Tibet Wild: A Naturalist's Journeys on the Roof of the World

by George B. Schaller

As one of the world’s leading field biologists, George Schaller has spent much of his life traversing wild and isolated places in his quest to understand and conserve threatened species—from mountain gorillas in the Virunga to pandas in the Wolong and snow leopards in the Himalaya. Throughout his celebrated career, Schaller has spent more time in Tibet than in any other part of the world, devoting more than thirty years to the wildlife, culture, and landscapes that captured his heart and continue to compel him to protect them. Tibet Wild is Schaller’s account of three decades of exploration in the most remote stretches of the wide, sweeping rangelands of the Chang Tang and the hidden canyons and plunging ravines of the southeastern forests. As engaging as he is enlightening, Schaller illustrates the daily struggles of a field biologist trying to traverse the impenetrable Chang Tang, discover the calving grounds of the chiru or Tibetan antelope, and understand the movements of the enigmatic snow leopard.  As changes in the region accelerated over the years, with more roads, homes, and grazing livestock, Schaller watched the clash between wildlife and people become more common—and more destructive. Thus what began as a purely scientific endeavor became a to work with local communities, regional leaders, and national governments to protect the unique ecological richness and culture of the Tibetan Plateau.  Whether tracking brown bears, penning fables about the tiny pika, or promoting a conservation preserve that spans the borders of four nations, Schaller has pursued his goal with a persistence and good humor that will inform and charm readers.  Tibet Wild is an intimate journey through the changing wilderness of Tibet, guided by the careful gaze and unwavering passion of a life-long naturalist.

Genres: Nature, Travel, Nonfiction, Science, China, Natural History, Wildlife

400 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 11, 2012

About the author

George Beals Schaller (born 1933) is an American mammalogist, biologist, conservationist and author. Schaller is recognized by many as the world's preeminent field biologist, studying wildlife throughout Africa, Asia and South America. Born in Berlin, Schaller grew up in Germany, but moved to Missouri as a teen. He is vice president of Panthera Corporation and serves as chairman of their Cat Advisory Council along with renowned conservationist and Panthera CEO Alan Rabinowitz. Schaller is also a senior conservationist at the Bronx Zoo-based Wildlife Conservation Society.

Schaller's work in conservation has resulted in the protection of large stretches of area in the Amazon, Brazil, the Hindu Kush in Pakistan, and forests in Southeast Asia. Due in part to Schaller's work, over 20 parks or preserves worldwide have been established, including Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), the Shey-Phoksundo National Park in Nepal, and the Changtang Nature Reserve in Tibet, one of the world's most significant wildlife refuges. At over 200,000 miles (320,000 km), the Chang Tang Nature Reserve was called "One of the most ambitious attempts to arrest the shrinkage of natural ecosystems," by The New York Times.

Reviews

[Preeti · Rating 4 out of 5]

Final rating: 3.5 stars

This book was so eye-opening. It really shows you the true life of field work in conservation. And oftentimes, it's not great: the frustrations, the trials and tribulations, the hardships, the monotony, the hard work. But there are positives: the beauty, the sublime, the small triumphs.

It is the sort of day that makes me question my devotion to this region.
[vs.]
A wonderful wildlife afternoon; for once reality lives up to anticipation and hope.

I will admit that parts of the book were slow, especially the first half. Schaller really gets granular when talking about the specific numbers of species as they travel through various areas, the particulars of travel, things breaking down, people they encounter. But when thinking back on it, I feel this again is perfect to show the monotony and meticulousness required to do this kind of work. Usually when we hear stories about conservation in the news, we hear them at such a high level. We don't see all the blood, sweat, tears, and time that went into gathering all the information and data that led to the final conclusion. This book really shows that.

Scientific reports present facts neatly arranged and tabulated, marching from concept to conclusion in a wonderfully linear manner. But that is not the reality of fieldwork. In the Chang Tang, for instance, it included endless days of snowstorms, icy winds, bogged down vehicles, impassable terrain, creative disinterest of some coworkers, and vanishing chiru, but on occasion sparkling encounters with wildlife as well. I’ve tried to capture here something of the messy way in which information is actually gathered, erratically and haphazardly, with the solving of everyday logistical problems, and sometimes even with mere survival as the most immediate concern. Patience is perhaps the most valuable commodity. Yet somehow, in the end, one often does gain the kind of information upon which conservation can be based.

