Also by Jane Alexander
Command Performance
The Bluefish Cookbook,
with Greta Jacobs
The Master Builder,
adapted from Henrik Ibsen
with Sam Engelstad
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
Copyright © 2016 by Jane Alexander
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto.
www.aaknopf.com
Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to Parallax Press for permission to reprint an excerpt from “Please Call Me by My True Names” from Call Me by My True Names: The Collected Poems of Thich Nhat Hanh, copyright © 1999 by Unified Buddhist Church Inc. Reprinted by permission of Parallax Press, Berkeley, California (www.parallax.org).
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Alexander, Jane, [date]
Title: Wild things, wild places : adventurous tales of wildlife and conservation on planet Earth / by Jane Alexander.
Description: New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2016. | “A Borzoi book.” | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016007803 (print) | LCCN 2016011120 (ebook) | ISBN 9780385354370 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780385354370 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Wildlife conservation.
Classification: LCC QL82 .A424 2016 (print) | LCC QL82 (ebook) | DDC 333.95/416—dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016007803
Ebook ISBN 9780385354370
Front-of-cover images: (top) Bison and (bottom) Rhinoceros, from Mammals Illustrated from Nature by Johann von Schreber. Both, De Agostini Picture Library/Getty Images; (background on animals) The Great Valley by Paul Weber (detail) © SuperStock/Alamy
Cover design by Janet Hansen
v4.1
a
To Ed.
Thanks for the journey.
Contents
Cover
Also by Jane Alexander
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Author’s Note
Prologue
PART 1: TIGER MAN
1. Mexico
2. Belize
3. Thailand
4. Idaho
5. Nepal
6. Myanmar
7. India
8. Brazil
PART 2: WILDLIFE WOMAN
9. Birds
10. Peru
11. Papua New Guinea
12. Hawaii
13. Galápagos
14. Newfoundland
15. Amazonia
16. East Africa
17. Madagascar
PART 3: THE BODY OF THE EARTH
18. Desert
19. Killers
20. Bhutan
21. Bahamas
22. Ecuador
23. Ocean
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Appendix
Bibliography
Illustration Credits
Illustrations
Author’s Note
My decision to capitalize the names of all animal species breaks with tradition and will cause grammarians to wince, if not throw these pages up in despair at what may seem capriciousness on my part. However, there is precedence for my action. The birding world has long capitalized the names of birds, making it clear that we are referring to the Solitary Sandpiper, the Great Egret, and the Black Phoebe and not descriptive terms such as “A solitary sandpiper waded along the shore,” “We saw a great egret today,” or “A black phoebe sat on a fence.”Capitalizing minimizes confusion about the world’s ten thousand species of birds, but it also elevates their status on a page, as capitals are intended to do by calling attention to the word. This is my intention in the book: to call attention to species of mammals, fish, reptiles, amphibians, and insects as well as birds. I have capitalized individual species but not families or categories. A single species such as the Tiger, with subspecies such as the Bengal Tiger, or a dominant species of several species such as the African Elephant or the Grey Wolf, will be designated by the generic “Tiger,” “Elephant,” or “Wolf” once it has been established in a chapter about Asia, Africa, or North America respectively. If the capitals are annoying I beg you to take a look at the sports page of any newspaper where teams, leagues, cities, coaches, awards, and players are all in capitals, adding considerable ink to any article. Surely the animals of the field and forest, the waters and the skies, deserve as much attention.
Prologue
An impenetrable wall of jungle vine cloaked the forest trail as we descended over a small stream and into even darker afternoon light ahead. The acrid scent of a large animal wafted toward us, and I stopped. If this was a Jaguar I didn’t want to risk cornering it. Jaguars are not known to be aggressive toward humans, but I was taking no chances, so with a soft footfall we retreated and made our way back up to our cabin in the mountains.
Belize in 1982 was not the tourist mecca it is today. The country had just won independence from Britain a year earlier, and its abundant wildlife was known only to scientists, a handful of birders, and dedicated reef divers. A friend of mine in the Foreign Service was stationed there, and at her urging my husband, Ed, and I paid a visit.
The portal through which all pass is Belize City. We walked through the rough-and-tumble town, birthed in the 1600s for the lumber trade at the confluence of rivers and streams spilling into the Caribbean. Haulover Creek split the town in two and was a disgusting body of water into which everything was thrown, including carcasses from the outdoor market. Bloated fish, coconuts, shoes, dead dogs, and yesterday’s newspapers floated by as if consecrating them to the river and the sea meant an end to the horror. But the detritus never stopped. Mosquitoes, rife with malaria, were active day and night while flies sank into luncheon plates quicker than a fork. A woman sitting in a concrete alcove begged me to buy her baby. We didn’t linger here.
