A Foreign Correspondent of Animal Kingdoms; Christina Larson Reviews Homesick for Foreign Policy Magazine

“How a headstrong field biologist helped birth the worldwide conservation movement.

The first scientist to perform detailed, sustained field studies of once-inaccessible animals in the wild, from Serengeti lions to mountain gorillas, Schaller revealed the lives of creatures long thought monstrous or mysterious.

…widely recognized as the father of modern conservation biology, his work was among the first to tackle, as Horn notes, “the question fundamental to conservation: What does this animal need?” Like a foreign correspondent arriving in a new land and quickly learning the language, customs, and daily rituals, Schaller approached his assignments with near-total immersion, birthing a global movement by peering closer into animal worlds than anyone else had before.

…his peers thought Schaller was raving mad when, as a 26-year-old biologist, he and his wife, Kay, left New York in 1959 for the Belgian Congo to observe gorillas in the wild for a year. Against all advice, he declined to carry weapons or armor. Other researchers warned him, Horn writes, that ‘he would be torn limb from limb. All the Great Men of Science said so.’ Not only did he survive, but he transformed biologists’ understanding of both wild gorillas and the possibilities of science itself.

…he succeeded in what researchers call “habituating” the animals to his presence—a practice later adopted .. by his successors studying great apes, including Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey…later efforts to prevent extinctions would have been impossible without Schaller’s pioneering bootsteps.”

Read the Full Review>