Hope For Animals And Their World Part 12

These are stories of precious life-forms that have been written off, consigned to the legions of the extinct-but have refused to die. Stories to give us hope.

Lord Howe's Island Phasmid or Stick Insect (Dryococelus australis) (Dryococelus australis) In 2008, during my lecture tour in Australia, I met a very large, very black, and very friendly female Lord Howe's Island stick insect. She crawled from one of my hands to the other several times, and when I gave her the opportunity, she also crawled onto my head and face. The encounter sent shivers up my spine-knowing, as I did, the almost incredible story of how she came to be there. Let me share that story.

Lord Howe's Island, small and partly covered with lush forest, is about three hundred miles off the coast of New South Wales, Australia. It was the only known home of the Lord Howe's Island phasmid-or stick insect, or walking stick-a giant creature about the size of a large cigar, four or five inches long and half an inch wide. Once they were found throughout the forests of the island, and known by the locals as land lobsters.

But in 1918, black rats arrived on the island when a ship was wrecked. And, as always, these relentless colonists quickly adapted to their new environment. Unlike all other stick insects in Australia, this giant phasmid lacked wings. And so it was an easy-and probably delicious-prey. At some point in the 1920s, the Lord Howe's Island phasmid was presumed extinct.

Then, in 1964, rock climbers found the dried-out remains of a giant stick insect on Ball's Pyramid, an eighteen-hundred-foot-tall spire of volcanic rock, fourteen miles from Lord Howe's Island. Five years later, other rock climbers found two other dried bodies incorporated into a bird's nest. This remote pinnacle, the haunt of countless seabirds, is almost entirely without vegetation. It seemed impossible that a very large, forest-loving vegetarian insect could be surviving in such a bleak environment. And so biologists ignored these reports until, in February 2001, a small group of people-Dr. David Priddel, the senior research scientist of the Department of Environment and Climate Change (New South Wales), his colleague Nicholas Carlile, and two other intrepid souls-decided to settle the matter once and for all, and set out on what they felt sure was a wild-goose chase.

A Perilous Journey In February 2007, from my home in Bournemouth, I had a wonderful talk with Nicholas Carlile (whom I met the following year). He told me that it had been a potentially dangerous undertaking. The seas around Ball's Pyramid are rough, and the team of three men and one woman had to leap from their small boat onto the rocks. ("Swimming would have been much easier," Nicholas told me, "but there are too many sharks!") His description of the landing-the desperate leap for the rocks with the boat surging up and down-was hair-raising. But they all made it, put up a small camp, and set off to climb as far as Gannet Green, about five hundred feet up the spire of rock where the main vegetative patches clung to life.

They searched the place thoroughly but found nothing other than some big crickets, and eventually the heat and lack of water drove them back down. Then, in a crevice about 225 feet above the sea, they came upon another tiny patch of comparatively lush vegetation, dominated by a single melaleuca bush. A small water seepage allowed this tiny oasis of plants to maintain its precarious foothold. Here they found the fresh droppings of some large insect, but a.s.sumed it was a cricket.

Back in camp, over supper, they discussed the situation. David Priddel knew that the stick insects are nocturnal, and that the group would have a better chance of seeing them if they went back to that bush at night. But he knew he could not make the climb in the darkness and so was loath to suggest it. Nicholas had the same idea, though, and he and Dean Hisc.o.x-a local ranger and an expert rock climber-volunteered to make the almost suicidal climb in the dark. They set out with headlamps and one instant camera. "It gives me the wobblies just to think of it," Nicholas told me over the phone.

Finally they reached the vegetated area. "And there is this enormous shining, black-looking body spread out on the bush," said Nicholas. "I yelled out some kind of expletive. And the two of us began celebrating like kids, jumping like six-year-olds"-but, he a.s.sured me, jumping with great caution, since the ledge was only thirteen feet wide on a sixty-degree slope, and it would have been very easy to slip over the edge!

Almost at once they saw a second giant insect stretched out on the vegetation. Nicholas's excitement, as he talked to me six years later, was palpable. "It felt like stepping back into the Jura.s.sic age, when insects ruled the world," he said. "It was one of those iconic moments that changed my life forever. We kept telling each other that no living person had ever seen one of these giant insects." They also found a youngster, a nymph. Nicholas took three photos and then they had to try to calm down before embarking on the highly dangerous nighttime descent.

When they got back to camp, the others were sleeping. "I crept up to Dave," said Nicholas, "put my lips to his ear, and whispered, 'We found a phasmid!' Soon everyone was awake!"

Early the next morning, the whole team climbed back up and made a thorough search. They found some more fra.s.s-apparently the proper terminology for insect poo!-and about thirty eggs in the soil. Then they had to leave as the boat was picking them up at 10 AM. The ocean swell had increased considerably by the time they left: The boat was rising and falling ten feet every few seconds. It meant split-second timing for the jump onto the deck-it gives me me the wobblies just thinking about it! the wobblies just thinking about it!

