To Conserve and Protect - The Delicate Balance of a Planet on the Brink
by Susan Scharfman
Many extraordinary people devote their lives to preserve wildlife. In Africa three were murdered: Diane Fossey (Gorillas in the Mist), Joy Adamson (Born Free), Joan Root (Wildflower, An Extraordinary Life and Untimely Death in Africa). A fourth, Jane Goodall, is still with us as are many more courageous and unsung heroes for whom conservation is a household word.
Our Enduring Tarzan
In the Edgar Rice Burroughs classic, Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes, the principal character is a 19th century human male. Orphaned as an infant, discovered by apes in a jungle tree house, he considers the female ape who nurtures him to be his mother. By the time a search party finds Tarzan he has grown to manhood. When his British rescuers show him his reflection in a mirror he determines he’s more like humans than primates, and agrees to return to London.
Tarzan’s education leads to the realization he’s the direct descendant of the Earl of Greystoke, heir to title, wealth and celebrity. His integration into ‘civilized’ society unveils a world of fear, greed and the inhumane treatment of animals in and out of the laboratory.
When the ‘rehabilitated’ Greystoke recognizes a caged captive ape is his own jungle ‘father,’ he’s unable to prevent its senseless killing. Enraged and tormented, even the love of a beautiful woman cannot dissuade him from returning to the Africa that bred him, where the laws of nature prevail over human ideologies.
Our Beloved Jane
Fifty-four years ago, young Jane Goodall walked into a rainforest reserve at Gombe, Tanzania, and spotted a large male chimpanzee crouching over a termite nest. He was foraging for food. Through her binoculars Jane watched him take a twig, bend and strip its leaves, and stick it into the nest where he spooned termites into his mouth.
In that remote African rainforest Jane Goodall made one of the most significant empirical discoveries of modern times—witnessing an animal, other than human, in the act not just of using a tool but of making one. "It was hard for me to believe," she recalls. "At that time, it was thought that only humans used and made tools. I had been told from school onwards the best definition of a human being was ‘man the tool-maker’ – yet I had just watched a chimp tool-maker in action."
Massa, The Lonely Primate
Psychologist and author Deborah Derrickson Kossmann (NY Times, October 26, 2014) writes about her experiences with a gorilla named Massa. Orphaned in Ghana, West Africa, infant Massa is sold by a ship’s captain to an American collector of exotic animals who lives in Brooklyn, N.Y. The lady dresses him in baby clothes and raises him like a human child. But when the adult Massa attacks his adoptive mother, she relocates him to the Philadelphia Zoo where he becomes the world’s oldest captive gorilla. Primates are a communal species. Since Massa had been socialized with humans, he could not coexist with other gorillas and had to be isolated for the rest of his life.
Dr. Kossmann visited with Massa for many years: “There was no glass between us,” she said. “He’d come closer in order to sit and look at me, sometimes his hand holding mine. The children smiled at him, and he appeared to smile back. But a gorilla’s grimace isn’t friendly; his bared teeth are a defense.”
Massa died in 1984 at the age of 54. Kossmann said in all the years since his death, the sadness of Massa’s solitary existence still haunts her: “The in-betweenness of being raised as a human when he was tiny and given away and treated as an animal again. Did Massa remember the dark green forest, the last time he felt his mother’s arms around him? The keepers scratched his back through the enclosure, to his great pleasure. He’d sigh deeply, leaning against the bars with his eyes closed, so the touch would continue.”
“Lights, Camera, Africa!” - Joan and Alan Root
When I lived in Africa I never locked my door. I wandered dark streets at night unafraid. There was very little poaching, game parks teemed with wildlife. Kenya’s Lake Naivasha was home to conservationist Joan Thorpe Root. More comfortable with animals than people, Joan and her husband Alan produced Oscar winning wildlife documentaries. Today one does not wander African cities at night; doors are steel bolted, animals are butchered, and heavily exploited Lake Naivasha, a mere shadow of its former self, boasts flamingos and tourists. As with Diane Fossey and Joy Adamson, Joan was murdered protecting the thing she loved most.
What Color is Your Story?
Every species has its rendezvous with destiny. When primitive hunters killed an animal it was for their survival and they ceremoniously honored its sacrifice. Aboriginals, including our own native Americans respect this. But most humans have forgotten their genesis. Through divine grace, the path we humans think we choose and the mistakes we think we make are neither chosen nor mistaken. As with past lives, we live within a technicolor screenplay that begins at birth and infancy. When infants are parted from their mothers at birth or soon thereafter, that separation becomes the palette for the colors in the story. Neither good nor bad, the story is what it is. Tarzan’s palette was the thick green forest of his birth, and the abiding memory of his gorilla mother’s cacao-colored arms. Massa was a vehicle for understanding coexistence between animals and humans for the planet’s survival. His palette was the white light of truth that contains all colors.
Not everyone will be a professional conservationist. If you prefer developers not destroy the forests, exploit the deserts, foul the oceans—you are a conservationist. If you want your grandchildren to know what an elephant in the wild looks like, how a colobus monkey responds to a human being—you are a conservationist. If you enjoy the exhilarating experience of any of the (58) national parks within the United States, you are a conservationist. Our collective consciousness makes all the difference.
