Hope for Animals and Their World

by Jane Goodall; Thane Maynard; Gail Hudson

  A National Park and Hope for the Future

  It was an exciting day when a team of FCP climbers discovered another small breeding colony. “The number of breeding pairs almost doubled overnight!” Frank told me. FCP then obtained funding to buy the breeding area from the private owners. And the government set aside a large area in the central mountains and laurel forests for a national park. Most important for the petrels, sheep and goats are no longer allowed to graze the high mountains. Fences were erected and shepherds whose flocks were excluded were compensated. This resulted in massive restoration of vegetation, much of which is endemic. It is believed that Zino’s petrels used to nest in many other areas, and it is hoped that they will soon try new nesting sites. To encourage them, some artificial burrows have been constructed.

  “Things are now running smoothly,” said Frank, whose grown son Alexander and daughter Francesca are now involved in carrying on the family’s protection of the Zino’s petrel. In the 2008 breeding season there were about sixty to eighty nesting pairs. The Parque Natural de Madeira has taken on the conservation programs initiated by the FCP. And Frank wrote that “we even have eco-tourists coming to hear the birds at night.” (How I should love to experience that myself!)

  Frank ended by recalling “the huge honor that my father and I felt when the name Zino’s petrel, suggested by W. R. P. (Bill) Bourne, stuck. It is very humbling and makes me all the more determined that all should go well for the future of this now less-rare species.” One thing is certain: But for Alec and Frank, the Zino’s petrel would be extinct, its eerie nocturnal calls silent forever.

  The Large-Billed Reed Warbler (Acrocephalus orinus)

  This little bird has been quietly getting on with its life not in a remote jungle but in the habitat around a wastewater-treatment plant outside Bangkok! It was rediscovered in March 2006 by ornithologist Philip Round, who was making a survey there. Along with other, familiar birds, Philip captured a small warbler that he did not recognize. It had a long beak and short wings.

  “Then it dawned on me—I was probably holding a large-billed reed warbler. I was dumbstruck,” he said in an interview. “It felt as if I was holding a living dodo.” The species had been identified and described in the Sutlej Valley of India in 1867; since then it had not been seen for 130 years. No wonder there was some debate as to whether this one specimen had been correctly identified. However, photographs and DNA samples subsequently confirmed the identification. The large-billed reed warbler is one more species that has defied extinction.

  This rediscovery, of course, was very exciting to ornithologists and the bird was a hot topic of conversation in their circles. Probably this is why, just six months later and while biologists were still investigating the wastewater plant birds, another specimen was found. This one was dead—discovered in the UK in a drawer in the Natural History Museum at Tring. There, for more than a hundred years, it had been lying with other reed warblers collected from Uttar Pradesh in India in the nineteenth century. It, too, was confirmed as a large-billed reed warbler through DNA analysis. Ornithologists are now speculating that other populations of the bird may yet be found in Thailand, and perhaps also in Burma or Bangladesh.

  The Caspian Horse

  This story is about a very small and very beautiful breed of horse, and an American woman, Louise, who “discovered” and rescued them from obscurity in Iran. Louise married a young man from the Iranian royal family, Narcy Firouz, and became a princess. In 1957, the young couple established the Norouzabad Equestrian Center, where the wealthier Iranian families sent their children to learn to ride. The trouble was that all the typical horses of Iran—the Arabian and Turkoman—were too big for the smaller children, including their own three. And so when, in 1965, Louise heard rumors of a small pony in the Elburz Mountains near the Caspian Sea, she decided to investigate. She set out on horseback with a few women friends—it was not usual for women to travel like this, and the journey (the first of several she would make) was potentially dangerous. But all went well, and she found the “ponies.” They were being used as work animals, pulling carts, malnourished and covered with ticks.

  Almost at once Louise realized that these were not ponies at all—they had the distinctive gait, temperament, and unique facial bone structure of horses. Very small, narrow horses to be sure, standing only about 11.2 hands high (one hand is four inches), but horses for all that.

