Hope For Animals And Their World Part 6

And it worked! On September 13, 2001, a male calf, named Andalas (one of the original names for the island of Sumatra), was born at the Cincinnati Zoo. Emi, it ends up, after all these trials and tribulations, is a phenomenal mother. Andalas weighed seventy-two pounds at birth and stood up and walked at fifteen minutes old. He nursed like wild and reached nine hundred pounds by his first birthday. After four years at the Los Angeles Zoo, Andalas was sent to Indonesia, where a small captive population of hairy rhinos is kept on the edge of a preserve.

The return of Andalas to his native land not only met with international media attention but also brought the story full circle, demonstrating that captive breeding of this critically endangered species is not only possible but looks to be succeeding. The hope is to establish captive breeding populations adjacent to the parks so that the young can be more easily released in the wild to bolster the population.

Meanwhile, in the past few years Emi and Ipuh have continued to breed successfully. Now that Emi's a veteran mom, she no longer needs progesterone to carry her fetus to full term. The immediate plan is to breed Andalas with two young females at the sanctuary in Indonesia to increase the genetic diversity in captivity.

So does breeding a few rhinos save a species? Not by itself. Demonstrating the value of wild animals to the people in an area where they live is the number one way to help protect those species and their habitat. Perhaps the most important outcome of this successful captive breeding program is the increased public awareness and dedication to protecting the wild hairy rhinos-around the world, but especially in Indonesia.

THANE'S FIELD NOTES

Gray Wolf (Canis lupus)

The first time I saw wild wolves was in the Lamar Valley in the northern section of Yellowstone National Park. I am willing to say that I believe in miracles solely on the basis of seeing those wolves. Because it is nothing short of a miracle that the gray wolf-once ruthlessly eradicated from the region-has returned to Yellowstone.

Long feared as a vicious predator, this social creature is actually very important to people. Not only are wolves the ancestors of our beloved dogs, but they are a remarkable symbol for conservation. In the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem in the American West, the successful reintroduction of the gray wolf has been both a remarkable comeback and a major controversy. Perhaps the greatest miracle is that ranchers are starting to live together with wolves for the first time since the advent of guns. And even though some ranchers continue to resist the reintroduction, the wolves are back, and by all appearances they are here to stay.

As a result, the return of the gray wolf to Yellowstone National Park is number one on the official "World's Top Ten Conservation Programs" list. It took decades of work and educating and arguing and explaining for that crazy combination of Western conservationists, ranchers, federal biologists, and dreamers to succeed.

In my mind, what makes wolf restoration so significant is that it follows hundreds and hundreds of years of persecution. There are doc.u.ments from the 1600s offering bounties on gray wolves in a number of colonies, stating the desired eradication of the species from the land. For centuries, Americans worked diligently to kill the wolf. And by the early twentieth century, the job was done. A species that once lived throughout most of the lower forty-eight states was almost entirely gone (a small remnant population was able to survive in Minnesota).

This almost complete eradication was not due just to the use of leg-hold traps. Or to wanton hunting and bounties. What finally took out the wolves was the widespread use of poison over a huge landscape. What brought them back was a public outcry and backing of efforts to restore the wolf to suitable habitat in the American West.

Mike Phillips is the executive director of the Turner Endangered Species Fund, headquartered in Bozeman, Montana. Mike ran the gray wolf restoration program in Yellowstone National Park from 1994 to 1997. But a decade before that began, he was involved with the reestablishment of the red wolf to the American Southeast, which Jane speaks to in these pages. Mike told me that during his many restoration projects, he learned a great deal about communicating with, and especially listening to, the concerns of local people.

"You have to make sure that local folks know exactly what you're up to because they will ask you, 'No, you want to do what what?!' And ranchers throughout the West will often say to me, 'It's not so much that we're against the gray wolf. We can live with the wolves. But what we do not want is a further erosion of our way of life. We don't want further federal intervention into what we do. We don't want further state intervention into what we do.' They see this as just another indication of how the West they once knew is changing."

Of course, the effort isn't to restore wolves to private ranches, but on federal land in Yellowstone National Park, where national surveys had shown that an overwhelming majority of Americans wanted again to see wolves thrive. What heartens Mike Phillips is "the continued bipartisan support of the Endangered Species Act for more than thirty years. The law is much argued over and debated, but the American people steadily tell their representatives that they do not want and will not accept extinction on their watch in their country."

