Chapter 15. Discovery
1. Jesse Oak Taylor, ‘The Sky of Our Manufacture: Literature, Modernity, and the London Fog from Charles Dickens to Virginia Woolf’ (Doctoral dissertation, University of Wisconsin-Madison, May 2010), p. 28.
2. Jesse Oak Taylor, ‘The Sky of Our Manufacture’, p. 35.
3. Jesse Oak Taylor, ‘The Sky of Our Manufacture’, p. 29.
4. Jesse Oak Taylor, ‘The Sky of Our Manufacture’, p. 31.
5. Jesse Oak Taylor, The Sky of Our Manufacture: The London Fog in British Fiction from Dickens to Woolf (Charlottesville, Virginia: University of Virginia Press, 2016).
Afterword
1. I have written two academic accounts of the growth of this people-based conservation approach, especially its dramatic extension across the Tibet Autonomous Region of China. See Daniel C. Taylor and Carl E. Taylor, Just and Lasting Change: When Communities Own their Futures, 2nd Edition (Baltimore MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016), Chapter 20, pp. 274–89.
Also, Daniel C. Taylor, Carl E. Taylor, and Jesse O. Taylor, Empowerment on an Unstable Planet: From Seeds of Human Energy to a Scale of Global Change (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), Chapter 8, pp. 157–86.
2. Jack Turner, The Abstract Wild (Tucson, Arizona: The University of Arizona Press, 1996), p. 112.
3. I first published these findings in 1995: Something Hidden Behind the Ranges (San Francisco: Mercury House Press).
4. Answers continually come from surprising corners. In the spring of 2014, Professor Bryan Sykes at the University of Oxford studied 32 samples of alleged Yeti and Bigfoot hair using DNA analysis. His conclusion: most were dog, horse, deer, and the two most mysterious were bear and with these his conclusion was the improbable, totally out-of-range polar bear and the more likely Ursus arctos (brown bear). But he then went on to draw a conclusion that this was not a regular brown bear but ‘an anomaly’. Again, the proclivity to connect to ‘an anomaly’ may be driven by emotional gravitation to Yeti rather than the simpler bear identification. Bryan C. Sykes, Rhettman A. Mullis, Christophe Hagenmuller, Terry W. Melton, Michael Satori, ‘Genetic analysis of hair samples attributed to yeti, bigfoot, and other anomalous primates’, in Proceedings of the Royal Society, B281: 20140161. Recovered 26 February 2017: http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/royprsb/281/1789/20140161.full.pdf.
A refutation of this claim on scientific grounds is presented in: Eliecer E. Gutierrez and Ronald H. Pine, ‘No Need to Replace an “Anomalous” primate (Primates) with an “anomalous” bear (Carnivora Ursidae)’, published in Zoo Keys 487: 141–54; 15 March 2015.
5. A parallel review of most of the Yeti claims to that in this book is found in Daniel Loxton and Donald R. Prothero, Abominable Science (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013). They proceed through the more-than-a-century-long history of claims, and conclude in a similar way with the bear being the primary footprint maker.
6. I subsequently have found midsize prints between the Cronin and McNeely, and Shipton and Ward, but leave them out of this narrative because they do not fit the story flow. I have also since found overprinted ‘Yeti’ prints in mud, but they are so clearly of a bear that it is easy to see why across the decades no Yetis have been ‘discovered’ outside the snows.
7. Siddhartha Bajracharya, Peter Furley, and Adrian Newton, ‘Impacts of Community-based Conservation on Local Communities in the Annapurna Conservation Area, Nepal’, 2005, Environmental Conservation 32(2): 239–47.
8. Mac Chapin, ‘Can We Protect Natural Habitats without Abusing the People who Live in Them?’ World Watch Magazine, November–December, 2004.
9. Michael Rechlin, Daniel Taylor, Jim Lichatowich, Parakh Hoon, Beberly de Leon, and Jesse Taylor, Community-based Conservation: Is it more effective, efficient, and sustainable (Franklin, WV: Future Generations Graduate School, 2008), p. 57.
10. N.P. Yadav and O.P. Dev, 2003, ‘Forest Management and Utilization under Community Forestry’, Journal of Forest and Livelihood 3(1): 37–50.
11. Michael Reclin, Bill Burch, Bhishma Subedi, Surya Binayee, and Indu Sapkota, ‘Lal Salam and Hario Ban: The effects of the Maoist insurgency on community forestry in Nepal’, 2007, Forests Trees and Livelihoods 17(3): 245–53.
12. Daniel C. Taylor and Carl E. Taylor, Just and Lasting Change: When Communities Own Their Futures, 2nd Edition (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016), pp. 285–89.
13. Taylor and Taylor, Just and Lasting Change, p. 288.
14. Robert L. Fleming, Liu Wulin, and Dorje Tsering, Across the Tibetan Plateau: Ecosystems, Wildlife, and Conservation (New York: W.W. Norton, 2007), p. 6.
Glossary
Bhui balu ground bear
chang barley beer
Deodar Sanskrit for ‘wood of God’
Ghoral the Himalayan chamois
Kali Khola stream of the Goddess Kali, the goddess of destruction
needeene local name for human-like jungle spirits
Payreeni Khola landslide stream
po gamo local name for human-like jungle spirits
rakshi distilled liquor made of rice or millet
rukh balu tree bear
Serow a donkey-sized, red-brown mountain goat with white legs
shockpa local names for human-like jungle spirits
thangka paintings Traditional Tibetan iconography
Thar large golden-fleeced Himalayan mountain goat
About the Author
Daniel C. Taylor has been engaged in social change and conservation worldwide for four decades with a focus on building international cooperation to achieve ambitious projects. He founded the seven Future Generations organizations worldwide, including the accredited Future Generations University (www.future.org, www.future.edu). He also co-founded and led The Mountain Institute (www.mountain.org) and initiated its worldwide programmes. In 1985, after providing the scientific explanation for the Yeti, he led a scientific team creating Nepal’s Makalu–Barun National Park, followed by, in close partnership with the Tibet Autonomous Region, China’s Qomolangma (Everest) National Nature Preserve, then Lhasa Wetlands National Park, and Four Great Rivers Nature Preserve.
Daniel is one of the synthesizers of the SEED-SCALE method, an understanding of social change initiated by a UNICEF task force he co-chaired from 1992 to 1995. Since 1995 he continued to lead global field trials of SEED-SCALE and is senior author of Just and Lasting Change: How Communities Own Their Futures, 2nd edition (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016; 1st edition, 2002) and Empowerment on an Unstable Planet: From Seeds of Human Energy to a Scale of Global Change (Oxford University Press, 2012). He is also the author of four other books on various topics.
Daniel, whose childhood was in the Himalaya, received his masters and doctoral degrees from Harvard University. From 1969 to 1972 he worked for the U.S. State Department. Among many honours, Daniel was knighted by the King of Nepal Gorkha Dakshin Bau III; was made the first Honorary Professor of Quantitative Ecology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences; and was decorated with the Order of the Golden Ark by HRH Prince Bernhard of The Netherlands.
Yeti- The Ecology of a Mystery Page 35