  Louise Firouz “discovered” and rescued the Caspian horse from obscurity in Iran. Shown here is Fereshteh, the first foal born after the Islamic Revolution. Tragically, during the revolution most of the Caspian horses were lost—auctioned as beasts of burden or slaughtered for meat. (Brenda Dalton)

  As she pondered the nature of this little horse, Louise suddenly remembered seeing, on the walls of the ancient palace in Persepolis, rock relief carvings of a horse that looked very much like the one she had just found. The Lydian horse depicted in those carvings had the same small, prominent skull formation. With a sense of excitement, Louise began to wonder whether, hidden beneath the matted coats of the work animals she had found, was a true representative of the ancient lost breed of the royals. The more she thought about this, the more certain she became.

  The Lydian horse had been used for chariot racing and in battle, a suitable gift for kings and emperors. It was thought by many to have been the ancestor of the Arabian—and it had been thought extinct for a thousand years! Louise found that there were still five purebred horses in the village, and she bought three of them. After extensive DNA testing, archaeozoologists and genetic specialists agreed with Louise that these little horses were indeed the ancestral form of the Arabian. What an incredible find!

  Louise made other excursions to the region, trying to find out how many of the little horses remained. I spoke with Joan Talpin, a close friend of Louise, who went with her on several of those searches. She told me the villagers were always friendly, and she remembers how the owners of the tiny inns where they stayed would go out to cut straw for fresh sleeping mats so that the visitors would not be plagued by bedbugs or fleas! In the end, Louise estimated there were about fifty of the horses, which she called Caspians, along the southern coast of the Caspian Sea. She purchased a few more, Joan told me—six stallions and seven mares—to found a breeding herd. Louise’s favorite remained that very first horse she found, whom she named Ostad Farsi for the professor. “He was a true gentleman,” said Joan, “and the breed owes much to him.” He was also loved by Louise’s children, who spent hours riding him and the other rescued Caspians.

  At first Louise and her husband, Narcy, financed the breeding themselves, but then in 1970 a Royal Horse Society (RHS) was formed in Iran. The society’s mission was to protect and maintain Iran’s native breeds, and it bought all Louise’s Caspians, by then numbering twenty-three. Louise and Narcy then started a second private herd near the Turkmenistan border. When two mares and a foal were killed by wolves, Louise, wanting to ensure that some of the horses be kept safe, arranged for eight of them to be exported to Britain in 1977. The RHS was angered—presumably they had not been consulted—immediately banned all further exports of Caspian horses, and began collecting up all of the little horses that remained in Iran, including all but one of the Firouzes’ second herd.

  Surviving Revolution and War

  Then came the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The Firouzes, because of their connections with the royal family, were arrested and imprisoned. Narcy was jailed for six months but Louise only for a few weeks, for she remembered advice given to her by a friend—that if she went to prison, she should go on a hunger strike. This worked—but, Joan told me, “Louise was thin anyway and must have been a beanpole when she came out!” Tragically, during that time most of the Caspian horses were lost—auctioned for use as beasts of burden or slaughtered for meat.

  Louise, however, was a survivor—and she was passionate about saving and protecting the bloodline of her beloved Caspian horses. She managed to rescue some of those t
hat remained from starvation and slaughter and established, for the third and last time, a small herd—to try to save the breed from extinction in Iran. And once again, before this was banned by the new government, she managed to export some of them to safety. The last such effort was in the early 1990s, when she sent seven horses on a tortuous and dangerous journey to the UK. They had to pass through the Belarus war zone, where bandits attacked and robbed the convoy. The horses arrived safely, but it had been a costly business. Soon after, in 1994, her husband died, and Louise could no longer afford to continue with her breeding program in Iran. She sold the remainder of her herd to the Ministry of Jehad, but was often called upon to advise on their management. She also assisted John Schneider-Merck, a German businessman, to establish his own small private herd of Caspians in Iran.

