Carlos Magdalena—skilled and passionate Kew Botanical Gardens’ horticulturist with the café marron he saved from extinction.(Carlos Magdalena)
When I visited Kew Botanical Gardens, I heard many fascinating stories about plants in the collection. Carlos Magdalena told me about the café marron, a small flowering shrub that was rediscovered by a schoolboy on Rodrigues Island (off Mauritius) about a hundred years after it was last seen. This was exciting, and the area was searched carefully in the hope that other individuals would be found. It seemed, however, that only the one plant had survived. Carlos described the nightmare of protecting it.
“It was in poor health and attacked by two insect pests,” he told me. “It was the last specimen of a species unique in its genus. It did not set seed. There was no information on its cultivation and no other similar surviving species for comparison. Several invasive plant species were growing next to it. It was a few meters off a public road, on a private piece of land, on a remote island with no botanical gardens. And frequently exposed to cyclones!”
Carlos built a cage around the sole survivor shrub to protect it from the locals, who tried to obtain branches for use as a local medicinal remedy. “Somehow somebody managed to jump in and cut the plant almost to ground level …”
Eventually, after two years of struggling with bureaucracy, three cuttings from the sickly survivor arrived with Carlos at Kew. And only one grew. Carlos’s seventeen-year struggle to persuade the café marron to produce fertile seeds is one of my favorite plant stories.
I asked him how it had felt to be primary caretaker for a very rare specimen like the café marron. “It is quite a responsibility,” he said, “when you suspect or know for certain that if it dies in your glasshouse—the whole species goes. It has scared me to death on several occasions. Going home on a Friday in a summer heat wave and thinking: Will it be there on Monday? … Will the person on duty remember to water it properly? Have I watered it too much? Or too little? This is something I’m trying to get used to but I haven’t yet!”
I also heard about Cooke’s kokio (Kokia cookei), a tree discovered in 1860 in Hawaii that was, over the next 118 years, believed on three separate occasions to have become extinct. Each time it was rediscovered years later—only to vanish again. The last time this happened, in 1970, the one remaining tree was killed in a fire. And yet one branch, charred and blackened, was able to provide a few fertile seeds. And so Cooke’s kokio lives on.
Carlos showed me a beautiful flowering shrub (Cylindrocline lorecenci) that had been—quite literally—raised from the dead. The story illustrates both the resilience of nature and the ingenuity of horticulturists (this time in France). Seeds had been collected fourteen years before the last living plant died, but unfortunately none of them germinated. Still, in just two of those seeds the scientists detected a few live cells. And from these, against all odds, they persuaded a new plant to grow.
Finally, on our Web site is the story of a truly dedicated field botanist, Reid Moran. For decades he was a sort of living myth in botanical exploration in Baja California and the Pacific Islands of Mexico. In 1996, Moran wrote The Flora of Guadalupe Island, which describes the immense botanical richness of the island but also analyzes, with despair, the devastating impact of the goats and other introduced species. “With its unique flora it is a Mexican treasure that urgently needs protection,” he said, “the most beautiful island I know …”
Reid Moran on Mexico’s Guadalupe Island, collecting a rare specimen of the endemic Guadalupe rock daisy (Perityle incana) that survives on a steep bluff, out of the destructive reach of goats. Around the world, botanists like Reid have risked and devoted their lives to preserving the diversity of earth’s plant species. (San Diego Natural History Museum)
Moran retired, but one of his friends, Dr. Exequiel Ezcurra, director of the Biodiversity Research Center of the Californias in San Diego, was a great admirer of Moran’s work. A question lingered in Exequiel’s mind: Could some of this collapsing paradise, with its incredible biological richness, still be saved? An expedition was organized and it was found that the situation, overall, was bleak, with many of the island’s unique species apparently gone and others seeming on the brink of extinction. Unless something was urgently done, the island would be a “paradise lost.”
Exequiel told me a dramatic story about the international cooperation and heroic efforts it took to secure funding and painstakingly restore the devastated island to its glorious paradisiacal condition.
In this book, we have shared stories of islands that were restored in order to provide the right habitat for endangered animals. Guadalupe Island was restored primarily to protect its beautiful and endangered flora—although it did see the vitalization of many birds and insects.
This story illustrates, in a striking way, the resilience of nature: Many of the plants on Guadalupe Island had weathered years of a very hostile environment and somehow survived. It is truly a success story, and without the pioneering work of botanist Reid Moran it would never have happened.
Without all the other men and women who are working so hard to conserve and protect our plants and their environments, our planet would be a poorer place. Their efforts are not usually well known, yet their contributions are so important, so meaningful. It is unfortunate that there isn’t enough space to pay tribute to them here, but their stories will brighten our Web site and open many eyes to the wonders of the plant kingdom.
A moment of trust. When infant Flint reached out to me, my heart melted. I loved him. (Hugo van Lawick/NGS)
Why Save Endangered Species?