Mike was there at the cages on that March morning in 1995 when the first wolves in sixty-nine years were allowed to run free in Yellowstone. What made the project so complicated was that wolf restoration wasn't just a sociopolitical challenge, or an administrative one with all the logistics, but also a biological challenge.

"We knew from other wolf relocations that if we simply released the gray wolves in Yellowstone, they would take off," Mike told me. "But the purpose of this program was to restore wolves to Yellowstone, so we needed to release them in a way that they would have a strong tendency to stay in the region. So we had to arrange an acclimation program that would allow the wolves to remain in captivity for an extended period of time at the release site. Well, that meant that they had to be fed and watered."

Water was the easy part of course. "For heaven's sake, in wintertime they can simply eat snow," Mike told me. "But imagine the amount of food we had to provide. We needed to feed five pounds of food per wolf per day. And if you have twenty wolves to be released, that's a hundred pounds a day and seven hundred pounds a week and three thousand pounds per month. It starts to add up."

Mike has been surprised by the success of the wolf restoration. "On any measurement you would like to observe, the program has been a success. The population has grown faster than expected. And particularly surprising is that many of the packs have remained observable. It is rather routine today for visitors to see wolves in the wild in the Northern Range of Yellowstone Park."

And as for what the future of wolves looks like, Mike reveals that at his core, he is a biologist: "The other thing you have to be mindful of is that gray wolves are great ecological generalists. They don't need much of an opportunity to flourish. They largely need to be left alone and they need access to prey items that are typically bigger than themselves. You give wolves a big landscape with something to eat, they're going to do just fine."

Basically, he is unconcerned about the wolf's future in Yellowstone and nearly unconcerned about the wolf's future in the northern Rocky Mountains generally. As a result of Mike Phillips's work and that of hundreds of others involved with the gray wolf restoration program, today you can see wild wolves again in the West, just as Lewis and Clark did two centuries ago.

PART 3

Never Giving Up

Introduction.

So far our stories have been about species rescued from the very brink of extinction and reintroduced to nature, although very few of them are surviving with absolutely no human management. And with the prospect of continued human population growth, habitat loss, pollution, poaching, climate change, and so on, we must remain vigilant in our effort to protect them and their habitats.

Those grouped in this section have a future that is even less secure. They have been saved from toppling into the abyss of extinction but, for various reasons, they have not yet been reestablished in the wild.

In its vast desert habitat of Mongolia and China, the wild Bactrian camel is threatened by hunters-and also by lack of water, as so much of the snowmelt in the surrounding mountains is diverted for agriculture-and will, presumably, be diminished further by global warming. Its future will depend on continuing talks with the Chinese and Mongolian governments and the political will to find an area where the wild Bactrian camel will be safe and its needs met. The future of the Iberian lynx in the wild depends on the extent to which the authorities are prepared to protect areas of natural habitat from human encroachment-and to some extent on the lynx's ability to learn how to cross roads safely!

Some must be retrained during captive breeding to adapt to the reality of their habitat. The giant pandas that are bred in captivity must be raised in such a way that they can survive and find more suitable food in their natural habitat than has been the case so far. And the effort to teach the northern bald ibis a new migratory route is still in the pilot phase-though this is very encouraging.

I have met many of those who are involved in the efforts to ensure a safer future for these species in the wild-some of them have been involved for many years. Fortunately for the animals-and for future generations-none of them will ever give up, no matter the challenges they face.

A further point to be made: These stories are representative of countless other rescue efforts that deserve to be publicized, some of which-such as the Chinese alligator-will appear on our Web site. One of the problems I have faced, during the writing of this book, is just how many admirable efforts are being made to save endangered species, all over the world. Just today, for example, I read about the beautiful little ladybird spider that lives close to my home in the UK. Its numbers were once down to about fifty individuals, but thanks to captive breeding there are now a thousand. I hope, on our Web site, we can honor many more of these ongoing projects, and the scientists and citizens who are helping to maintain and restore the biodiversity of our planet.

We do not know what the future holds for life on earth, whether our combined efforts can turn things in favor of animals and their world. What is important is that we never give up trying.