But for me, Schaller really shines when he does take that step back and talks about his work in a more abstract and philosophical manner, when he actually examines his own work and his life.

Lying in the cocoon of my sleeping bag during the long hours of night waiting for dawn, my thoughts distill life past and present. In over half a century of fieldwork I still sleep in cold tents, frost crystals around my face in the morning, just as I did during the 1950s in Alaska, during the 1970s in the Himalaya and Karakoram of Nepal and Pakistan, and from the 1980s onward on the Tibetan Plateau of China and other parts of Central Asia. What am I accomplishing? Why am I doing the same kind of work decade after decade, though in different places? At my age it’s come time for a mental summing up. I strive to do solid science and promote conservation, but, at the same time, I seek a life outdoors, in part a self-indulgent escape from a daily routine. When searching for a personal philosophy, I recall the words of the German poet Johann Friedrich von Schiller: “What the inner voice says will not disappoint the hoping soul.” But that inner voice nags at my being a scientific fossil with a narrow focus, unchanging, while others do “hard” science with acronyms like GIS and DNA. I console myself that natural history remains the cornerstone of conservation, that it must be learned on the ground, asking questions, observing, listening, taking notes, getting the boots muddy. Technology helps to open the world but technology can also close it unless one learns directly from nature.

He talks about having perseverance instead of hope, even though I feel he does think hope is important. I also think he implies that the nagging voice of pessimism is always there in the back of your head:

After a hiatus of five years since the 2006 workshop, during which progress on the peace park almost ceased, there might now be action on trans-frontier cooperation. I am tempted to write that I hope the peace park will become a reality. However, hope is all too often an indulgence or a prediction of disappointment; it is not a plan of action. With perseverance, we will ultimately succeed. Is it stubbornness or principle on my part after working toward this goal for a quarter century? Actually both. Conservation is my life and I must believe in success or I have nothing.

Something that I think has been more prominent in conservation in the past several years is the importance of the involvement and buy-in of the local community. Schaller has known that for decades:

It has become axiomatic that conservation can be successful only if local communities are fully involved in planning and implementing management efforts.

Throughout the book, you meet not only the animals Schaller is studying, but the people he interacts with: the scientists and researchers, along with the locals and government officials, and photographers, filmmakers, anyone that is involved. With so many people involved, as in any other field, there will always be differing viewpoints, conflicting goals, varying approaches. Alas, this is the only way, and in this book you see the one step forward, two steps back progress, slow changes, or change not happening quickly enough.

Too many of my wildlife observations consisted of sad mementoes of once-vibrant animals.

I think this is a great book for those interested in conservation, especially to understand the day-to-day field work.

A few more of my favorite quotes:

I do not mistake numbers and measurements and statistical detail for meaning, but I hoped to collect enough scattered facts to discover from them certain patterns and principles which underlie the Chang Tang ecosystem. But nothing remains static, neither a wildlife population nor a culture, and I knew my efforts would represent just a moment in time, a record of something that no one has seen before and never would again.

To see all these animals leading their ancient and traditional lives, seemingly unaffected by humankind, is truly a gift to the spirit.

Being forever itinerant, and burdened with the melancholy of an outsider, I became perhaps an internal exile with a detached and reticent character. Fieldwork demands stoicism, a tolerance for pounding winds and lashing snows as well as balky porters and vehicles, and, most difficult, often renouncing time with those you love. Passions are selfish, and it is Kay who bore the burden of mine.

Whatever the explanation, I like to ramble over wild topography or sit quietly to watch an animal in its universe so different from mine. A naturalist basically wanders and observes.

It taught me that the forces of pillaging and plunder will always seize any opportunity to destroy, and that never-ending vigilance and commitment are needed to protect a country’s natural treasures and save fragments of wilderness for future generations.

Science is presumed to be based on facts objectively observed, interpreted, and reported. Each person, though, brings his or her subjective bias to a scientific endeavor. Too often you look only for what’s already in your mind.

Abdusattor and our two drivers interview households about their life and its relation to wildlife, an essential component of a conservation project. Such facts about local conditions are a starting point, not a conclusion. All too often conservation is approached with enthusiastic ignorance, focused on principles while ignoring the actual aspirations, desires, and needs of the people. Practical conservation usually can survive only by compromise.