A bush pilot we met in a bar flew us to a Mayan ruin called Lamanai, largely unexcavated then. The little seaplane put down in the “river of crocodiles” and was secured to the wooden dock. Tripping over extensive vines, we began to explore the ancient site. No one was around. Only the incessant cicadas and tree frogs, the occasional whoop of an Oropendola above its dangling nest or the buzz of insects broke the silence of centuries. The great pyramid called the Temple of the Jaguar was unrecognizable since the jungle had reclaimed it as her own. We made our way down crumbling steps and entered a narrow dark corridor, ducking to avoid bats as they flitted into open air. The beam of our flashlight revealed a huge stone head looming in the dark, its blue and red paint as bold as the day it was applied a thousand years ago. This great Mayan civilization was gone. It disappeared as the Olmec had disappeared before it, both as extinct as the Dodo bird half a world away. By the time the Spanish arrived, the Maya had been replaced by the Aztecs and then the Aztecs by the Spanish. Survivors of these great civilizations were subsumed into a new culture, like Darwin’s finches, adapting to the environment in which they found themselves.
Ed and I traveled deeper into the interior of Belize, to the high pine forests, staying in a government “rest house” courtesy of our Foreign Service friend. We awoke each morning to the roar of Howler Monkeys, the sound penetrating the forest like an approaching freight train. Once I glimpsed a big male on a dirt road one hundred yards ahead, walking on two feet like a
dark furry human being. Sasquatch lives!
The sheer abundance of industry around us was unlike anything I’d encountered in the forests of the northeastern United States, from Leafcutter Ants chopping up leaves and carrying them in long soldierly lines to their farms, to myriad colorful birds zipping by in pursuit of food or nest material. Belize is a birder’s paradise, but it is also home to thousands of species of insects, amphibians, reptiles, and mammals, including the king of the forest, the Jaguar.
I went home and began writing a screenplay about a female biologist who tracks Jaguars in Belize. I contrived a story that involved the modern-day Maya, drug trafficking, and our intrepid heroine. What a great adventure, I thought, and what a great part for me! In the course of research on the cats I called the Bronx Zoo and was told I might want to talk to their field biologist in Belize, who actually was tracking Jaguars there. He had just been grounded because of head injuries sustained in a crash involving a single-engine plane, which had nosedived into the jungle floor, and he might be amenable to conversation.
The next day I hopped on a plane and by evening was having a drink in the Fort George Hotel with the thirty-year-old Alan Rabinowitz. He was bruised and battered but intrigued enough by my presence to invite me back to his study site in the Cockscomb Basin. We spent five days together, tracking Jaguars against the orders of his doctor, dissecting scat, measuring pugmarks, and talking extensively about wildlife. His shack was deep in the rainforest next to a few Mayan families and surrounded by a cacophony of birdsong.
I never saw a Jaguar in Belize, but one night as I lay on my cot, fixated on five scorpions clinging to the inside screen near my head, I heard a deep guttural cough outside, which thrilled me to the core. This was it. This was the wild elusive cat of Central and South America, revered by the Olmec, Aztec, and Maya, stalked by trophy hunters and fashionistas for its singularly gorgeous coat. This was the animal so rarely seen or heard that it existed in the realm of myth and divinity. The shack wall was all that separated us as I listened to the Jaguar in the forest of the night. I was hooked.
I abandoned my screenplay and turned instead to encouraging Alan to write his story—reality is always more interesting than any fiction, and Alan’s life in the jungle of Belize was exciting and different. As a stutterer who talked only to animals he had a lot to say.
My life has been immersed in the world of make-believe ever since I began acting. It is a magical world I love and that summons the most imaginative parts of me. But the natural world holds more mystery and beauty than could ever be contained in one life, or vista, or creature. As Hamlet says to his friend, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
Alan and I became close friends and we traveled to many places together. With his wife, Salisa, and my husband, Ed, we trekked the Annapurna range in Nepal’s Himalayas; we visited his study site in Thailand hoping to glimpse the rare Clouded Leopard; we spied Bengal Tigers perfectly camouflaged in the grasses of India; we rafted a great trout river in Idaho; we stayed with the Lacandon Indians, never subdued by the conquistadors, in the depths of the Chiapas rainforest; and, finally, we saw numerous Jaguars lazing on cool riverbanks in Brazil’s searing Pantanal.
My thirst for wild encounters and my passion for birds have taken me to unique places in the world in the company of remarkable field biologists. One cannot spend time with these heroes of conservation and not understand the crisis we are facing today with wild things and wild places.
The changes that are occurring to our planet Earth, as a result of human incursion, are happening with such rapidity that by all estimates we barely have a generation, maybe twenty years, to slow carbon emissions into the atmosphere before the results are catastrophic. Many bird and animal species are threatened with extinction. The concurrent events of global warming and rising sea levels, which mean the end for birds, will force mass migrations of people to viable climates and away from coastal flooding. Birds really are the canaries in the coal mine, portending what’s to come for all species. Where they struggle to survive, people also struggle.