Iberian Lynx (Lynx pardinus)

I first read about the Iberian lynx in the Iberian Air magazine first read about the Iberian lynx in the Iberian Air magazine Ronda Iberia Ronda Iberia in June 2006, when I was on my way from Spain to the UK. Endemic to the Iberian Peninsula, this lynx, I read, is one of the world's most endangered felines. The article introduced Miguel Angel Simon, a biologist who was heading up a lynx recovery plan. Immediately I wanted to meet with him. in June 2006, when I was on my way from Spain to the UK. Endemic to the Iberian Peninsula, this lynx, I read, is one of the world's most endangered felines. The article introduced Miguel Angel Simon, a biologist who was heading up a lynx recovery plan. Immediately I wanted to meet with him.

And a year later, when I was in Barcelona, it happened: Miguel Angel flew in from his field station to talk with me. I found him sitting at a table in a peaceful area of my small hotel with Ferran Guallar, executive director of JGI-Spain, who offered to translate for us. Miguel Angel, a wiry man with a short military mustache, looked business-like and competent, and was clearly pa.s.sionate about his work with the lynx.

It was 2001 when Miguel and his team began the first thorough census of the lynx population throughout Andalusia. They set up photo traps and searched for signs of lynx presence such as feces. The results showed that the species was in serious trouble. Not only were the lynx affected by habitat loss, hunting, and being caught in traps set for other animals, but rabbits, their main prey species, had been almost eliminated by an epidemic. Indeed, in some places they had disappeared entirely from this land the Phoenicians called Hispania, meaning "land of the rabbits." Undoubtedly, Miguel said, many lynx had died from starvation. His census showed that there were only between one and two hundred lynx remaining in two areas in southern Spain; during the previous twenty years, they had become extinct in central Spain and Portugal. Clearly desperate measures would have to be taken if these beautiful animals were not to become extinct.

Astrid Vargas and her staff work around the clock to save Spain's treasured Iberian lynx. Shown here with a young male, Espliego, abandoned by his mother, Aliaga. (Jose M. Perez de Ayala) (Jose M. Perez de Ayala) Winning Friends for the Lynx An application to the EU for funding resulted in one of its biggest-ever grants for work with an endangered species-twenty-six million euros for the period from 2006 to 2011. The lynx restoration program was established with eleven partners: four conservation groups, four government ministries, and three hunting organizations. Because most of the surviving lynx were on private land in the rural boroughs of Andujar in Jaen, Cardena in Cordoba, and Donana in Huelva, it was clearly of utmost importance to strive for the full cooperation of the landowners.

At first, this was not easy. A lynx will prey on fawns, and many farmers had concerns about lynx also killing their lambs-which they sometimes do. And so, from the start, Miguel and his team investigated every report of lamb killing and gave compensation to farmers-even if it turned out that the killer had been a wolf. A scheme was launched whereby awards were given to landowners who had good conservation records.

Gradually the landowners' att.i.tude changed. More and more of them, whether they owned fifteen thousand acres, or fifty acres, or simply a summer villa with a garden, signed agreements with the lynx recovery team. First-they would protect the lynx on their land. Second-they would no longer shoot rabbits, but rather leave them for the lynx. Third-they would permit those working on the lynx recovery plan to use their land for controlled reintroductions (of lynx and rabbits) and monitoring. Indeed, it has become something of a status symbol to claim that you have lynx on your land-after all, in some places the lynx is actually a totem animal. Thus the lynx is now protected, through ninety-eight separate agreements, throughout an area of some 540 square miles.

Of course, Miguel told me, recovery is agonizingly slow. A female has cubs only every other year, and normally she will not raise more than two young at a time. Nevertheless, in 2005 at one of the main research sites, some twenty females gave birth to about forty cubs in the spring. And by autumn approximately thirty young lynx had survived. But this is the time, Miguel told me, when the trouble starts, as the young adults leave to find new territories. The males leave when they are a year old. The females may hang around for another season. Whatever their age, many simply vanish when they go off on their own. But according to Miguel, they have now started using radio collars for GPS satellite tracking; it is finally possible to find out where the animals go.

