Why Science Isn't Enough to Save the World's Big Cats

By Peggy Fosdick

 
L-R: ΦBK chapter officer Mary Bendel-Simso, newly-inducted
wildlife conservationist Alan Rabinowitz, ΦBK chapter officer
John Olsh and ΦBK Senator Jim Lightner.
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During a recent visit to his alma mater, world-renowned wildlife conservationist Alan Rabinowitz explained to an audience at McDaniel College that good science is the basis of his work. 

But to make the lasting changes he seeks in the conservation of endangered big cats, he must become everything but a scientist —  villager, marriage counselor, cattle rancher, diplomat — to give local people and their top government officials, some of whom are dictators, the incentive or reason to save jaguars, tigers and other big cats.
 
“The reality is that you go for whatever you can get,” Rabinowitz said after recounting the efforts involved in getting the government of Myanmar to protect 2,500 square miles of tiger habitat, a huge achievement he called his, “crowning glory.”
 
Rabinowitz’s remarks were made during a talk, “Saving the World’s Endangered Cats: Why Science is Not Enough,” given in September at McDaniel College in Westminster, Md. His visit coincided with his induction into the Delta of Maryland Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa. 
 
Rabinowitz has earned his reputation as the world’s foremost authority on jaguars and other big cats during nearly three decades spent mostly in the field, studying jaguars, clouded leopards, Asiatic leopards, tigers, Sumatran rhinos, bears, leopard cats, raccoons and civets. He has persuaded governments around the globe to set aside vast areas of land to help save these endangered species.
 
Currently the president and CEO of Panthera, a nonprofit organization devoted to saving the world’s 36 wild cat species, Rabinowitz served as executive director of the Science and Exploration Division for the Wildlife Conservation Society for nearly 30 years before founding Panthera. 
 
A summa cum laude graduate in biology of then Western Maryland College (now McDaniel College) with a master’s in zoology and a doctorate in wildlife ecology from the University of Tennessee, Rabinowitz has had a major impact in his field. 
 
His work as a conservationist and as a diplomat of sorts has resulted in the world’s first jaguar sanctuary in Belize; Taiwan’s largest protected area, its last piece of intact lowland forest; the first field research on Indochinese tigers, Asiatic leopards, and leopard cats in Thailand in the region’s first World Heritage Site; and the creation of five protected areas in Myanmar, including the country’s first marine national park, the country’s first and largest Himalayan national park, the country’s largest wildlife sanctuary, and the world’s largest tiger reserve.  
   
In recent years, Rabinowitz and other wildlife conservationists have changed their tactics. They know now that it is not enough to preserve habitats to save animals from extinction — they must also preserve gene pools. Islands of land isolate populations of animals, resulting in inbreeding and weakening the gene pool.
  
Rabinowitz now works to create corridors — forested passageways — for wild cats to roam to other groups of their kind, where they mate and thus diversify the gene pool. His current project, Paseo del Jaguar or “Path of the Jaguar,” to secure these pathways through Central and South America, was profiled in the March 2009 National Geographic magazine. Success may eventually bring jaguars back into the U.S. as well.
   
In April, Panthera launched a groundbreaking program in partnership with Mount Sinai School of Medicine’s Global Health and Emerging Pathogens Institute to create a link between health in rural communities and protection of critical habitats.  The program is part of Rabinowitz’s Jaguar Conservation Project in the Brazilian Pantanal region, home to the world’s largest cattle ranching area and also where Panthera manages more than 270 square miles of habitat crucial to jaguar survival.
 
Panthera’s Pantanal Project is aimed at establishing one of the world’s largest, intact protected jaguar corridors and creating within that corridor a model in which cattle ranching is both profitable and compatible with jaguar conservation.
 
Author of six books and 80 publications, Rabinowitz said his life’s work has focused on fulfilling his goal: “to find and survey the world’s last wild places, with the intention of saving as much land in protected areas as I can and securing homes for some of the world’s most endangered large mammals.” 
 
“Always aim high,” Rabinowitz said. 
 
“This is what you have to shoot for,” he told the students, professors and others gathered for the evening lecture as he pointed to an Albert Einstein quote projected on the two screens in McDaniel Lounge. “One should not pursue goals that are easily achieved. One must develop an instinct for what one can just barely achieve through one’s greatest efforts.”  

Peggy Fosdick is the communications director in the Office of Communications and Marketing at McDaniel College.