They were all convinced that the only population of Lord Howe Island's giant phasmid in the world lived on that one shrub.

How did the little colony get to that isolated pillar of rock? Perhaps a gravid female had made the fourteen-mile journey from Lord Howe's Island clinging to the legs of some seabird, or to floating vegetation after a storm. And once there, how had she found the one and only suitable habitat on the entire pyramid? Perhaps, suggested Nicholas, a recently dead female containing eggs had been picked up as a "stick" on the main island and transported to a seabird's nest near the phasmids' bush. But however she got there, how on earth had her descendants survived for eighty years or so in that desolate environment? We shall never know.

As soon as they got back, the biologists set to work to draw up a draft recovery plan for the phasmid. They faced many battles with bureaucracy, and two years elapsed before they had permission to return-and they were only allowed to catch four individuals. They found that there had been a big rockslide on Ball's Pyramid. How easily the entire population could have been wiped out during those two frustrating years. However, on Valentine's Day in 2003, they found the colony still thriving on its one bush. To transport the incredibly rare cargo-the four captured insects-a special container had been prepared, and this presented a problem when they arrived in Australia. It was not long after 9/11 and security was very tight, yet they had to convince the officials not to open the precious box!

The team of discoverers approach the treacherous Ball's Pyramid, fourteen miles off Lord Howe's Island-a tiny population of phasmids mysteriously found its way here and lived unknown for eighty years. (Nicholas Carlile) (Nicholas Carlile) One of the scientists on that second expedition was Patrick Honan, a member of the Invertebrate Conservation Breeding Group (among many other things), who subsequently played a key role in the future of the phasmids. One pair went to a private breeder in Sydney, and the other two (Adam and Eve) went with Patrick to the Melbourne Zoo. To everyone's delight-and relief-Eve soon began laying pea-size eggs.

The team a.s.sists one another across a sh.o.r.e-line traverse-in search of the elusive Lord Howe's Island phasmid. The sea conditions had deteriorated overnight, and rising seas meant the team only had limited time on the Pyramid.(Nicholas Carlile) But within two weeks of captivity the pair in Sydney died, and Eve became very, very sick. Patrick worked every night for a month desperately trying to cure her. He scoured the Internet for help, but no one knew anything about the veterinary care of giant stick insects! Eventually, based on gut instinct, Patrick concocted a mixture that included calcium and nectar, and fed it to his patient, drop by drop as she lay curled up in his hand. To his joy she seemed to get better and laid eggs for a further eighteen months. But the only ones that hatched were the thirty or so that she'd laid before she fell sick. How fitting that the first of these hatched on International Threatened Species Day! I can well imagine the excitement and sheer delight of all those concerned when out crawled a bright green nymph-already almost an inch long.

It was in 2008, when I visited the Melbourne Zoo, that I met Patrick and he introduced me to that friendly female stick insect I described at the start of this story. She was, he told me, one of the fifth generation of these phasmids in captivity. Patrick showed me the rows of incubating eggs-11,376 at the last count, he said. And there are about seven hundred adults in the captive population. They are very special insect beings. Patrick showed me a photo of how they sleep at night, in pairs, the male with three of his legs protectively over the female beside him.

Then we went for a ribbon-cutting ceremony. Surrounded by the whole team, I wielded the scissors and declared that the zoo's brand-new Lord Howe's Island stick insect exhibit was now officially open. Later, Patrick told me he'd left academia, believing that the most important conservation is gra.s.sroots-that people will only try to save animals once they get to know them firsthand. He has just completed the final planning of a project to have these stick insects reared by a hundred primary and secondary schools-a fantastic opportunity for the students to become involved in an ongoing conservation program in their own cla.s.srooms.

As a further insurance for the species' survival, eggs are now being sent to other zoos and private breeders in Australia and overseas. The two hundred eggs that had been sent to the San Antionio Zoo in Texas have already begun to hatch, Patrick told me: "So the species has now gone international."

With so many of the giant insects thriving, there is an increasingly urgent need to release the species back into the wild on Lord Howe's Island. And this is giving a significant push to the program to eradicate rodents there planned for the winter of 2010. Once they are gone, the first giant phasmids will be returned to the place of their ancestors.

It has been an incredible story. Nicholas told me that when he joined David on that first expedition to Ball's Pyramid, they both believed it was doomed to failure. How could a creature, last seen eighty years before, possibly be alive on a piece of barren rock way out in the ocean?

"So," said Nicholas, "we went with the purpose of proving the phasmids not not to be there, to refute, once and for all, on good scientific evidence, the rumors about their existence. Which just goes to show!" to be there, to refute, once and for all, on good scientific evidence, the rumors about their existence. Which just goes to show!"