I asked Miguel if he had a good story to share and he told one that proves, he says, that the conservation program is working. In 1997, in one area, there were only seven adult lynx (identified from photo traps)-two females and five males-and just one cub. n.o.body thought the tiny group had a chance of surviving, especially because disease was spreading among the rabbits. Nevertheless, the son of the ranger in charge was asked to name the cub. The little boy, without hesitation, chose the name Pikachu. Pikachu. And, to everyone's amazed delight, Pikachu-along with all seven adults-survived. Today there are forty-five lynx in the area. "And," said Miguel, "Pikachu is king." And, to everyone's amazed delight, Pikachu-along with all seven adults-survived. Today there are forty-five lynx in the area. "And," said Miguel, "Pikachu is king."

A Visit with the Lynx Written into the recovery program was the decision to establish a captive breeding program. A team of scientists, who work closely with Miguel and his team, carefully determine which lynx, from which areas, should be taken into captivity in order to ensure genetic diversity. The rules are strict: Only if three cubs from one female survive to six months of age can one of them be captured. The cubs are sent to one of the two breeding centers.

Miguel works closely with Astrid Vargas-who heads up the El Acebuche Centre in Donana-and he introduced me to her by phone. A year later I was landing in Seville, with my sister Judy, for the drive to the breeding center. Astrid herself was unable to meet us at the airport because there had been a tragedy during the night. She had been woken by the volunteers who monitor the breeding females and cubs via TV monitors. They told her that there had been a serious fight between cubs-the sixth within the past month. This time it was Esperanza's youngsters. By the time Astrid arrived, the female cub had received a lethal bite to her throat.

I learned that it was the second death caused by cub fighting since the start of the breeding program. Thus it was a somewhat subdued team that greeted us when we arrived: Astrid, Antonio Rivas (Tone), Juana Bergara (the head keeper), and some dedicated volunteers. It was not surprising that they were upset-they showed me the footage of the aggression later, and it was shocking in its sudden onset and its ferocity.

Astrid told me that she could never forget the first time sibling murder took place at the breeding center. The mother was Saliega, known as Sali, and she was the first female ever to give birth in captivity. She was an excellent mother, and her three cubs were all doing well-until, when they were about six weeks old, a play bout between the largest cub, Brezo, and one of his sisters suddenly turned deadly serious and they began to fight fiercely. Sali seemed perplexed and tried to break it up, holding one or the other of the pair with her jaws, shaking them. But Brezo would not let go, and in the end, badly wounded himself, he killed his sister with a bite to her throat.

"We suddenly went from a happy family to an awful crisis situation with a dead cub, an injured one, and a completely stressed-out mother who would repeatedly take the third cub in her jaws and pace all over the enclosure," said Astrid.

Frantically Astrid contacted as many experts as she could. Finally she got through to Dr. Sergey Naidenko, a Russian scientist who had studied the Eurasian lynx for twenty years. And, he told her, for eighteen of those years he had recorded sibling aggression among captive lynx and he had come to think that it was normal behavior. But no one had believed him-it was always ascribed to bad management. Astrid was delighted to speak with Naidenko. "It was like finding a guru," she told me.

She asked him if he'd had success returning injured cubs to their mothers, and he said yes, 100 percent success. But, he warned, it would have to be done very carefully. At this point, Astrid had to make a tough decision: She knew Brezo needed his mother and her milk, but she also knew that the media and wildlife authorities were watching closely. What if she made a wrong decision and it led to the death of another precious lynx? She would be blamed, perhaps damaging the status of the whole breeding program. But because their goal was to return lynx to the wild, it was vital that the cubs be raised by their mothers. So she decided, with much apprehension, to take the risk.

Brezo had been away from his mother for a day and a half. First they sprinkled him with Sali's urine-she often sprayed her cubs. "We tried," said Astrid, "to cover as much as possible our human smell with Sali's own perfume." As soon as Sali saw Brezo, she began "vocalizing sounds of joy." Once he was in the enclosure, she groomed him and sprayed him and lay down so he could suckle. "Brezo was in lynx heaven," said Astrid, "and we were so happy and deeply touched by the scene that I still get chills when I recall it."

Since then, the team has broken up fights in several subsequent litters. They always occur when the cubs are about six weeks old, and for no apparent reason.