Unfortunately, if perception and reality clash, the former always tends to win. Perhaps Mark Twain said it best: “First get your facts; then you can distort them at your leisure.”

Although Buddhism is opposed to intentional killing, such as by hunting, this has never prevented many Tibetans from pursuing animals for subsistence and profit. As with any religion, there is a contradiction between the ideal and actual practice.

Note: I received a review copy of this book from NetGalley. Quotes may have changed in the final version.

[Patty · Rating 1 out of 5]

An account of Schaller's time researching the chiru, a sort of antelope or gazelle found the Chang Tang, the northern plain of Tibet. Well, that's what the summary said. In reality, that only takes up about half of the book, with the rest being given over to random chapters on topics like snow leopards, Tibetan bears, wild sheep, pikas (sort of a wild hamster), and Schaller's personal life story. Since these chapters were mostly way more interesting than the fucking chiru, which I was tired of ten pages in, I didn't mind. Though I have to say an account of his childhood in WWII-era Germany was not what I expected from the cover.

This is possibly the most boring book I have ever read. If I hadn't needed to write a review for NetGalley, I would never have bothered to finish it. Schaller rarely bothers to tell the reader anything about the chiru - what it looks like, its biology, its behavior - but instead writes endless passages that read something like this: "Today we counted 115 chiru. The next morning the car got stuck in the mud. We counted 97 chiru. The next day it snowed. 103 chiru." On and on and on. There are no characters in the book except for Schaller himself; though he has companions on his trips and occasionally encounters politicians or locals or friends, no one sticks around long enough to have a personality or plot. Often they don't even get names or descriptions. Absolutely not recommended under any circumstances. If you have a strange urge to read about chiru, I'm sure you could find academic articles that are both more entertaining and more informative.

I read this as an ARC via NetGalley.

[Mark Smeltz · Rating 3 out of 5]

George Schaller is such a conservation legend that I hate to say I was anything other than completely enthralled with this book. And indeed there is a lot to enjoy in many of his individual insights, anecdotes, and details of the scientific processes he employed in the Himalayan region. However, it feels unfocused when taken as a whole, being comprised of many separate accounts of varied length and detail. The first 40% or so of the book can also be somewhat disorienting, as Schaller introduces a large number of his colleagues across recollections of various expeditions and the reader is tasked with keeping track of everyone.

When the book treats a specific conservation issue in greater detail, though, it tends to open up. Examples include discussion of the problem of poisoning pikas, the harmful shahtoosh trade, and the last two chapters, which deal with the conflict between pastoralists and wildlife. When Schaller is championing the coexistence of wildlife and people, he is at his most engaging.

Thanks to the publisher, Island Press, for providing a review copy of the book via NetGalley.com. There are a few formatting problems associated with the PDF copy I received (missing dates, charts not displaying properly, etc.), but nothing devastating.

[Miranda · Rating 5 out of 5]

I guess it is always a good sign when I look back at the clippings I’ve taken on my kindle, and find them to be so long that it takes considerable time to copy, paste, and sort through them!

This would be the book I recommend to anyone who is interested in conservation on the Tibetan Plateau, or becoming a field ecologist or biologist in general. George Schaller is probably the most well known field ecologist of our time, and certainly the most well known foreign field ecologist in China.

My appreciation for this book was definitely heightened by my own work experiences in Maduo and as a foreigner in China!

This book includes on-the-ground stories about:
* Conservation, ecology, biology stories (the highlight for me being the chapters about the chiru and shahtoosh and plateau pika!)
* Local communities and local politics in Tibet and China tied to conservation (the difficulty and randomness of permits in Tibet, the heavy-handedness of some local politicians and overwhelming support of others)
* Religion (specifically Tibetan Buddhism) & conservation: how religion can give both give people a conservation “ethic” yet not deter them from harming the environment in favor of monetary gain
* Beautiful descriptions of nature and wildlife up in the plateau, from the types of birds, large mammals, and flowers in bloom in different seasons
* Stories of fieldwork like taking super long car rides, cold nights, car breakdowns, drinking butter tea, eating yak meat, the hospitality of locals, and so on
* Stories of some people I know! It’s very exciting when someone else writes about people I know and have worked with (I appreciate how he fondly describes Lv Zhi Laoshi!)
* Thoughtful reflections on his own career as a naturalist
* Thoughtful on his own personality, upbringing, life, relationships, family, and so on
* A cheeky jab at Madoi County (my workplace)
* A recognition of the problem of wild dogs (I feel vindicated!)
* A beautiful photo spread in the middle of the book picturing his journeys doing conservation work in Tibet
* Maps with travel and survey routes and other information about the area