“You are not your story.” –– Eckhart Tolle
Many extraordinary people devote their lives to preserve wildlife. In Africa three were murdered: Diane Fossey (Gorillas in the Mist), Joy Adamson (Born Free), Joan Root (Wildflower, An Extraordinary Life and Untimely Death in Africa). A fourth, Jane Goodall, is still with us as are many more courageous and unsung heroes for whom conservation is a household word.
Our Enduring Tarzan
In the Edgar Rice Burroughs classic, Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes, the principal character is a 19th century human male. Orphaned as an infant, discovered by apes in a jungle tree house, he considers the female ape who nurtures him to be his mother. By the time a search party finds Tarzan he has grown to manhood. When his British rescuers show him his reflection in a mirror he determines he’s more like humans than primates, and agrees to return to London.
Tarzan’s education leads to the realization he’s the direct descendant of the Earl of Greystoke, heir to title, wealth and celebrity. His integration into ‘civilized’ society unveils a world of fear, greed and the inhumane treatment of animals in and out of the laboratory.
When the ‘rehabilitated’ Greystoke recognizes a caged captive ape is his own jungle ‘father,’ he’s unable to prevent its senseless killing. Enraged and tormented, even the love of a beautiful woman cannot dissuade him from returning to the Africa that bred him, where the laws of nature prevail over human ideologies.
Our Beloved Jane
Fifty-four years ago, young Jane Goodall walked into a rainforest reserve at Gombe, Tanzania, and spotted a large male chimpanzee crouching over a termite nest. He was foraging for food. Through her binoculars Jane watched him take a twig, bend and strip its leaves, and stick it into the nest where he spooned termites into his mouth.
In that remote African rainforest Jane Goodall made one of the most significant empirical discoveries of modern times—witnessing an animal, other than human, in the act not just of using a tool but of making one. "It was hard for me to believe," she recalls. "At that time, it was thought that only humans used and made tools. I had been told from school onwards the best definition of a human being was ‘man the tool-maker’ – yet I had just watched a chimp tool-maker in action."
Massa, The Lonely Primate
Psychologist and author Deborah Derrickson Kossmann (NY Times, October 26, 2014) writes about her experiences with a gorilla named Massa. Orphaned in Ghana, West Africa, infant Massa is sold by a ship’s captain to an American collector of exotic animals who lives in Brooklyn, N.Y. The lady dresses him in baby clothes and raises him like a human child. But when the adult Massa attacks his adoptive mother, she relocates him to the Philadelphia Zoo where he becomes the world’s oldest captive gorilla. Primates are a communal species. Since Massa had been socialized with humans, he could not coexist with other gorillas and had to be isolated for the rest of his life.
Dr. Kossmann visited with Massa for many years: “There was no glass between us,” she said. “He’d come closer in order to sit and look at me, sometimes his hand holding mine. The children smiled at him, and he appeared to smile back. But a gorilla’s grimace isn’t friendly; his bared teeth are a defense.”
Massa died in 1984 at the age of 54. Kossmann said in all the years since his death, the sadness of Massa’s solitary existence still haunts her: “The in-betweenness of being raised as a human when he was tiny and given away and treated as an animal again. Did Massa remember the dark green forest, the last time he felt his mother’s arms around him? The keepers scratched his back through the enclosure, to his great pleasure. He’d sigh deeply, leaning against the bars with his eyes closed, so the touch would continue.”
“Lights, Camera, Africa!” - Joan and Alan Root
When I lived in Africa I never locked my door. I wandered dark streets at night unafraid. There was very little poaching, game parks teemed with wildlife. Kenya’s Lake Naivasha was home to conservationist Joan Thorpe Root. More comfortable with animals than people, Joan and her husband Alan produced Oscar winning wildlife documentaries. Today one does not wander African cities at night; doors are steel bolted, animals are butchered, and heavily exploited Lake Naivasha, a mere shadow of its former self, boasts flamingos and tourists. As with Diane Fossey and Joy Adamson, Joan was murdered protecting the thing she loved most.
What Color is Your Story?
Every species has its rendezvous with destiny. When primitive hunters killed an animal it was for their survival and they ceremoniously honored its sacrifice. Aboriginals, including our own native Americans respect this. But most humans have forgotten their genesis. Through divine grace, the path we humans think we choose and the mistakes we think we make are neither chosen nor mistaken. As with past lives, we live within a technicolor screenplay that begins at birth and infancy. When infants are parted from their mothers at birth or soon thereafter, that separation becomes the palette for the colors in the story. Neither good nor bad, the story is what it is. Tarzan’s palette was the thick green forest of his birth, and the abiding memory of his gorilla mother’s cacao-colored arms. Massa was a vehicle for understanding coexistence between animals and humans for the planet’s survival. His palette was the white light of truth that contains all colors.
Not everyone will be a professional conservationist. If you prefer developers not destroy the forests, exploit the deserts, foul the oceans—you are a conservationist. If you want your grandchildren to know what an elephant in the wild looks like, how a colobus monkey responds to a human being—you are a conservationist. If you enjoy the exhilarating experience of any of the (58) national parks within the United States, you are a conservationist. Our collective consciousness makes all the difference.
“You are not your story.” –– Eckhart Tolle
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