Mothers and Cubs I was able to see firsthand how much Astrid cares for the lynx in the program. She and the head keeper, Juana Bergara, took me first to visit Esperanza, mother of the cub killed the night before. Despite this trauma-or perhaps because of it-she was clearly very, very pleased to see Astrid and Juana. Although all the lynx cubs at the center are raised with limited contact with humans, and prepared, as far as possible, for survival in the wild, Esperanza had been hand-raised and had a special relations.h.i.+p with people.

As we approached, wearing protective booties and rubber gloves, she gave little breathy sounds of greeting and rubbed up against the wire. She repeatedly b.u.t.ted the wire mesh with her head-a sign of affection, Astrid said. Clearly, she could not get enough of this attention-I had the feeling that this contact was soothing for her after the stress of the night. I heard her purring like a happy domestic cat. She had been found in 2001, Astrid told me, as an almost dead one-week-old lynx cub. She was saved by the Jerez zoo vets and hand-raised. She never saw another lynx until she was almost a year old.

To provide opportunity for the cubs to learn from their mothers, the families are kept in large outdoor enclosures, where the cubs are taught to hunt by their mothers. Rabbits, of course, are bred for this purpose. In one of the big enclosures, three cubs were playing. Their mother led them toward a handsome black rabbit, but they showed absolutely no desire to want to hurt it, nor did the rabbit show the slightest fear. It almost seemed to want to play! The keeper told me that one of the lynx refused to kill one individual rabbit that remained in the enclosure for several weeks-and thereby witnessed the quick dispatch of many others of his kind. This, of course, is the difficult part of such programs. Astrid told me that she always feels so sorry for the rabbits. It makes it worse that her son, Mario, now four years old, always wants to go and see the rabbits when he visits the facility. And he always asks to bring them home.

Astrid took me to visit two of the breeding males-they are stunningly beautiful creatures. One lay quite far away, watching us intently. The other was close to the mesh, but spat and hissed at us as we approached. He had lived in the wild until he was three years old, Astrid told me. Then he was brought to the center too badly injured to be released. As we watched him, Astrid was reminded of another injured lynx, Viciosa, who had been sent to her from Andalusia, and I remembered Miguel telling me about her when we met in Barcelona. When he had found her, by following signals from her radio collar, she'd been close to death. She had been badly injured by fighting during the breeding season, and weighed only eleven pounds instead of the average twenty-four pounds or so. Amazingly, with good care and good food, she recovered in three weeks.

When Astrid received her, she had already been saddled with the name Viciosa (which means "vicious") by Miguel's team. "But she wasn't at all vicious," Astrid told me, "she just wanted to eat and eat!" When Viciosa was released back into her territory toward the end of breeding season, she immediately coupled with a male, and nine weeks later gave birth to two cubs.

I was very impressed by Astrid's facility. There are cameras mounted to cover each outside area and others for the inside of the dens. The TV monitors are on twenty-four hours, monitored by staff or volunteers, throughout the whole year, and with particular intensity during the three months of birthing and cub rearing. All this footage is providing unique information about lynx behavior.

I was astounded by a truly unique method for collecting blood. Any attempt to anesthetize the lynx, or handle them in any way, is extremely distressing for them. A German scientist had the idea of collecting blood by means of a giant bedbug! Lynx sleep on a layer of cork at night. A small hole is cut in this, and into this s.p.a.ce a hungry bedbug is placed. It makes a beeline-or bugline!-for the warm body and starts to suck blood. After twenty minutes (when the bug starts to digest the blood), it is removed from below the sleeping platform, and the blood removed with a syringe. The lynx sleeps on, undisturbed. And the bug can be used again! (No doubt this will cause outrage among People for the Ethical Treatment of Bedbugs!) A Tragic Killing Before we left, Judy and I saw the infrared footage of the night's fatal attack. It lasted eight minutes. It began when the victim, up on a ledge in the night quarters, was suddenly, for no apparent reason, attacked by her brother from the back. Then the two started fighting in earnest. The victim, from the start, went on the defensive, lying on her back and kicking with her back legs. After two minutes, the kicking stopped. Esperanza had rushed to the scene instantly and, seizing the victim, tried to pull her away. Three times she managed to separate them, but the aggressor would not give up. Astrid had been called and was there within five minutes-but although she retrieved the cub, it was too late to save her. She had a punctured lung and several broken ribs.