  The Future of the Caspian Horse Ensured

  With Iran’s many political upheavals—the overthrow of the shah during the Islamic Revolution, bombing during the Iran–Iraq War, the very real threat of famine—as well as the Caspian’s former association with royalty, the fate of these horses was ever in the balance. One moment they were considered a national treasure, the next they were seized as wartime food. But thanks to Louise, who had exported a total of nine stallions and seventeen mares, the future of this ancient line has been ensured. Today they can be found in England, France, Australia, Scandinavia, New Zealand, and now the United States.

  Much of the history of this little horse can be found in The Caspian Horse, written by one of Louise’s close friends, Brenda Dalton. She writes that Caspians are “one of the oldest and most gentle breeds in the world. They become attached to you, and are more dependent on us, more ‘doglike’ than other breeds of horses or ponies. They are very charismatic and very, very pretty and very engaging.” But for Louise, they would almost certainly have vanished without a trace. The fact that she “discovered” them, before it was too late, must have given her great joy. Later she would say that after finding the first Caspians, she watched the ancient horse “trot serenely back into history.”

  Louise, “Iran’s lady of horses,” died in May 2007, and when I spoke to Brenda on the phone she had just returned from a memorial service held in the UK. What a fascinating and amazing person, what an extraordinary life. Above all she understood and loved horses, and she must have suffered greatly when her beloved Caspians were sold back into drudgery and for slaughter. But despite the setbacks, and as a result of her courage and determination, she saved a rare and charismatic breed, reintroduced it to the horse-loving world, and became, herself, an integral part of its history.

  Amazingly, we are even rediscovering species from the distant prehistoric world—once believed to only exist as fossils. Shown here a news clipping about the coelacanth, an animal species that has survived, unchanged, for sixty-five million years. (South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity)

  Living Fossils:

  Ancient Species Recently Discovered

  Imagine finding a living species previously known only from fossils! A species from an ancient prehistoric world that has existed, beyond our knowledge, for millions of years. The coelacanth, an enormous shark-like fish, was discovered just before World War II. Because I was only four years old, it was not exciting to me at the time. It is very exciting to me now. An animal species that has survived, unchanged, for sixty-five million years! And no one knew about it—except, I suppose, fishermen who had occasionally caught one in their nets, and they would have had no idea that it was anything untoward. It was indeed known to science, but in the form of fossils, stored in various museums, of little interest to any save those paleontologists who happened to be interested in fish. For them, the discovery was as though a living dinosaur had been found!

  When I worked with Louis and Mary Leakey at Olduvai in 1958, I would sometimes stand, holding the fossilized bone of some long-gone species, and imagine how it would have looked in life. Indeed, it sometimes led to near-mystical experiences. As when I found the tusk of an extinct giant pig and seemed suddenly to see it standing there, huge and fierce. Saw its coarse brown hair, the crest of black hair along its back, its bright fierce eyes. I seemed to smell the animal, hear it snort. And then it was gone and I was left looking down at a piece of prehistoric ivory, slowly returning to reality.

  The coelacanth comes from a far more ancient era than that pig. It is as though one of the fish, from those prehistoric seas I had longed to visit as a child, has come swimming into the present. And I can so easily imagine the overwhelming feeling of excitement of the scientists who handled and studied that first coelacanth. Indeed, they must sometimes have imagined they were dreaming.

  The Wollemi pine was also known only from the fossil record—from imprints of its leaves on ancient rock. And it, too, dates back sixty million years. When the first specimen was picked from a tall tree in a remote and unexplored canyon in Australia, the biologist who found it had no idea that he had made a major discovery, that he would have the extraordinary honor of having a “living fossil” named for him. Indeed, it took a long time and many hours of discussion and searching through herbarium specimens before its true identity was finally revealed. That was truly the botanical discovery of the last century, just as the coelacanth was one of the major discoveries in the animal kingdom. The future of the tree is assured—that of the fish is uncertain. The stories of both are fascinating.

