For conservationist George Schaller, it’s all animals, all the time

George Schaller has locked eyes with tigers, babysat lions and crossed paths with gun-wielding militias from Rwanda to Afghanistan, all in an effort to protect the world’s most engaging and most threatened animals.
“I went into this whole business because I enjoy watching animals, but you learn very quickly that you have a moral obligation to protect what you study,” he said.
Over the past five decades, Schaller has done research in 23 countries, written 19 books and helped establish reserves that cover an area almost as big as Spain. Traveling with his wife and two sons, Schaller has studied snow leopards, pandas, gorillas, tigers, lions and antelopes — all species whose numbers are dwindling.
“Conservation is basically ethics, spiritual value, beauty,” Schaller said. “It’s not hard science per se, but it must be based on hard science.”
Today at 7 p.m. in Bishop Auditorium, the veteran conservationist will share some of his memories and photos with the Stanford community and high school students from the Bay Area.
The presentation, titled “Science and Adventure,” is the first in a series honoring Jhumki Basu ‘98, who passed away in 2008 after a long fight with breast cancer. Basu was a New York University professor who fiercely promoted high-quality science education for under-privileged students.
Schaller, currently the senior conservationist with the Wildlife Conservation Society, knows the importance of an early introduction to science. Seventy-seven, gray-haired and lean, Schaller still speaks with a hint of childhood excitement about conservation.
“Like most naturalists, I started out as a kid interested in the outdoors,” he said.
Schaller’s work has taken him to remote corners of the globe where gumption is a prerequisite for research. He has donned layer after woolly layer to follow hairy antelopes across the frozen Tibetan plateau and driven for hours in a Land Rover to track down lion scat in the Serengeti.
“Scientific papers all sound very neat and tidy,” Schaller said, “but I spend as much time picking vehicles out of mud as doing science.”
“If there’s a rock star in field biology, George Schaller’s the guy,” added Alan Launer, a research associate with the Stanford Center for Conservation Biology. “He’ll go out in the middle of nowhere for months, even years, just to get important information on some organism.”
At the end of the day, Schaller’s list of essentials boils down to a few simple items: “a pair of binoculars, a notebook and a pen — anything else is extra.”
Schaller’s use of these simple tools has helped protect some previously mysterious animals, yet he thinks some of his most important work is in education.
“Training nationals in their own country — that’s the most lasting thing you could do,” Schaller said. “Long after I’m gone, there will still be this work being done.”
Schaller’s efforts have landed him in the Democratic Republic of Congo during its independence struggle, China in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution and, in recent years, the mountains of Afghanistan.
“Conservation is, in the end, politics,” Schaller said. But the biologist’s singularity of purpose has helped him navigate these troubled regions.
“I have a very focused agenda, and that is to help with conservation,” he said. “Countries realize that, so they tend to tolerate me.”
Schaller’s dedication to conservation is fueled by his emotional connection to nature. He recalled the bittersweet experience of looking out over the diversity and abundance of the African Serengeti with his wife.
“[I had] an emotional, even primitive response to seeing all this beauty and all that wildlife, but still [felt] the guilt of knowing what human beings have done,” he said.
Even as he tirelessly pursues his work, Schaller worries about the level of environmental concern in America. This is, in part, what brings him to Stanford today. Among his audience will be high school students from Redwood City, San Jose and East Palo Alto, some from the same schools Jhumki Basu was involved with while at Stanford.
“I hope they are inspired,” said Robyn Duby, an administrator in the human biology department, which sponsored the lecture. “I hope that [Schaller will] trigger their imagination and inspire them to see that conservation biology isn’t just a word — it’s an exciting career.”
“I’ll tell them, ‘hey, you’ve got to get involved,’” Schaller said. “It doesn’t matter what profession you’re in. Whether lawyer or businessman, you can be involved in the environment.”
All they need is a pair of binoculars, a notebook and a pen. Anything else is extra.