We have not begun to explore the wealth that biodiversity offers human beings. Our interconnectedness with other species directly impacts our own well-being both physically and spiritually. We depend on the benefits from nature to sustain our bodies and the solace of wild places to soothe our souls, but somewhere along the way we lost respect for nature. We lost wonder. We no longer consider the unique and living creatures of the planet as sacred or special beings like ourselves.
The killing of animals for body parts, or out of irrational fear or irresponsible hunting, and the collecting of rare species for private gain have become rampant and threaten the populations of the most magnificent mammals on earth, such as Elephants and Tigers as well as the less celebrated amphibians, reptiles, and fish.
We are desecrating our lands, ripping out the heart of precious sites through reprehensible drilling, logging, and monoculture. We are polluting our waters with chemical spills, plastics, sewage, and dredging. Nature is resilient; she can repair herself if given the chance and the time.
Climate change is the overriding issue of our generation, dwarfing all others. One hundred and ninety-five nations finally came together in December 2015 to commit to reducing carbon emissions, officially recognizing that we are one world and we sink or swim together. The hard work of actually making it happen has just begun. Can human ingenuity pull the rabbit out of the hat with this one? I have great faith in technology’s saving us or at least leading the way, but I have less faith in our leaders in government, the media, and education making the case for our citizens, or teaching our young the importance and wonder of the natural world. How do you learn to love or protect the marvels of this planet if you have not been taught about them? How do you stand up for those things that have no voice of their own if you are not shown the way?
Scientists know what is happening, but their science is often repudiated and they cannot make their voices heard. They are like prophets in the wilderness. They have written thousands of books and papers. I have read only a fraction, but I have traveled with some of them and I have listened as they recounted the wonders and horrors of their journeys; I’ve also listened to the wildlife photographers who are documenting this precipitous time in our planet’s history through their artistry. These men and women are my heroes, as are people everywhere who speak up for the natural world. This book is for the protectors of our home the Earth and for all the miraculous living things in it.
PART 1
TIGER MAN
1
Mexico
Shade trees spread their branches over walkways of the little zoo in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, a respite from the late afternoon heat. Alan Rabinowitz was ahead of us, looking down into a spacious enclosure that mimicked the real rainforest of Mexico to our south. We heard the guttural snarls before we saw the object of his intense gaze. A female Jaguar snapped at the male as he attempted to mount her, and swiped her paw across his cheek.
He grabbed her by the neck, thrusting her low to the ground, but she managed to escape and ran off into the underbrush with the male in pursuit. He sauntered next to her and began licking her back and neck against the lay of the fur, surprisingly gentle compared to the bite to her neck. She didn’t stir until he again tried to get on top; then the whole courtship ritual began again. When at last she was ready he gained entrance and held her down with his jaws on her neck until the act was finished minutes later. They rolled on the ground and spooned like lovers on the grass, satiated for the moment. Then the process began all over again.
Alan was transfixed. He watched for the better part of an hour, barely moving, just like a cat. That is what Victor had said earlier in the day, when he first met Alan: “He is the cat he stalks!” It was true. His stillness was sometimes unnerving. His eyes, pale and catlike, could fix you with a penetrating stare while he contemplated the answer to something said. He was also power
ful. He had excelled at wrestling in school and kept his body strong with weights and running. Later he would be dubbed the “Indiana Jones” of conservation for his intrepid pilgrimages on behalf of the great cats.
Jaguar in a small zoo, Chiapas, Mexico, 1985
It was 1985. Alan, Ed, and I were traveling with Victor Perera in southern Chiapas. Victor, a Guatemalan, taught writing at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and had spent years with the Maya and the Lacandon Indians, a tribe never crushed by the Spanish. His book The Last Lords of Palenque painted a picture of the waning days of a once-great society, one that had built the graceful temple Palenque and worshipped gods and demigods of the animal world, including the Jaguar. I had studied the Maya, and Alan wanted to know more about the spirit world and the Jaguar. Victor’s book was fascinating; I sent a letter to his publisher telling him so. Our correspondence resulted in a friendship and an invitation to accompany him on his next visit to the Lacandon, in the last great forest of southern Mexico.
Chan K’in Viejo, his body bent, one shoulder higher than the other, his hands gnarled from the arthritis afflicting him, stood on the hill near his thatched house as we climbed to meet him. He smiled warmly as Victor approached, and they embraced. He said he had dreamed we were coming. This last lord of the Lacandon was barely five feet tall; he wore a white cotton tunic, and his black hair fell straight to his shoulders, with bangs covering his forehead. His voice was strong, and he was full of goodwill and humor. Victor presented him with a box of Churchill cigars, and Chan K’in immediately lit up, the huge cigar covering half his wizened face as he smoked. We spent the afternoon and evening under his roof as his three wives ground flour in the metate and pressed tortillas onto the hot stones in the fire, his little children treading the dirt floor with their stick toys. Chan K’in was reputed to have twenty-one children and in his nineties still copulated on a ritual pile of corncobs after the annual harvest.
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