THe is a pioneer Field Biologist George B. Schaller was born in an era that conflicted with his life’s work. By the time he reached places like Brazil, India and the Himalayas, environmental destruction was well underway and wildlife was in sharp decline.
Yet in many ways, Schaller, who was born in 1933, was years ahead of his time, particularly in the way he thought about animals. While other 20th-century scientists chose to see non-human species as devoid of feelings or complexity, Schaller was convinced that animals have inner lives like our own and have all the characteristics of consciousness, including personality, friendship, rivalry, and desire. He believed that the surest way to discover these hidden worlds was to meet the animals on their own terms, living alongside them in the field for weeks, months or even years.
The approach paid off. Schaller’s research laid the foundation for the field of conservation biology, and his commitment to translating his findings into real-world action likely saved many species from extinction—earning praise from the likes of David Attenborough and Michael Crichton as the most important animal researchers of the 20th century. “AHomesick for an Unknown World: The Life of George B. Schaller“Writer and filmmaker Miriam Horne documents the triumphs, tragedies, frustrations and boredom behind these achievements.
At more than 600 pages, Horne’s impressively researched book draws from decades of letters, diaries, photos and nearly 20,000 pages of field notes that the biologist made during his long career. He spoke with more than four dozen sources from 16 countries who worked with Schaller in some capacity, some as far back as the 1960s. He also interviewed Schaller and his family extensively and even took two field trips with him.
That the new biography exists at all is a testament to Schaller’s decision that Horne was the right man for the job. He had previously rejected “many biographers”, Horn wrote, but he saw in him a kindred spirit who shared “a call of these other creatures”. Horn is not only an acclaimed environmental journalist, but has worked in conservation for the US Forest Service and the Environmental Defense Fund.
Throughout his career, Schaller focused on a roving cast of species that were, at the time, “the unprotected and unexplored expanse where most life on Earth remained,” Horn wrote. Although well-known charismatic species often preoccupied him — at various times he studied lions, tigers, jaguars, snow leopard, And a variety of bears – he also embraced less celebrated wildlife. On the Tibetan Plateau, for example, he fell hard for the pika, a relative of rabbits that “said hello by touching their noses, sometimes pecked them on the forehead, and reciprocated his attention,” Horn wrote. He also had a special fondness for her wild boar. In Tanzania, she had a pet warthog named Giri who “patted” her back like a dog and flopped across her body with belly rubs.
Horne’s impressively researched book draws from decades of letters, diaries, photos and nearly 20,000 pages of field notes that the biologist produced during his long career.
Schaller often described himself not as a scientist, but as an “animal biographer”. Horne wrote that he had an insight unmatched by any other species, that an “unwavering attention could sustain anything.” He also quickly became known for sheer tenacity. In three years in the Serengeti, for example, he covered 93,000 miles and spent 2,900 hours observing.
In many cases, Schaller produced the first in-depth data on the species he studied. To the surprise of other scientists, he proved that gorillas can get used to the presence of humans and that the great apes are gentle by nature. He proved that tigers are disappearing from India not because of over-hunting but because of the decline of their prey species and that lions are cooperative and capable of mind theory. Across continents, he showed that hunters are actually good at maintaining healthy prey populations. His photographs of snow leopards and pandas – known to the world by National Geographic – were the first of the wild species.
For all the beauty he documented, Schaller also had to contend with agonizing loss. In just four years, he has seen Pakistan’s snow leopard population go from relatively safe to critically endangered. His work with jaguars in Brazil came to a heartbreaking end when a runner he was working with betrayed the team by ordering the killing of a mother jaguar and announcing his decision to clear more forest to expand his cattle herd. In China, Schaller witnessed panda numbers dwindling as the animals lost habitat to logging and farming, and were mistreated by government officials at a research center. At times, he wondered if “his intimate way of studying animals” was out of step “in a largely empty world,” Horne wrote.
Schaller’s perfectionism and obsessive focus often put him at odds with his time in the field. He can be brooding and withdrawn — Horn’s characterizations harken back to Schaller’s traumatic and isolated childhood, which included fleeing Germany after World War II with his mother, while his father, a former Nazi diplomat, stayed behind.
Horn also does not hesitate to describe Schaller’s scientific efforts to his family, especially his wife, who died in 2023. The couple met while attending the University of Alaska Fairbanks and married in 1957 with a shared goal of a life of adventure. At best, they stayed together. In China, for example, Schaller spent his days crawling through dense bamboo thickets in search of pandas while Kay stayed at camp drying and picking up animal feces.
But Kay’s responsibility to raise their two sons – and later, a growing list of health problems – kept her increasingly away from the field. Back in the United States, she was instrumental in managing her husband’s correspondence, editing and typing his many scientific papers and nearly two dozen popular book manuscripts, and most importantly, served as “the center of my passions,” as Schaller wrote. Over the years, though, resentment at being left behind grew. In a personal essay in 1997, Kay wrote, “How ironic to see someone whose dreams so closely match your own marry and then be taken away.”
Schaller spent most of the last 40 years of his professional life working in Tibet, where he was the first Westerner to be allowed access to the highest and wildest parts of the plateau. Documented across 100 pages, the more tedious pace of this section reflects the slowing of Schaller’s own achievements as the world changed around him and his aging body began to betray him. Other annoyances mounted, too, and detracted from his ability to generate new data: he was often prevented from taking photographs, had to overpay handlers or the police, and was unable to set his own schedule in the field. “I am hanging on to nothing, without new scientific or conservation achievements, to justify K’s absence,” he wrote at one point in his 70s.
Throughout his career, Schaller focused on a roving cast of species that were, at the time, “the unprotected and unexplored expanse where most life on Earth remained,” Horn wrote.
Like a species doomed to extinction, Horn describes Schaller as “the last”—the last of his kind. For wildlife biologists today, regimented schedules and technology-driven methods for data collection have replaced the extreme, months-long observatory fieldwork that Schaller pioneered, and many of the ecosystems and wildlife populations he studied no longer exist.
Yet despite the discouragement, his work eventually had tangible results. For example, his findings about pandas led the Chinese government to allocate millions of dollars to the conservation of the species and ban the capture of wild pandas for research and entertainment in zoos. After shawls revealed to the world that the luxury Shahtush shawl, popular in the 1980s and 1990s, was made from the fur of hunted Tibetan deer, the industry declined drastically. He helped inspire the creation of several protected areas, including the Chang Tang Reserve in Tibet — the second largest protected terrestrial area in the world, Horn wrote.
Schaller’s reach extends beyond his personal studies. He blazed a trail for other notable fieldwork, including Diane Fossey’s research on mountain gorillas, Jane Goodall’s work on chimpanzees, Ullas Karanth’s ground-breaking studies on tigers, and Alan Rabinowitz’s global conservation work on wild cats. Some of his “scientific grandchildren,” as a Chinese colleague called Schaller’s protégés, continue to make major contributions to conservation today.
Most important, though, is the mark he left on the way many people, scientists and civilians, came to see the wildlife. As Horn writes, “Above all, Schaller’s work will always be a reminder that we live in a world of kinship.”
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This article was originally published the darkness. read on Main article.
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