Why should we bother to save endangered species? For some, the answer is simple. My friend Shawn Gressel, of the Sioux Tribe in South Dakota, works to reintroduce the swift fox and the black-footed ferret on tribal lands. One day while we sat talking and looking at his photographs, Shawn said to me, “Some people ask me why it matters. They want to know why am I doing it. And I tell them it is because these animals belong on the land. They have a right to be there.” He feels “obligated” to the animals he is working with.
Shawn is not alone. Many, if not most, of those I have spoken to feel much the same—even if they prefer (or have been advised) to give a scientific explanation of the importance of their work. And of course, there can be no question of the importance of protecting an ecosystem and preventing the loss of biodiversity. Yet there are millions of people who simply “don’t get it.” Especially if the species concerned is an insect—“Just a bug!” When the Salt Creek tiger beetle was listed as federally endangered, and federal money was released to help safeguard some of the unique and endangered habitat where it lives, there was a heated exchange of e-mails printed in the local Lincoln, Nebraska, newspaper. While many readers welcomed the decision, many others were shocked and horrified; some, too, were genuinely mystified. Here are three examples—and one hears similar opinions in many places.
A man calling himself Dick wrote, “Hundreds of thousands of species have come and gone without humans trying to save them. Even animals we killed off are probably happier now. Look at the dodo bird, what major environmental impact did all of them being wiped out have, other than sailors not having an easy lunch?”
Jill Jenkins asked, “Can someone tell me what difference it would make in our world as a whole, if this beetle were to become extinct?? I am really thankful our U.S. government wasn’t around to offer grants to keep the dinosaur from becoming extinct. One half million dollars to save a bug when millions of humans are homeless and hungry. We should be ashamed!”
Then someone named J had this to say: “Now I have heard it all! I am getting so sick of our ‘fine’ government making kindergarten decisions like this! We need to save our humans that are inflicted with cancer and other life threatening illnesses before we care about this beetle thing! If I saw one in my house I would smash it!”
There were, of course, many letters from people who understood the importance of protecting the environm
ent, even if they did not understand the reasons in detail. Theresa, for example, wrote: “It amazes me how spoiled-rotten Americans are, with our gas-guzzling SUVs and oversized … everything! If we don’t nurture our habitat, our entire world will become one big Easter Island!” (The full story of the fight to save the Salt Creek tiger beetle can be found on our Web site.)
It is indeed true that the expense of saving an endangered species can be exorbitant, so it is fortunate that in many countries there are laws protecting life-forms threatened with extinction. Else the damage inflicted on the natural world would be even greater. Hundreds of thousands of dollars may be spent on re-routing a road to protect the habitat of some small seemingly insignificant creature; a company may be forced to relocate a proposed development if the area is also home to an endangered species—or else buy suitable land elsewhere and even foot the bill of relocating the species concerned. (There are heartwarming accounts of all this on our Web site.) The reclamation of degraded habitats may cost us dearly, yet these efforts are among the most important facing us as we move into a new millennium.
We Need Wilderness to Nurture Our Souls
Scientists are continually providing facts and figures that can be used to explain the importance, to ourselves and our future, of preserving ecosystems. But the natural world has another value that cannot be expressed in materialistic terms. Twice a year, I spend a few days in Gombe—that’s all the time I have. Of course, I hope that I will see the chimpanzees. But I also look forward to the hours I spend alone in the forest, sitting on the peak where I once sat as a young woman and looking out over the forested valleys and the vast expanse of Lake Tanganyika. And I love to sit absorbing the spiritual energy of the Kakombe waterfall as it drops eighty feet to the rocky streambed below, the vegetation constantly moving in the wind of falling water. No wonder the chimpanzees perform their spectacular waterfall displays, “dancing” in the shallow water at the base of the falls, swaying rhythmically from foot to foot, hurling huge rocks, then sitting to watch the mystery of Water—always coming, always going, always there in front of them. No wonder this was one of the sacred places where the medicine men, in the old days, would come to perform their secret rituals. It is these experiences that fill my heart and mind with peace—being, even for a short time, part of the forest, connected once more with the mystery, feeding my soul.
Jeremy Madeiros, who has dedicated his life’s work to protecting the Bermuda petrels, or cahow, told me how he was taken to a California redwood forest when he was eleven years old. For him, being among those giant ancient trees was a spiritual experience, as it is for so many of us. “It was a defining moment in my life,” he told me. “It determined my future path.”
Rod Sayler, working to save the pygmy rabbit in Washington State, believes that human values and ethics should, where possible, drive the saving of endangered species. “We are treading too harshly on the earth and consuming and degrading too much of the planet,” he said. “If we allow extinctions to happen through ignorance or greed, then with the loss of each endangered species and unique population, our world becomes less diverse and strikingly less beautiful and mysterious. Our oceans, grasslands, and forests will echo with silence, and the human heart will know that something is missing—but it will be too late.” He argues that, although the fight to save endangered species may be costly, “can the human spirit afford not to try? If we do not, someday we will look back with the wisdom of time and regret our decision.”
