Conservationist Schaller named to Time’s ‘Hero of the Planet’
Conservationist Schaller named to Time’s ‘Hero of the Planet’
WCS
November 13, 2007
Renowned conservationist Dr. George Schaller of the Wildlife Conservation Society was recently named by Time Magazine as one of 60 “Heroes of the Planet.” He joins an elite group of environmental champions, including former Vice President Al Gore and former Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev.
Time’s editor’s honored Dr. Schaller for his five-plus decades of work to protect some of the world’s most beloved wildlife, including pandas, tigers, gorillas, lions and many other species. He is the Vice President of Science and Exploration for the Wildlife Conservation Society, the parent organization of the Bronx Zoo.
 Two Tibetan antelope or chiru (Pantholops hodgsonii) on the Tibetan plateau including of China’s Tibet Autonomous Region. The Chinese government has taken special steps to reduce the impact of the new Tibetan railway which bisects the feeding grounds of the chiru, building thirty-three special animal migration passages under the railway. Photo by George Schaller/WCS |
Dr. Schaller began his career in conservation in the mid 1950s in Alaska, culminating in wildlife surveys that led to the creation of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. From there, he initiated the first-ever biological studies of mountain gorillas, paving the way for Dian Fossey’s crusade to protect these gentle giants. Then Dr. Schaller went onto to conduct seminal wildlife studies of tigers in India, lions in the Serengeti, pandas in China, and snow leopards in Tibet. He helped establish one of the world’s largest protected areas — the 115,000 square-mile Chang Tang Reserve in Tibet, created in 1993.
In recent years, Dr. Schaller has worked in the rugged trans-boundary region shared by Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Pakistan and China. There, he hopes to establish a new protected area to safeguard the spectacular and highly endangered Marco Polo sheep.