QUOTE HIGHLIGHTS

About being a naturalist:
For a naturalist there is conflict between a life of comfort, companionship, and security at home, and one of hardship among mountains and plains. Observing undisturbed Marco Polo sheep fills me with delight, and waves of pleasure surge through me. Hearing that a government has protected an area that I had recommended is a balm to the soul, giving meaning to my life. But I renounce so much by seeking wilderness—a settled life, friends, and contact with those I love. There is usually no one other than my wife, Kay, in the field in whom I can truly confide during days of adversity.

Usually one relishes a hard life afield even while complaining of discomforts such as the cold and the wet. Here we have too great a measure of both. However, in future years I may well recall this journey with a touch of nostalgia.ere, for example, are two exuberant descriptions from his [Sven Hedin] books: Those who imagine that such a journey in vast solitude and desolation is tedious and trying are mistaken. No spectacle can be more sublime. Every day’s march, every league brings discoveries of unimagined beauty. . . . It was a delicious feeling to know that we were the first human beings to travel these mountains, where existed no path, where there never had been a path, and where there was not a footprint visible, except those made by the hoof of yak, antelope, or kulan [kiang]. . . .

I enjoy walking across wild topography such as this; the desolation calms, it does not intimidate. It gives a sense of scale. A seemingly nearby hill may take two hours to reach.

I need to move, to feel the terrain underfoot, not roar across it imprisoned in a metal cocoon and immersed in engine noise rather than wind.

WHAT IS IT ABOUT the huge emptiness of the Tibetan Plateau, a wild and raw terrain where lakes are the color of molten turquoise, that has so ensnared me, that has drawn me back again and again over decades of fieldwork? I am still uncertain. I don’t know why the trajectory of my efforts on behalf of nature has been “up”—up in Alaska, Africa, and Asia, up where mountains vanish into cloud, up with wind song and intense, pure light. I have been a cloudwalker up among mountains, hiking, dreaming. This has little to do with being a naturalist. But neither is it aberrant professionally, because a feeling of unity with a landscape and its creatures can be sought anywhere. My childhood did not predispose me to a special love of mountains or to any other particular terrain, and neither environment nor heredity bear direct responsibility for how I was assembled. Maybe I simply prefer the beauty of a hermetic world suffused with stillness.


About family:
Love is the only bridge connecting us during lengthy separations. There is the knowledge that my return is awaited, a gift of happiness from someone who is part of myself. We each carry a different burden of hardship when separated. Nevertheless our lives keep going, round and round, together and apart, a mandala of love and compassion.


About people I know:
At first I worry about Lu Zhi: beneath her helmet of hair and soft, round face with its charming smile, she seems rather fragile. But she is as tough as any of us.


About himself/ personal reflections:
This history of being repeatedly a stranger in a strange land may have helped to infuse my character with its social restraint and continual longing for a sense of my own place. That said, not being gregarious, or being unwilling to seek just any companionship, does not imply being asocial. I seek a feeling of community, with my family, my expedition members, and congenial persons of similar interests.

As always, I hesitated to end a project, having known even at the start that it would always be only a passing phase, a dual existence between life in the field and life at home. I yearn to retain both, to find a balance between contentment and longing. Whether I’m home in the United States or in Tanzania or in India or any other place, I’m briefly in it but don’t feel of it. I feel rootless, unconnected, always traveling in my mind on and on as if with a hunger that is never quite satisfied.


About religion:
As His Holiness the Dalai Lama said: “Ultimately, the decision to save the environment must come from the human heart.” The Buddhist religion stresses love and compassion toward all living beings, and this predisposes its followers to be receptive to an environmental message, more there than elsewhere.

Tibetan Buddhism distinguishes eighteen kinds of “void,” and this landscape, a place of desolation and emptiness yet possessing a raw, haunting beauty, is another such void. When we stop for a rest, I stride ahead through a land of light, the snow glistening and the air vibrating with the sun’s energy. Not even a bird calls in the dense silence. My boots kick up lunar dust. As the explorer Fernand Grenard wrote in 1893, it is a land “where nothing passes but the wind, where nothing happens but geological phenomena.” I absorb the landscape into my being.