The Keepers of the Planet: What Keeps Them Going
Fortunately for the future of the planet and all its life-forms, including us and our children, there are, as we have seen, brave souls out there fighting day after day to save what is left and restore what has gone. Working on this book has been a real privilege, for I have met so many of these extraordinary, dedicated, and passionate people from around the globe. Many of them, as described, have spent years working in remote places, enduring considerable personal discomfort and sometimes very real dangers. They have had to battle, too, not only with the harsher aspects of nature but also with uninformed, unimaginative, and shortsighted officials who refuse permission to move ahead with urgently needed management actions. Yet they have not given up.
What keeps them going? I asked some of those who have been longest in the field. All of them confessed to loving the wilderness, being out there with nature. And, as well, they became utterly absorbed in the work—almost, for some of them, it was like a mission. They simply couldn’t give up. They became, as the wife of Dean Biggins (one of the black-footed ferret team) put it, “obsessed.”
Don Merton has devoted his life to saving endangered birds. This is Adler, a juvenile kakapo—one of the many island birds that Don heroically rescued from the brink. “If you didn’t love and respect the creatures you are trying to save you couldn’t spend decades crawling through treacherous terrain and dangling from ropes,” he told me. (The dramatic story of saving the kakapo, the only flightless parrot in the world, is told on our Web site.) (Margaret Shepard)
Don Merton, who has worked so hard to protect island birds, told me that most of all he loved “the ultimate challenge—fighting to save the last few individuals of a unique life-form. The black robin is one of New Zealand’s living treasures … I felt a massive responsibility to current and future generations to save this fantastic little bird from the brink of extinction.” He told me that he could hardly wait to get back to the field each spring to find out how the individual birds had fared. And, he said, “Some of my colleagues became annoyed with me when I rose very early to start searching at first light, and woke them!”
Graduate student Len Zeoli with a highly endangered Columbia Basin pygmy rabbit. “How can you see one, know one, and not love these little creatures,” he said to me. “That’s what drives us. That is what keeps us going.” (Dr. Rod Sayler)
Chris Lucash, after twenty-one years with the Red Wolf Recovery Program, told me that during the early years when they were releasing the wolves into the wild, he felt privileged to have the opportunity of being part of something he believed was so very important. “I had unwavering energy,” he said. “I had a difficult time sleeping and wanted only to stay out keeping track of the wolves and try to figure out everywhere they went, what they did, why they did it, what they ate. I took little or no time off. I lived red wolves, and was baffled, confused by, and almost intolerant of people—friends and family—who did not feel the way I did about the program.” And still, after more than twenty years working with the wolves, he looks forward to going to work “every day—sometimes even on Sundays!”
Daring to Admit That We Love
There is another aspect of their work that for some may be the most important—the relationship they establish with the animals they work with. I have described my own feelings for so many of Gombe’s chimpanzees. The one I loved best was David Greybeard, the first who lost his fear of me, who allowed me to groom him and tolerated my following him in the forest. And I remember, as though it happened but yesterday, the day I offered him a palm nut on my outstretched hand. Not wanting it, he turned away, but then he turned back and, looking directly into my eyes, took the nut, dropped it, then very gently squeezed my hand with his fingers. A chimpanzee gesture of reassurance. And so we communicated perfectly, he and I, with shared gestures that, surely, predate our human spoken language.
Unfortunately in our materialistic world, where all that counts is the bottom line, human values of love and compassion are too often suppressed. To admit you care about animals, that you feel passionately about them, that you love them, is sometimes counterproductive for those in conservation work and science. Emotional involvement with one’s subject is considered inappropriate by many scientists; scientific observations should be objective. Anyone who admits to truly caring about, having empathy with, an animal is liable to be written off as sentimental, and their research will be suspect.
Fortunately, most of the extraordinary individuals
whose work is discussed in this book are not afraid of showing that they care. (Particularly those who have retired!) During one of my discussions with Carl Jones, of Mauritius Island fame, he echoed my own belief—that although scientists must have the ability to stand back and observe objectively, “they should also have empathy.” Humans, he said, “are intuitive and empathetic before they are coldly scientific”—and he believes that most “scientists call on these underlying qualities every day.” When he was working to save the Mauritius kestrels, he got to know and understand each bird as an individual. Don Merton waxed lyrical over the black robins, “those delightful, tame, friendly little birds.” Over the years, Don said, “I naturally became very attached—even emotionally involved you might say! I just loved them.” And Len Zeoli, when I asked him what motivated him to keep on working to save the pygmy rabbits, said simply, “How can you see one, know one, and not love these little creatures? That’s what drives us. That is what keeps us going.”
Mike Pandey, while filming in India the barbaric method of killing gentle, harmless whale sharks, came across a huge individual who was dying. “It slowly turned to look at me … beseeching and pleading … the intelligent eyes spoke a million words.” He said he would never forget that look: “Suddenly I was in communication with the majestic creature and there was a deep-rooted bonding.” That was the turning point that transformed his life. He decided to “speak out for the voiceless” and started his long series of powerful films for conservation.
Hope for Animals and Their World Page 36