The Mallorcan Midwife Toad (Alytes muletensis) (Alytes muletensis) My childhood natural history bible, The Miracle of Life, The Miracle of Life, described the fascinating life history of midwife toads. The female lays the eggs, but the male carries and protects them until they hatch. It was one more of those stories that left me increasingly fascinated by "the miracle of life." described the fascinating life history of midwife toads. The female lays the eggs, but the male carries and protects them until they hatch. It was one more of those stories that left me increasingly fascinated by "the miracle of life."

There are five species of midwife toads, widespread across Europe and northwest Africa, but the existence of the toad on Mallorca, an island off the east coast of Spain, was not known until 1977 when fossilized remains were discovered there. At that time, it was thought that it had been extinct on the island for about two thousand years. And then, just three years later in 1980, one single individual was found in a deep canyon in a remote mountainous region in the north. This led to the discovery of a small population living there.

They are golden brown to olive green in color, with patterns of darker brown or black, and large eyes. Like most toads they are nocturnal, hiding under rocks during the day. The females produce strings of eggs, which the father fertilizes externally then wraps around his ankles. He then carries his c.u.mbersome load of between seven to twelve eggs, making sure to keep them moist, until they are ready to hatch. At that point, he enters shallow water until all the-exceptionally large-tadpoles have emerged and swum away.

I learned about the program to save the remaining Mallorcan midwife toads firsthand from Quentin Bloxam, a scientist with the Jersey Wildlife Conservation Trust, who happened to be in Mallorca at the time of the discovery in 1980. "There was a student there at that time studying tortoises," Quentin told me over the phone, "and he came to discuss his project with me and ask my advice." At the end of this meeting, the student asked him: "By the way, have you heard about this toad that has just been discovered?" This was news-and exciting news-to Quentin, and he set off with the student down a small street to meet Dr. J. A. Alcover, the biologist who had made the fantastic discovery. "We went into his office," said Quentin, "and he pulled a shoe box from under his desk and there inside were a few of the toads! I was amazed to see a species that had been believed extinct." Quentin told me that Dr. Alcover was equally amazed. The two biologists stood enthralled, looking down at the elusive toads nestled there in the shoe box.

Quentin then met Dr. Joan Mayol and other Mallorcan scientists, who took him to see the place that they had earmarked as a site for a captive breeding program. "It did not seem to offer appropriate accommodations," Quentin told me, "and I suggested they might like to send a few individuals to the Jersey Wildlife Conservation Trust [now called the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust], which had a good record for breeding endangered species." Dr. Mayol readily agreed-but it was five years before the doc.u.mentation was ready, since the appropriate authorities in Spain as well as Mallorca had to be approached. During this time, three other small populations of the toads had been found in the area.

Finally the conservation trust was able to send Simon Tong from the Herpetology Department to collect tadpoles for breeding in Jersey. They got their legs and lost their tails and all seemed to be going well-until they began to croak. "Every single one was a male!" said Quentin, laughing. The male has a ringing call to attract the females-apparently it sounds a little like a hammer hitting an anvil. For this reason, this toad is sometimes known as the ferreret ferreret, a Spanish word meaning "little blacksmith." And so those poor little ironworkers in Jersey croaked away in a futile attempt to summon nonexistent females! Fortunately the next consignment of toads soon arrived from Mallorca, this time with some adults-including females! After this, things went well and the toads prospered in their captive environment.

Since 1988, Quentin told me, several thousand have been successfully returned to Mallorca, both as adults and tadpoles, into areas known to be within the historical range of the species. Some 20 percent of the current population in the wild is derived from captive-bred stock that have been distributed in seventeen sites.

Of course, it is not all plain sailing. There are still threats posed by habitat loss and introduced species that prey on the toads and tadpoles (such as the viperine snake) or compete with them for food (like the green frog-which also eats them). More serious, perhaps, is a shrinking of water as a result of the numbers of tourists who visit the island. To address this there are plans to dam some of the toad's rivers to create suitable habitats. In fact, it was discovered by those working on the project that the toads love the granite water troughs made by the shepherds in the old days, placed in the deep shade so that they would not dry out.

In 2005, the dreaded chytrid fungus that has killed millions of amphibians worldwide was reported for the first time in Mallorca. It has so far only been found in two populations of the midwife toads. Fortunately, because they always live near torrents and only move up and down the stream where they are born, not from one stream to another, the virus was contained.

In 2002, it was decided that no more captive-bred toads or tadpoles should be sent back to Mallorca since there is little need and the potential cost-the risk of introducing disease-is huge. There is an educational program on the island, helping to raise awareness and instill pride in their unique, endemic toad. Already, as Quentin told me, "this toad has been the subject of a good many master's and a few PhD degrees."