After the dying cub had been removed, Esperanza behaved strangely. Every time the survivor tried to return to the den, his mother-who seemed unable to carry him in the accepted manner, by the scruff of his neck-dragged him out despite his attempts to resist. This was repeated many times. For some reason Esperanza did not want him in that den.

Later I heard from Astrid that a careful necropsy had shown that the actual lethal wounds had not been inflicted by the male sibling, as had been thought, but by the mother in her efforts to try to separate her cubs. "Esperanza," Astrid told me, "was always attentive yet rough with her cubs. Her instinct to separate these two was good, but she was captive-raised, had no lynx playmate as a cub, and thus had no chance to learn her own strength. And that," said Astrid, "was lethal."

The Future of the Lynx in the Wild That evening Astrid, Tone, and Javitxu drove Judy and me into the Donana National Park lynx habitat. Of course we saw no lynx, though Javitxu told us that just the previous week he had seen a mother with three cubs playing in one of the many open clearings among the low trees.

During the drive, we discussed the many difficulties and the many problems that lie ahead-the protection of suitable habitat, for one thing. Even the national parks are not always safe. Part of Donana National Park's buffer zone had been taken over for a golf course. Also, each year, hundreds of thousands of people make a pilgrimage to the Virgin of Rocio festival, in honor of a statuette of the Virgin Mary that once supposedly magically appeared in a tree. Unfortunately, the pilgrims pa.s.s through prime lynx habitat, right through the national park, in the middle of the breeding season. Then, too, there are more tourists coming into the area, attracted by the beautiful beaches. And as road traffic increases, so do the numbers of lynx killed on roads (at the time about 5 percent of all deaths).

Nonetheless, as we discussed over a delicious dinner in a small and friendly restaurant, there is much that is positive. For one thing, the lynx population in Donana is now stable at about forty to fifty individuals. It is of course the number of breeding females, and the number of young born each year, that counts. During recent years, there have been ten to fifteen females.

And work has started on the construction of tunnels under the roads in the hope that the lynx will learn to use them-as animals do in other places. They are thinking about building bridges over the roads, too. Finally, and most importantly, they are working to increase the number of rabbits.

We poured the last of the Spanish red wine and raised our gla.s.ses to the restoration of the Iberian lynx and the dedicated people who are devoting their all to making a dream come true.

Postscript Later, in the fall of 2008, I heard from Astrid that the captive breeding program was, by mid-2008, ahead of projections. There were, she said, fifty-two lynx in captivity, twenty-four of which were born in the facility. This means, said Astrid, that provided the release area is ready for them, reintroduction of captive-born lynx could take place in 2009-one year ahead of schedule. And because not one Iberian lynx had been killed in a road accident in Donana since late 2006, it seems that the area may be suitable for reintroducing captive-born lynx.

I then heard from Miguel that the number of territorial breeding females was up to nineteen, and there were between seventeen and twenty-one new cubs alive in September 2008. While the verdict is still out as to whether or not Spain's magnificent Iberian lynx will once again have a suitable habitat that allows it to thrive in the wild-a protected area that is safe from pilgrims, golf courses, and the like-for now the news is encouraging.

John Hare, adventurer, explorer, and pa.s.sionate advocate for the wild Bactrian camel, shown here with domestic Bactrian near the northern border of Tibet, surveying a sanctuary for their highly endangered wild cousins. (Yuan Lei) (Yuan Lei)

Bactrian Camel (Camelus bactria.n.u.s ferus)

In the Gobi Deserts of Mongolia and China, in some of the most desolate country in the world, truly wild Bactrian (two-humped) camels still live. Wild Bactrian camels were captured and domesticated about four thousand years ago. Gradually, over time, the descendants of those first domesticated herds have become genetically differentiated from their wild relatives.

Everything I know about these camels I have learned from John Hare, the man who has done more to save them than anyone else. Indeed, but for him and the Chinese and Mongolian colleagues he works with and inspires, the wild Bactrian camels would almost certainly have reached the point of no return. I first met John Hare in 1997, just before the publication of his book The Lost Camels of Tartary. The Lost Camels of Tartary.

