Making the world safe for big cats
Explorer Alan Rabinowitz creates havens for tigers, jaguars, and leopards.
from the May 23, 2007 edition
Page 2 of 3
"Turns out pigs there can't just wallow in their filth like back home because they get killed by parasites," he notes. "But now locals know how to raise pigs in the jungle. As do I."
Loath to tell hand-to-mouth hunters never to stalk game at all, he brought slides and printed posters to showcase endangered species: the Asiatic black bear, the clouded leopard, the sambar ( an Asiatic deer).
Ah Puh was among the persuaded, Rabinowitz says. Having traded in his crossbow and poison arrows, the Lisu man now earns a living helping the American's locally recruited team of wardens to pinpoint sites for the infrared ray-triggered cameras that monitor tigers.
"One of our wardens just reported seeing a mother with two cubs," Rabinowitz says cheerfully.
That's solace enough, he suggests, when facing his critics who often don't approve of his tactics in conservation. Human rights advocates, for example, accuse him of being a dupe of Burma's repressive military regime.
Built like Rambo, with ruggedly handsome features, Rabinowitz has the storybook look of an explorer. His talisman is a jade sun god pendant from Mayan temple ruins that he stumbled upon in Belize's Cockscomb Basin, where he tracked jaguars and set up the world's first reserve for the spotted cats in 1984. He has other physical mementoes – including a boxer's nose – from a litany of adventures, including a crash landing in the jungle.
The dashing figure that Rabinowitz cuts is at odds with his Brooklyn childhood. A stutterer, he was the target of playground ridicule. To fend off tormentors, he began lifting weights and taking boxing lessons at age 10. Between kindergarten and sixth grade, he says, he stopped talking altogether. To people, that is. After school, he'd lock himself in his room and pour his heart out to his pet turtles, hamsters, and gerbils. "I made a promise that if I ever got my voice," says Rabinowitz, who still occasionally stutters slightly, "I'd use it to try to save animals."
He has. Rabinowitz studied jaguars in Belize, clouded leopards in Taiwan, and Indo-Chinese tigers in Thailand. In all three countries he established pioneering nature reserves for big cats.
"Alan has done a tremendous job in conservation," says George Schaller, a legendary naturalist who launched Rabinowitz on his career in the 1980s while the young biologist was studying black bears and raccoons in Tennessee's Smoky Mountains. "He's very focused and dedicated, working toward what needs to be done with local people, officials, donors, scientists, and whoever can help."
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