The recovery program, supported by the Mallorcan government in collaboration with the Marineland Mallorca and Govern de les Illes Balears, is acclaimed as the model for amphibian recovery. It is the first amphibian species to have its original "critically endangered" status changed to "vulnerable." And when I visited Mallorca as part of a JGI-Spain lecture tour, I was able to congratulate government officials on this success. There is a new wave of concern for the environment and animal welfare in Spain as a whole, and this bodes well for the future of not only this endemic toad but other endangered wildlife as well.

Zino's Petrel (Pterodroma madeira) (Pterodroma madeira) This is a fascinating story in which a new species of petrel, believed to be extinct before it was even described, was rediscovered by Dr. Paul Alexander "Alec" Zino, a pa.s.sionate amateur ornothologist. But for the determined efforts of Alec and his son Frank, Zino's petrels would indeed have slid into extinction.

These petrels are slender birds, with a body length of just over one foot and a three-foot wingspan. Like all petrels they spend months at sea, picking up food from the ocean surface with their short st.u.r.dy beaks. They breed on Madeira, a Portuguese island off the northern coast of Africa, arriving during the darkness of night, and flying up the steep valleys of the high mountains to their nesting sites among the sheer rock pinnacles. If there is no nest burrow available, the younger birds will dig new ones in which to lay their single eggs. About two and a half months after hatching, the fledglings launch themselves into the darkness; they will not return to Madeira for up to five years.

The rediscovery and ongoing protection of Madeira's elusive petrel will forever be linked to the Zino family. Shown here is a historic photo of father Alec (left) and son Frank (right) working to find and protect the petrels on the Selvagem Islands in the 1980s. (Elizabeth Zino and Rene Pop) (Elizabeth Zino and Rene Pop) Our story begins in 1903, when a few dead birds were found and taken to Father Ernesto Schitz, a priest with a keen interest in natural history. He identified them-wrongly, it turns out-as Fea's petrels. Thirty years later those "Fea" skins were reexamined by petrel expert Gregory Matthews, who realized, to his excitement, that he was looking at the remains of a completely different species, one unknown to science. He named it Pterodroma madeira. Pterodroma madeira. Since there had been no reports of live birds since 1903, he a.s.sumed the species was extinct. Since there had been no reports of live birds since 1903, he a.s.sumed the species was extinct.

Eventually, the third generation of Zinos picked up the work of monitoring and safeguarding the Zino's petrels. Shown here is grandson Alexander Zino, with chick. (F. Zino of Freira Conservation Project) (F. Zino of Freira Conservation Project) And then in 1940, a single dead petrel was found and taken, for identification, to Alec Zino. He immediately recognized that this bird was one of the new species described by Matthews: Clearly, it was not extinct after all! After this he and his son Frank made repeated trips to Madeira's high mountains where the birds were most likely to breed, listening for the calls of petrels. But they heard nothing and saw no signs.

Then Alec had an idea. Because this new species was so similar to the Fea's petrel in appearance, perhaps its call was similar too. He played recordings of Fea calls to shepherds in the high mountains-and one of them, Lucus, recognized the calls at once. He said they were "souls of shepherds who had died in the mountains." Lucus told Alec and Frank that they could hear those calls near Pico Cidrao, in the central ma.s.sif.

And so in 1969, Alec, Frank, and Gunther "Jerry" Maul, a friend who had stimulated their fascination with petrels in the first place, drove to Pico Arcero, high in the mountains, then climbed down to a "stone table" where they huddled, waiting. Thinking back to that night Frank wrote: "It was bitterly cold and very dark; ideal for listening.

"Suddenly," Frank continued, "my father nudged me and said, 'Did you hear it?' We both listened all the more intently and heard this noise above that of the wind. 'Yes!' we both called in delight-waking Jerry, whose snoring we had been registering!!!" The "calls" stopped!! Soon, though (with Jerry wide awake from laughing), they heard the real calls and listened, entranced to the sounds that have been described (by ornithologist Malcolm Smith) as "ghostly nocturnal wailing."

Later that year a very small colony of the live birds was found, nesting on a rocky ledge. Apart from the local shepherds, Alec, Frank, and Jerry were probably the first people ever to see these petrels alive. For the next few years father and son returned during the breeding season to observe the birds. "It was not encouraging," Frank told me. "The breeding success at the known nesting burrows was terribly low."

During the season of 1986 they began systematic monitoring of the colony; at the one known nest ledge there were only six nests with eggs in them. And not one of the young birds survived the summer-almost certainly due to predation on eggs and chicks by rats. This finding was shocking, and it led to the launching of the first serious conservation organization, Freira Conservation Project (FCP), for predator control and systematic monitoring of the Zinos' colony.

"On September 12, 1987," Frank told me, "we pulled a ball of down out of a nest-the first chick we had ever handled!" They ringed it, returned it to its nest, and eventually it fledged. It was the only one that survived that year. However, as they persisted in their efforts to control the rats, things began to look brighter. And then, in 1992, just as they thought that they were winning the battle against rats, they lost ten birds to cats: "almost twenty-five percent of the known breeding population," said Frank.

