Miriam Horn on WBAI, Pacifica Radio in NYC

Returning in 1963 for Life Magazine, Schaller found the mountain gorillas newly fearful and spotted just one friend, a once-puckish female aged by human pressures into a stooped old woman.

Miriam Horn joins Jeff Simmons, host of “Animal Matters” on WBAI NYC, to talk about her biography of George Schaller, Homesick for a World Unknown.

“Miriam Horn tells the story of the legendary naturalist George B. Schaller, whose work transformed modern field biology and conservation … In 1959 he arrived in the Belgian Congo as a young zoology student and did something radical for the time; he chose to observe mountain gorillas instead of trapping or shooting them. Over the course of his career he studied tigers, primates, lions, wild dogs, cheetahs, snow leopards, pandas and more across 32 countries and seven decades and became a fierce advocate for the wild places those animals need to survive [and] a mentor helping to inspire and train generations of scientists and wildlife advocates. .. Horn was given unprecedented access to George Schaller’s family correspondence and a trove of field notes and journals .. her new book isn’t just a portrait of a scientist but of a person whose work was shaped by patience, rigor, humility and an almost spiritual devotion to the natural world.”

listen to the full show here