We stop at a gompa, a small place of meditation. A monk chants, beats a drum, and burns incense of juniper twigs to assure us a good trip. Villagers, we are informed, hunt muskdeer for the prized musk gland and Himalayan tahr and blue sheep for meat. As in Pemako, there is discordance between the Buddhist principle of compassion toward life and a seeming lack of ecological concern for the wild inhabitants of forest and alpine meadow.

I have noted in both monks and laymen that religious conviction about living beings, about nature, seldom includes ecological awareness and understanding. Sertang, we realize, represents in a microcosm the worldwide conflict between development and the moral values of conservation.

I was reminded of the words of the eleventh-century Tibetan saint and hermit Milarepa: Snow, rock, and clay mountains are my hermitages. Snow and glacial rivers are my drinking water. Deer, gazelle, and blue sheep are my livestock. Lynx, wild dog, and wolf are my guards. Langur, monkey, and brown bear are my playmates. Thrush, snow-cock, and griffon are my garden birds. If this appeals to you, please join me.


About conservation and local livelihoods:
Households have at least one summer and one winter range for their livestock. Sometimes the two ranges are as little as an hour’s walk apart, but sometimes twenty-five miles or more may separate them. The government’s division of most rangelands into family plots, leased for thirty to seventy years depending on area, has created a new set of problems for the households and the wildlife. If a heavy snowstorm or drought deprives the livestock of grazing, a family can perhaps rent pasture from a neighbor or, in sparsely inhabited parts, try to find some open communal land.

The relatively intact Kekexili area gave me a glimpse into the past, whereas trends here offer a gloomy peek into the future. We have to find ways to better protect and manage the landscape. Of course, no ecosystem remains static and local cultures adapt and change. There is an urgent need to develop new ideas, approaches, and policies appropriate to changing ecological conditions and therefore social and economic conditions. The basic goal should be to conserve the function of the ecosystem for the pastoralists who have no alternative livelihood and for the plants and animals which have no alternative whatsoever. The reality is, roughly, that environmental management is people management. Local concerns must be addressed if wildlife and pastoralists are to coexist with a measure of ecological harmony. Solutions are always complex and require an integrated approach, not a simplistic one like poisoning pikas. It has become axiomatic that conservation can be successful only if local communities are fully involved in planning and implementing management efforts. Indeed, rangelands lend themselves well to long-term conservation as long as the approach is adaptive and flexible, and pastoralists can remain mobile. Other countries, such as the United States, Australia, and many African countries, have degraded their rangelands extensively through indifference, negligence, greed, imperfect scientific information, and lack of suitable policies. We can learn from their mistakes and should apply any relevant knowledge here, an initiative largely the responsibility of Chinese scientists in cooperation with provincial and local officials and with community leaders.

My concern had been with the cat, yet I also had sympathy for the poor families which had lost their sheep and yaks. After all, why should a family strain its meager livelihood because of an obscure law protecting snow leopards so that others in some faraway city can talk about the ecological balance of the mountain ecosystem and our moral obligation to save the species? Is there a way to compensate families for loss of livestock to predators? I knew that the survival of all big cats depends in part on an adequate answer to this question.



About ecotourism:
Jon Miceler discussed the advantages of tourism with him. Precise and straightforward, the general said, “God created this. Why not people enjoying it?”

The Annapurna Conservation Area resembles the Yarlung Tsangpo Great Canyon Reserve in that it has a major peak (Annapurna, 26,538 feet), is of similar size (2,940 square miles), and tourism is seasonal because of the monsoon. Over 67,000 tourists trekked into this easily accessible area in 1999. There are many small private hotels and shops along the trekking route around Annapurna, most owned by outsiders. Tour operators bring in most of their own porters instead of hiring locally. As a result, only 7 percent of the tourist money spent reaches the local people. After fifteen years of community development, a mere 10 percent of the resident population had benefited in some way from tourism. The rest continue to raise crops and livestock, often far from tourist routes. The arrival of so many seasonal outsiders has raised food prices for all households, a negative impact of tourism. The entrance fee to the Annapurna Conservation Area is the equivalent of $23 per tourist. This provides about 60 percent of the annual management budget—when funds are actually handed over by the government—and the rest depends on foreign donors. The cost of managing a major reserve for tourists while implementing effective community development obviously exceeds revenue. Protection of native plant and animal communities is the major function of a reserve. Successful long-term conservation ultimately depends on community participation, something still lacking in Pemako. The roles and responsibilities of government and communities with respect to conservation have to be discussed, negotiated, and clearly defined, essential here in Pemako as well as in the Chang Tang and other protected areas. Communities need to understand why the reserve was established, why certain policies are necessary, how communities can best contribute to the management of natural resources, and how they might benefit from conservation measures.