In addition to baiting and killing rats, the new conservation group, FCP, then began trapping cats (since then about ten cats per year had been caught in the breeding grounds). As a result the breeding success of the petrels improved during following seasons. Nevertheless it would take years before numbers in the breeding colony increased, since each female lays only one egg, and each chick, after fledging, spends the next five years at sea.

A National Park and Hope for the Future It was an exciting day when a team of FCP climbers discovered another small breeding colony. "The number of breeding pairs almost doubled overnight!" Frank told me. FCP then obtained funding to buy the breeding area from the private owners. And the government set aside a large area in the central mountains and laurel forests for a national park. Most important for the petrels, sheep and goats are no longer allowed to graze the high mountains. Fences were erected and shepherds whose flocks were excluded were compensated. This resulted in ma.s.sive restoration of vegetation, much of which is endemic. It is believed that Zino's petrels used to nest in many other areas, and it is hoped that they will soon try new nesting sites. To encourage them, some artificial burrows have been constructed.

"Things are now running smoothly," said Frank, whose grown son Alexander and daughter Francesca are now involved in carrying on the family's protection of the Zino's petrel. In the 2008 breeding season there were about sixty to eighty nesting pairs. The Parque Natural de Madeira has taken on the conservation programs initiated by the FCP. And Frank wrote that "we even have eco-tourists coming to hear the birds at night." (How I should love to experience that myself!) Frank ended by recalling "the huge honor that my father and I felt when the name Zino's petrel, suggested by W. R. P. (Bill) Bourne, stuck. It is very humbling and makes me all the more determined that all should go well for the future of this now less-rare species." One thing is certain: But for Alec and Frank, the Zino's petrel would be extinct, its eerie nocturnal calls silent forever.

The Large-Billed Reed Warbler (Acrocephalus orinus) (Acrocephalus orinus) This little bird has been quietly getting on with its life not in a remote jungle but in the habitat around a wastewater-treatment plant outside Bangkok! It was rediscovered in March 2006 by ornithologist Philip Round, who was making a survey there. Along with other, familiar birds, Philip captured a small warbler that he did not recognize. It had a long beak and short wings.

"Then it dawned on me-I was probably holding a large-billed reed warbler. I was dumbstruck," he said in an interview. "It felt as if I was holding a living dodo." The species had been identified and described in the Sutlej Valley of India in 1867; since then it had not been seen for 130 years. No wonder there was some debate as to whether this one specimen had been correctly identified. However, photographs and DNA samples subsequently confirmed the identification. The large-billed reed warbler is one more species that has defied extinction.

This rediscovery, of course, was very exciting to ornithologists and the bird was a hot topic of conversation in their circles. Probably this is why, just six months later and while biologists were still investigating the wastewater plant birds, another specimen was found. This one was dead-discovered in the UK in a drawer in the Natural History Museum at Tring. There, for more than a hundred years, it had been lying with other reed warblers collected from Uttar Pradesh in India in the nineteenth century. It, too, was confirmed as a large-billed reed warbler through DNA a.n.a.lysis. Ornithologists are now speculating that other populations of the bird may yet be found in Thailand, and perhaps also in Burma or Bangladesh.

The Caspian Horse This story is about a very small and very beautiful breed of horse, and an American woman, Louise, who "discovered" and rescued them from obscurity in Iran. Louise married a young man from the Iranian royal family, Narcy Firouz, and became a princess. In 1957, the young couple established the Norouzabad Equestrian Center, where the wealthier Iranian families sent their children to learn to ride. The trouble was that all the typical horses of Iran-the Arabian and Turkoman-were too big for the smaller children, including their own three. And so when, in 1965, Louise heard rumors of a small pony in the Elburz Mountains near the Caspian Sea, she decided to investigate. She set out on horseback with a few women friends-it was not usual for women to travel like this, and the journey (the first of several she would make) was potentially dangerous. But all went well, and she found the "ponies." They were being used as work animals, pulling carts, malnourished and covered with ticks.

Almost at once Louise realized that these were not ponies at all-they had the distinctive gait, temperament, and unique facial bone structure of horses. Very small, narrow horses to be sure, standing only about 11.2 hands high (one hand is four inches), but horses for all that.

Louise Firouz "discovered" and rescued the Caspian horse from obscurity in Iran. Shown here is Fereshteh, the first foal born after the Islamic Revolution. Tragically, during the revolution most of the Caspian horses were lost-auctioned as beasts of burden or slaughtered for meat. (Brenda Dalton) (Brenda Dalton) As she pondered the nature of this little horse, Louise suddenly remembered seeing, on the walls of the ancient palace in Persepolis, rock relief carvings of a horse that looked very much like the one she had just found. The Lydian horse depicted in those carvings had the same small, prominent skull formation. With a sense of excitement, Louise began to wonder whether, hidden beneath the matted coats of the work animals she had found, was a true representative of the ancient lost breed of the royals. The more she thought about this, the more certain she became.

