

John: Do you usually need to release more females than males?

George: That would vary by animal, obviously. One male is happy to have several females. You have got to just experiment. You’re going to lose some animals, especially during hunting season.

John: Do you have suggestions on how to build social support for rewilding efforts for large carnivores? You probably hear in the news about wolf restoration efforts in the West and particularly in Colorado now; and you know we’re contemplating cougar restoration efforts in the Northeast. How do we build enough social support that the animals won’t be shot?

George: A very small percentage of wolves are going to kill livestock and dogs. If people object to that, what kind of compensation can you give them? People like compensation in material things, in money, or in good publicity.

John: Did you ever study wolves or any other of the dog family members?

George: As a sideline. When I go to an area, I try to study everything. Not only what the tigers eat, but what the wolves eat, etc.

John: With the kind of work you did over the past seven decades, could a young biologist hope to have a similar career, or is it just too politically difficult now to do studies in foreign countries?

George: It depends on your foreign country. Most of these countries have sent students to the U.S. who return home and now can do their own studies. I think of Iran; it’s a wonderful country, and the last Asiatic cheetahs are there. There are only maybe 30, 40 left. I made five or six trips there to work with Iranian wildlife officials in protecting them. Now there is no way an American can safely go there.

John: Are the areas that you helped protect over there still protected?

George: The big problem is, with so few cheetahs, they must travel far to find mates. So one of the main causes of death is roadkill

John: Do you think the cheetahs can persist in Iran?

George: It’s doubtful.

John: Are they the only cheetahs outside Africa now?

George: Yeah, Indian ones are gone. The other countries bordering Iran say there is an occasional cheetah, but that’s not a population.

John: How about Asiatic lions? Do they have a future?

George: They live in one small area in the Gir Forest in India. And they’re well protected. But is that a future? I don’t know.

John: In a case like that, is it ethical to use artificial means to keep the population alive? I don’t know whether that would be supplemental food or bringing in individuals from zoos to mix up the genetics. Is that kind of manipulation appropriate or is that meddling too much?

George: It depends. African lions seem to be genetically just enough different to call them a subspecies.

John: Now, if I may ask you a sticky question, some of us believe that many of the problems facing wildlife are insurmountable if we don’t address what some of us think is a fundamental problem: human overpopulation. Do you see that as a driver of the extinction crisis?

George: That, together with climate change, is obviously a basic issue… but you can’t change people.

John: Do you have grandchildren?

George: I have two.

John: Do you give them advice on what they might do with their lives? Or are they too young for that?

George: They can make their own decisions. They live in Vancouver.

John: Are they interested in nature?

George: Yes, but not as a profession.

John: Do you feel guardedly optimistic about the future, or pessimistic, or somewhere in between?

George: I go up and down.

John: I don’t know if you ever heard this quote. Arnie Ness, the father of deep ecology, would say, “I’m a pessimist for the 21st century, an optimist for the 22nd.” I think he meant civilization as we know it would not last much longer, but maybe something better will emerge afterward.

George: Yeah, with climate change… look at these tornadoes in Florida—billions of dollars in damage.

John: During your work life, did you see the effects of climate change already, or is it becoming more evident now than it was when you were out in the field?

George: The only time we actually checked was up in northern Alaska. I revisited a site that I photographed 50 years before. One of the students who had been with me was there, and we compared the trees over 50 years, from then to now. There had been changes.

John: As the Bering Sea warms, the Western Arctic is getting not just warmer but also wetter and the shrub line is advancing. Some of the traditional caribou migration routes apparently are being abandoned because the caribou don’t like to thrash through thick shrubs, and so they’re detouring around. That sounds like a direct result of climate change.

George: Oh, absolutely. Climate change has been going on for thousands of years, but we are speeding the process.

John: What were you studying when you were in Alaska’s Arctic?

George: I did my undergraduate work in Alaska. One summer, I went to northern Alaska with a friend, and we went by canoe from the mountains down to the ocean to record birds. Then, the next summer I worked with the Fish and Wildlife Service to follow caribou migrations. And the summer after that, I went to Mount Katmai National Monument—an interesting place to see wildlife, with lots and lots of big brown bears.

John: What took you to Alaska originally?

George: My cousin had gone there. And I was lucky I met Kay there.

John: Any general suggestions for those of us engaged in conservation? For people who follow Rewilding Earth?

George: Every area can use somebody to check on things and talk to communities and see how they need help or what they need to conserve wildlife, and so forth. There’s not enough of that all over.

To hear more stories about George’s conservation work in his own words, watch this video: George Schaller: Tales from a Life in the Field.