A cheeky jab at Maduo (I laughed out loud!)
After a long day we arrive in Madoi xiang, a desolate cluster of building with refuse and feces everywhere, so depressing that even the dogs bark with little conviction.


Reflections on a rewarding career and life (my favorite!!)
Lying in the cocoon of my sleeping bag during the long hours of night waiting for dawn, my thoughts distill life past and present. In over half a century of fieldwork I still sleep in cold tents, frost crystals around my face in the morning, just as I did during the 1950s in Alaska, during the 1970s in the Himalaya and Karakoram of Nepal and Pakistan, and from the 1980s onward on the Tibetan Plateau of China and other parts of Central Asia. What am I accomplishing? Why am I doing the same kind of work decade after decade, though in different places? At my age it’s come time for a mental summing up. I strive to do solid science and promote conservation, but, at the same time, I seek a life outdoors, in part a self-indulgent escape from a daily routine. When searching for a personal philosophy, I recall the words of the German poet Johann Friedrich von Schiller: “What the inner voice says will not disappoint the hoping soul.” But that inner voice nags at my being a scientific fossil with a narrow focus, unchanging, while others do “hard” science with acronyms like GIS and DNA. I console myself that natural history remains the cornerstone of conservation, that it must be learned on the ground, asking questions, observing, listening, taking notes, getting the boots muddy. Technology helps to open the world but technology can also close it unless one learns directly from nature. Still, my inner voice points to failures. I have not built anything, no conservation organization, no university department with students, and I have not written a synthesis of my field. Nor, I feel, have I had a basic and original insight, or thought of something that my peers admire and use to create new concepts and ideas. I tend to avoid conferences, seldom give lectures, and shun the spotlight. In sum, I have not lived up to my potential. I am neither leader nor follower, and instead inadvertently subscribe to the dictum of Ralph Waldo Emerson: “Do not go where the path may lead; go where there is no path and leave a trail.” It affords me great pleasure to observe the rich and complex life of another species and to write its biography. After all, the mountain gorilla, tiger, giant panda, and chiru are among the most beautiful expressions of life on Earth. I have published interesting and useful scientific information. But all scientific work, unless there is the grand, everlasting insight of a Darwin, Einstein, or Newton, is soon superseded, forgotten, or rated at most a historical reference as others build upon your research. That is how science must proceed. I have received accolades for my work, such as conservation prizes from organizations in China, India, Japan, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United States, and these I treasure. In the darkness of my soul, I nevertheless look for something upon which my heart can rest, some accomplishment of lasting value, something beyond myself. I promoted the establishment of nature reserves in China, Pakistan, Brazil, and other countries. But a reserve is stationary, and no matter how well protected and supported by local communities, it may well be subject to climate change, shifting habitat and species, or even elimination because of politics. A reserve may not persist in its present form, if at all, unless it becomes part of a carefully managed landscape. My wildlife articles and books have inspired some students to seek a life as naturalist. Young local biologists accompany me on most journeys, as on this one to the Chang Tang. I believe that my greatest gift to a country is to leave behind trained nationals who will continue the fight to protect nature’s beauty. In this way my legacy of knowledge and spirit will flow onward long after I have ceased to be even a memory. It is a comforting thought.

[Ryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

A collection of accounts of the author's many expeditions to Tibet and surroundings starting from the 1980s till today. A tad too lengthy oftentimes as some parts read more like a diary. It begins with the pursuit and survey of the Chiru populations in the vast expanse of the Tibetan plateau, as Schaller treks into and across it from different neighboring countries. We are given a detailed treatment of the shatoosh trade in Chiru fur that seemingly devastated these beautiful ungulates, and yet a great deal remains unknown about them even after decades spent tracing their migratory routes.