John was once in the British Foreign Service-one of the old brigade, tough without being burly, efficient, determined, and with a pa.s.sion for adventure. Over the years, we have talked a great deal about his mission to save the Bactrian camels. When we first met, I knew no more about them than he knew about apes. I rode on a domestic Bactrian in the Kolmarden Zoo in Stockholm-just to see what it was like-and John glimpsed a few wild chimpanzees when he was serving in Nigeria. But we are both basically creatures of the wild places, and only leave them to try to save them. John has generously shared his knowledge with me, written for me something of his years with the Chinese and the Mongolians-and the wild camels.

"My desert adventures-that have, over the past twelve years, enabled me to visit the four enclaves in the Gobi in China and Mongolia where the wild Bactrian camel still survives," he wrote, "began in neither of those two countries but in Moscow. I was there, in 1992, to stage an exhibition of environmental photographs in the Polytechnic Museum. At the reception, I spotted a man in a dark suit who sported a Stalin look-alike mustache, and I asked him how he was managing to survive in lawless Moscow. For Moscow was a dangerous place at that time after both communism and law and order had collapsed. At that moment, camels and the Gobi Desert could not have been further from my mind.

"'I work for the Russian Academy of Sciences,' Professor Peter Gunin said in hesitant English. 'I lead the joint Russian/Mongolian expeditions to the Gobi Desert. That takes me away from Moscow every year and so I manage to survive.'

"'Do you ever take foreigners on your expeditions?' I asked. 'I'd give my right arm to go with you.'

"Peter Gunin stroked his bushy mustache. 'There's no market in Moscow for a foreigner's right arm,' he said with a smile. 'Even the Mafia aren't interested in them. What can you do? Are you a scientist?'

"'Unfortunately, not,' I replied, searching desperately for something relevant to say. 'I could take photos. I could come as your cameraman.'

"'My colleague, Anatoly, is coming on the next expedition as the official photographer,' Peter replied. 'Is there nothing that you can do that has a scientific background? I will have to justify your inclusion to the Academy.'

"'Do you use camels on your expeditions?' I asked. 'I've had a good deal of experience working with camels in Africa.'

"'That's it,' he cried. 'Camels! We need a camel expert. We need someone to undertake a survey of the wild Bactrian camel population in the Mongolian Gobi.'

"'I know nothing about the wild Bactrian camel,' I said. 'Nothing at all. I didn't even know there was such an animal.'

"'You will learn all about the wild Bactrian camel if you come with us,' Peter Gunin said. "He gave me a broad wink. 'Provided that you can get the foreign exchange.'

"'How much do you want?'

"'Fifteen hundred dollars, plus your air-fare.'

"'I'll try to find it,' I said without the slightest hesitation. I had no idea how I was going to get hold of it or whether I would get leave of absence from my job. I only knew that I had to go with this amiable Russian professor into the Mongolian Gobi."

As a result of that chance meeting, John has made seven expeditions into the deserts of China and Mongolia and probably knows as much as or more than anyone else about the wild camels, their habits, range, population status, and history.

Bactrian camels feed mainly on shrubs; their humps act as a rich fat store that allows them to go for long periods without food. They are also able to go for long periods without water-which is not, contrary to popular belief, stored in the humps. When water is located, they are able to drink as much as fifteen gallons at one time in order to replenish reserves they have lost. Two hundred years ago, Bactrian camels ranged across the deserts of southern Mongolia, northwestern China, and into Kazakhstan in habitats ranging from rocky mountains to plains and high sand dunes. Years of persecution have reduced the species to four small fragmented populations, three in northwest China (approximately 650) and one in Mongolia (about 450).

The Primary Enemy-Human Their enemies are the humans who hunt them, prospect for oil in the desert sands where they struggle to survive, conduct nuclear tests in the heart of their homeland, and poison their limited grazing by using pota.s.sium cyanide in a search for gold. There could be fewer than a thousand-they are more endangered than the giant panda.

"In my quest for this timid and elusive creature," John wrote me, "I have led expeditions, four of them on domesticated Bactrian camels, into some of the most breathtakingly beautiful yet hostile country imaginable. I have traveled through forbidden areas, closed for over forty years, made the first recorded crossing of the Gashun Gobi from north to south, and been fortunate to stumble across a lost outpost of the ancient city of Lou Lan. And so, whether I was walking behind domestic camels, Bactrians or Dromedaries, or scanning the sky-line for their wild relatives, the camel has enabled me to do what I like doing best: exploring."