The Lydian horse had been used for chariot racing and in battle, a suitable gift for kings and emperors. It was thought by many to have been the ancestor of the Arabian-and it had been thought extinct for a thousand years! Louise found that there were still five purebred horses in the village, and she bought three of them. After extensive DNA testing, archaeozoologists and genetic specialists agreed with Louise that these little horses were indeed the ancestral form of the Arabian. What an incredible find!

Louise made other excursions to the region, trying to find out how many of the little horses remained. I spoke with Joan Talpin, a close friend of Louise, who went with her on several of those searches. She told me the villagers were always friendly, and she remembers how the owners of the tiny inns where they stayed would go out to cut straw for fresh sleeping mats so that the visitors would not be plagued by bedbugs or fleas! In the end, Louise estimated there were about fifty of the horses, which she called Caspians, along the southern coast of the Caspian Sea. She purchased a few more, Joan told me-six stallions and seven mares-to found a breeding herd. Louise's favorite remained that very first horse she found, whom she named Ostad Farsi for the professor. "He was a true gentleman," said Joan, "and the breed owes much to him." He was also loved by Louise's children, who spent hours riding him and the other rescued Caspians.

At first Louise and her husband, Narcy, financed the breeding themselves, but then in 1970 a Royal Horse Society (RHS) was formed in Iran. The society's mission was to protect and maintain Iran's native breeds, and it bought all Louise's Caspians, by then numbering twenty-three. Louise and Narcy then started a second private herd near the Turkmenistan border. When two mares and a foal were killed by wolves, Louise, wanting to ensure that some of the horses be kept safe, arranged for eight of them to be exported to Britain in 1977. The RHS was angered-presumably they had not been consulted-immediately banned all further exports of Caspian horses, and began collecting up all of the little horses that remained in Iran, including all but one of the Firouzes' second herd.

Surviving Revolution and War Then came the 1979 Islamic Revolution. The Firouzes, because of their connections with the royal family, were arrested and imprisoned. Narcy was jailed for six months but Louise only for a few weeks, for she remembered advice given to her by a friend-that if she went to prison, she should go on a hunger strike. This worked-but, Joan told me, "Louise was thin anyway and must have been a beanpole when she came out!" Tragically, during that time most of the Caspian horses were lost-auctioned for use as beasts of burden or slaughtered for meat.

Louise, however, was a survivor-and she was pa.s.sionate about saving and protecting the bloodline of her beloved Caspian horses. She managed to rescue some of those that remained from starvation and slaughter and established, for the third and last time, a small herd-to try to save the breed from extinction in Iran. And once again, before this was banned by the new government, she managed to export some of them to safety. The last such effort was in the early 1990s, when she sent seven horses on a tortuous and dangerous journey to the UK. They had to pa.s.s through the Belarus war zone, where bandits attacked and robbed the convoy. The horses arrived safely, but it had been a costly business. Soon after, in 1994, her husband died, and Louise could no longer afford to continue with her breeding program in Iran. She sold the remainder of her herd to the Ministry of Jehad, but was often called upon to advise on their management. She also a.s.sisted John Schneider-Merck, a German businessman, to establish his own small private herd of Caspians in Iran.

The Future of the Caspian Horse Ensured With Iran's many political upheavals-the overthrow of the shah during the Islamic Revolution, bombing during the IranIraq War, the very real threat of famine-as well as the Caspian's former a.s.sociation with royalty, the fate of these horses was ever in the balance. One moment they were considered a national treasure, the next they were seized as wartime food. But thanks to Louise, who had exported a total of nine stallions and seventeen mares, the future of this ancient line has been ensured. Today they can be found in England, France, Australia, Scandinavia, New Zealand, and now the United States.

Much of the history of this little horse can be found in The Caspian Horse The Caspian Horse, written by one of Louise's close friends, Brenda Dalton. She writes that Caspians are "one of the oldest and most gentle breeds in the world. They become attached to you, and are more dependent on us, more 'doglike' than other breeds of horses or ponies. They are very charismatic and very, very pretty and very engaging." But for Louise, they would almost certainly have vanished without a trace. The fact that she "discovered" them, before it was too late, must have given her great joy. Later she would say that after finding the first Caspians, she watched the ancient horse "trot serenely back into history."

Louise, "Iran's lady of horses," died in May 2007, and when I spoke to Brenda on the phone she had just returned from a memorial service held in the UK. What a fascinating and amazing person, what an extraordinary life. Above all she understood and loved horses, and she must have suffered greatly when her beloved Caspians were sold back into drudgery and for slaughter. But despite the setbacks, and as a result of her courage and determination, she saved a rare and charismatic breed, reintroduced it to the horse-loving world, and became, herself, an integral part of its history.