A range of other typical fauna of these cold, mountainous terrain are also covered, from pika colonies to wolves, yak, brown bear, argali sheep, ghoral, blue sheep and the emblematic, ghostly snow leopard. The book also ventures a little off track, to Nepal and southwestern China - humid, dense and leech infested forests where clouded leopards and tigers roam, albeit at greatly reduced numbers today.

George Schaller is an eloquent writer, so those lengthy accounts of treks are never so dull as to prevent one from plodding on. An autobiographical chapter sketches his journey from war torn Germany to the USA and highlights of his career and rise to prominence as field biologist extraordinaire by being the pioneer in field research of such charismatic animals like gorillas, pandas, tigers and lions. Long may he continue to be an inspiration to all conservationists.

[Rita Marie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I couldn't get into this book. It seemed to ramble from one situation to another, one place to another, without any overall scheme. Came across as a collection of field notes glued together into a book.

Perhaps someone familiar with the author's earlier works would enjoy it more. Certainly a worthwhile endeavor, but just didn't work for me. As much my fault as the book's, I suspect.

[Ty Keith · Rating 5 out of 5]

If I could have read this book as a 15 year old instead of as a 50 year old, I suspect that my life path would have been vastly different. Schaller's details of real zoological studies in the field are comparable to the accounts of similar science chronicled by Bernd Heinrich in his wonderful books.

[Keith Nangle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Years ago I read ‘The Triumph of Sepu Kangri’, by the celebrated British mountaineer Chris Bonington. The story spanned two years, the first of which recounted a reconnaissance of the approach to the mountain across the Chang Tang plateau of Tibet. The actual climb I remember as being somewhat anticlimactic: not that technical, not that difficult (Bonington then was in his sixties and was not part of the summit team).

But the account of that recon trip captivated me utterly: traversing a plateau at 15k meters, living with nomads along the way, dealing with altitude and weather, and generally suffering happily in the grand style of the early British explorers (albeit with Land Cruisers).

This book has some of the same appeal, but is much more focused on Schaller’s essential work on wildlife preservation (and his record in this regard is impressive indeed). My only quibble is with his, shall we say, Teutonic belief that he and he alone knows how the rest of us are doing it wrong. Having lived in Germany for several years, it’s not an unfamiliar attitude.

The chapter on his Chang Tang traverse motivated me to research guided climbs in the area; maybe I can even learn to accept that the hefty fees go not to Lhasa but to Beijing.

[Meghan Bohn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Up from 2.5 stars.
I fell in love with chiru (Tibetan antelope) in middle school, because of *course* I would fall in love with an obscure species, weird child that I was (am). So I should have loved this. It shouldn't have taken me almost a *year* and at least two starts to finish this book. It picks up a bit in the middle, and I can absolutely appreciate the author's contributions to conservation, but if it was any other species I would have given up long ago.

[Mohan Alembath · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great book from the world's foremost wildlife biologist

[Christopher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting book taking the reader to remote parts of Trans-himalayan terrains and to it's rare wildlife..

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

在多抓鱼店里看到的，很喜欢

[Javier Vazquez]

Classic George Schaller! Very detailed accounts of his travels, studies and observations in the region.

[John Benson · Rating 4 out of 5]

George Schaller has done conservation work through out the world, but has spent much of the past thirty years in Tibet and the Himalayas. He highlights different conversation excursions he has done over the years. At least one of his chapters gives an overview of his life and how he ended up as a conservationist. I enjoyed the book because he shared his passion for saving specific animals, and gave me a sense of the cultures and landscape where these animals live. He writes in a very accessible style that helped me as a non-scientist to appreciate his work in this area.

[Rita · Rating 4 out of 5]

Worthwhile read if you're interested in conservation or first-hand accounts of field work. Schaller does his best to present both sides of the problem when it comes to the complex issues of conservation, especially in remote areas like Tibet.
I'd also like to note that his inclusions of poetry and other quotations matched the tone of the book perfectly (for me).

[Curt]

Tried, got about 70 pages in but just couldn't get into it.

[Riko Stan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reads like an episode of Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom. Enjoyed the book and the descriptions of the Tibetan deserts.

[Foggygirl · Rating 3 out of 5]

good read.