“If there’s a pantheon of wildlife heroes, George Schaller is surely in it”
John Davis reviews Miriam Horn’s new biography of Schaller, Homesick for a World Unknown, for the Rewilding Institute.
Whether you’ve been following George Schaller’s pioneering studies and reading his books for half a century, or you have just learned of him, you will devour this book and admire its subject. The subject is dual, really, for George was often accompanied and always supported by his beloved wife, research partner, and editor, Kay Schaller. The two often lived with their sons Eric and Mark in simple huts in remote places, where the boundaries between wild and domestic were blurry, and the household often included orphan cubs or calves that George or Kay rescued…
George and Kay Schaller were deep ecologists before Norwegian philosopher Arne Naess coined the term “deep ecology.” George was a conservation biologist before Michael Soulé founded the Society for Conservation Biology. The couple were rewilding advocates before Dave Foreman defined “rewilding.”