  The Most Beautiful Fish or “Old Fourlegs”(Latimeria chalumnae)

  Toward the end of 1938, Marjory Courtenay-Latimer, a twenty-three-year-old museum curator in East London, South Africa, noticed a very strange-looking fish in the catch of the trawler Nerine. She often went to look at the sea life brought in by the fishermen, but she had never seen anything like this before. In an interview, she said it was “the most beautiful fish I have ever seen, five feet long and a pale mauve blue with iridescent silver markings.” She and the museum staff knew that it was unique and of great scientific value. She preserved as much of the fish as possible, drew it, and sent the now famous sketch to renowned ichthyologist Professor J. L. B. Smith.

  I would love to have been there when, finally, Professor Smith and the remains of that fish got together. Already there was speculation as to the identity of the deep-sea creature—and early in 1939, Smith announced to a stunned world that it was a coelacanth, a fish previously known only from the fossil record. It had been considered extinct for some sixty-five million years.

  For the next fourteen years, no more coelacanths were reported, but then, in 1952, one was found in the Comoros. Professor Smith—I imagine with much excitement—went to fetch it. This find was considered so important that the then prime minister, Dr. D. F. Malan, allowed him to use a Dakota of the South African Air Force to transport the fish back to East London! More scientists became interested, and more attempts were made to try to see these fish in their natural habitat. And then came the first amazing footage of coelacanths swimming in the ocean. It was shot from the manned submersibles Geo and Jago by Professor Hans Fricke and his team.

  In 1938 Marjory Courtenay-Latimer, a twenty-three-year-old museum curator in East London, South Africa, saw a strange-looking fish in the catch of a local trawler. She drew the fish, and sent this now famous sketch to renowned ichthyologist Professor J. L. B. Smith, who identified it as a coelacanth, a sixty-five-million-year-old species. (South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity)

  Coelacanths are large fish growing to about six feet in length; the heaviest recorded so far was 243 pounds. Professor Smith wrote a book about them, which he titled Old Fourlegs—a reference to the lobed fins that he and other scientists thought might be precursors to the arms and legs of land vertebrates.

  Historical photo of Marjory Courtenay-Latimer with a mounted coelacanth. (South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity)

  Recently I was in touch with Dr. Tony Ribbink in Grahamstown, South Africa. He is the CEO of the Sustainable Seas Trust, founded to study and protect endangered species
in the ocean canyons and caves of Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, Madagascar, the Comoros, and South Africa. He got involved with coelacanth research and conservation in 2000 when scuba divers discovered a colony in the Saint Lucia Wetland Park off Sodwana Bay, South Africa. They were more than a hundred yards deep when they found and filmed coelacanths in canyons about two miles from the shore.

  “The discovery of the coelacanths in a marine park and world heritage site,” he said, “was a wake-up call.” He likened it to finding elephants in a terrestrial park years and years after the park had been established. I asked if he had seen coelacanths in the wild. “Yes I have,” he told me, “at depths from 105 to over 200 meters. They are amazing—very quiescent, very tolerant of each other, slow moving and mystical.”

  The Sustainable Seas Trust launched the African Coelacanth Ecosystem Programme, which works in Comoros, Kenya, Madagascar, Mozambique, South Africa, and Tanzania. They have engaged hundreds of researchers, students, and public officials from nine countries and gradually gained new insights into the ecology, distribution, and behavior of these amazing survivors from ancient times. But still many of the fundamental questions, asked initially in the late 1930s by Marjory Courtenay-Latimer and Professor Smith regarding life history, breeding behavior, gestation period, where the young are born, whether parental care is practiced or whether the young hide until they are large enough to join adult groups, remain unanswered. No one has ever knowingly seen a young coelacanth in the wild.