Amazingly, we are even rediscovering species from the distant prehistoric world-once believed to only exist as fossils. Shown here a news clipping about the coelacanth, an animal species that has survived, unchanged, for sixty-five million years. (South African Inst.i.tute for Aquatic Biodiversity) (South African Inst.i.tute for Aquatic Biodiversity)

Living Fossils: Ancient Species Recently Discovered

Imagine finding a living species previously known only from fossils! A species from an ancient prehistoric world that has existed, beyond our knowledge, for millions of years. The coelacanth, an enormous shark-like fish, was discovered just before World War II. Because I was only four years old, it was not exciting to me at the time. It is very exciting to me now. An animal species that has survived, unchanged, for sixty-five million years! And no one knew about it-except, I suppose, fishermen who had occasionally caught one in their nets, and they would have had no idea that it was anything untoward. It was indeed known to science, but in the form of fossils, stored in various museums, of little interest to any save those paleontologists who happened to be interested in fish. For them, the discovery was as though a living dinosaur had been found!

When I worked with Louis and Mary Leakey at Olduvai in 1958, I would sometimes stand, holding the fossilized bone of some long-gone species, and imagine how it would have looked in life. Indeed, it sometimes led to near-mystical experiences. As when I found the tusk of an extinct giant pig and seemed suddenly to see it standing there, huge and fierce. Saw its coa.r.s.e brown hair, the crest of black hair along its back, its bright fierce eyes. I seemed to smell the animal, hear it snort. And then it was gone and I was left looking down at a piece of prehistoric ivory, slowly returning to reality.

The coelacanth comes from a far more ancient era than that pig. It is as though one of the fish, from those prehistoric seas I had longed to visit as a child, has come swimming into the present. And I can so easily imagine the overwhelming feeling of excitement of the scientists who handled and studied that first coelacanth. Indeed, they must sometimes have imagined they were dreaming.

The Wollemi pine was also known only from the fossil record-from imprints of its leaves on ancient rock. And it, too, dates back sixty million years. When the first specimen was picked from a tall tree in a remote and unexplored canyon in Australia, the biologist who found it had no idea that he had made a major discovery, that he would have the extraordinary honor of having a "living fossil" named for him. Indeed, it took a long time and many hours of discussion and searching through herbarium specimens before its true ident.i.ty was finally revealed. That was truly the botanical discovery of the last century, just as the coelacanth was one of the major discoveries in the animal kingdom. The future of the tree is a.s.sured-that of the fish is uncertain. The stories of both are fascinating.

The Most Beautiful Fish or "Old Fourlegs"(Latimeria chalumnae) Toward the end of 1938, Marjory Courtenay-Latimer, a twenty-three-year-old museum curator in East London, South Africa, noticed a very strange-looking fish in the catch of the trawler Nerine. Nerine. She often went to look at the sea life brought in by the fishermen, but she had never seen anything like this before. In an interview, she said it was "the most beautiful fish I have ever seen, five feet long and a pale mauve blue with iridescent silver markings." She and the museum staff knew that it was unique and of great scientific value. She preserved as much of the fish as possible, drew it, and sent the now famous sketch to renowned ichthyologist Professor J. L. B. Smith. She often went to look at the sea life brought in by the fishermen, but she had never seen anything like this before. In an interview, she said it was "the most beautiful fish I have ever seen, five feet long and a pale mauve blue with iridescent silver markings." She and the museum staff knew that it was unique and of great scientific value. She preserved as much of the fish as possible, drew it, and sent the now famous sketch to renowned ichthyologist Professor J. L. B. Smith.

I would love to have been there when, finally, Professor Smith and the remains of that fish got together. Already there was speculation as to the ident.i.ty of the deep-sea creature-and early in 1939, Smith announced to a stunned world that it was a coelacanth, a fish previously known only from the fossil record. It had been considered extinct for some sixty-five million years.

For the next fourteen years, no more coelacanths were reported, but then, in 1952, one was found in the Comoros. Professor Smith-I imagine with much excitement-went to fetch it. This find was considered so important that the then prime minister, Dr. D. F. Malan, allowed him to use a Dakota of the South African Air Force to transport the fish back to East London! More scientists became interested, and more attempts were made to try to see these fish in their natural habitat. And then came the first amazing footage of coelacanths swimming in the ocean. It was shot from the manned submersibles Geo Geo and and Jago Jago by Professor Hans Fricke and his team. by Professor Hans Fricke and his team.

In 1938 Marjory Courtenay-Latimer, a twenty-three-year-old museum curator in East London, South Africa, saw a strange-looking fish in the catch of a local trawler. She drew the fish, and sent this now famous sketch to renowned ichthyologist Professor J. L. B. Smith, who identified it as a coelacanth, a sixty-five-million-year-old species. (South African Inst.i.tute for Aquatic Biodiversity) (South African Inst.i.tute for Aquatic Biodiversity) Coelacanths are large fish growing to about six feet in length; the heaviest recorded so far was 243 pounds. Professor Smith wrote a book about them, which he t.i.tled Old Fourlegs Old Fourlegs-a reference to the lobed fins that he and other scientists thought might be precursors to the arms and legs of land vertebrates.

Historical photo of Marjory Courtenay-Latimer with a mounted coelacanth. (South African Inst.i.tute for Aquatic Biodiversity) (South African Inst.i.tute for Aquatic Biodiversity) Recently I was in touch with Dr. Tony Ribbink in Grahamstown, South Africa. He is the CEO of the Sustainable Seas Trust, founded to study and protect endangered species in the ocean canyons and caves of Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, Madagascar, the Comoros, and South Africa. He got involved with coelacanth research and conservation in 2000 when scuba divers discovered a colony in the Saint Lucia Wetland Park off Sodwana Bay, South Africa. They were more than a hundred yards deep when they found and filmed coelacanths in canyons about two miles from the sh.o.r.e.

"The discovery of the coelacanths in a marine park and world heritage site," he said, "was a wake-up call." He likened it to finding elephants in a terrestrial park years and years after the park had been established. I asked if he had seen coelacanths in the wild. "Yes I have," he told me, "at depths from 105 to over 200 meters. They are amazing-very quiescent, very tolerant of each other, slow moving and mystical."

The Sustainable Seas Trust launched the African Coelacanth Ecosystem Programme, which works in Comoros, Kenya, Madagascar, Mozambique, South Africa, and Tanzania. They have engaged hundreds of researchers, students, and public officials from nine countries and gradually gained new insights into the ecology, distribution, and behavior of these amazing survivors from ancient times. But still many of the fundamental questions, asked initially in the late 1930s by Marjory Courtenay-Latimer and Professor Smith regarding life history, breeding behavior, gestation period, where the young are born, whether parental care is practiced or whether the young hide until they are large enough to join adult groups, remain unanswered. No one has ever knowingly seen a young coelacanth in the wild.

"When our research began in 2002," said Tony, "only one coelacanth was known from Mozambique, one from Kenya, four from Madagascar, some from Comoros, and we know that our South Africa population has at least twenty-six individuals."

In 1979, a coelacanth was found off Sulawesi by an Indonesian fisherman. This turned out to be a different species, Latimeria menadoensis Latimeria menadoensis. Another of these, again off Sulawesi, was caught alive in 2007 and actually lived, in a quarantined pool, for seventeen hours.

Tragically, these living fossils-which have survived innumerable stresses over the millennia yet remained essentially unchanged-are now vulnerable to extinction. This is because while they are fairly unpalatable and are not targeted by fishermen, they are caught accidentally as a bycatch. Increasing demand for fish and a depletion of the insh.o.r.e resources have seen fishermen move into deeper water to set gill nets, thus penetrating the habitats of the coelacanth around Africa and Madagascar. The first coelacanth bycatch recorded in Tanzania was in September 2003; since then, nearly fifty have been caught. All have died. This represents the greatest known rate of coelacanth destruction anywhere.

Fortunately the Tanzanian authorities, with the help of the Sustainable Seas Trust, are planning to develop, off the coast of Tanga, one of several marine protected areas. These refuges are not exclusively for coelacanths but are part of a plan to protect special offsh.o.r.e ecosystems while working out sustainable ways of harvesting them to benefit coastal human communities as well as the fish. But the coelacanth is of such importance that a major awareness campaign has been launched to let the people know about the extraordinary prehistoric fish in their waters.

"Coelacanths are rare, beautiful, and intriguing," says Tony. "They have brought together people of many cultures and countries, and inspired a more harmonious relationship between us and the rest of the living world. To the countries of the Western Indian Ocean, they are an icon for conservation-the panda of the sea. And a symbol of hope."

A fossilized branch alongside a recent clipping of the rediscovered Wollemi pine that belongs to the two-hundred-million-year-old Araucariaceae family. ( J. Plaza RBG Sydney) ( J. Plaza RBG Sydney) A n.o.ble Discovery: The Wollemi Pine (Wollemia n.o.bilis) (Wollemia n.o.bilis) On Sat.u.r.day, September 10, 1994, David n.o.ble, a New South Wales national parks and wildlife officer, was leading a small group in the Blue Mountains of Australia about a hundred miles northwest of Sydney, searching for new canyons. David has been exploring the canyons of these wild and beautiful mountains for the past twenty years.

On this September Sat.u.r.day, David and his party came across a wild and gloomy canyon that he had never seen before. It was hundreds of yards deep, the rim fringed by steep cliffs. The party abseiled down into the abyss, past numerous small waterfalls of sparkling water. They swam through the icy waters, and then hiked through the trackless forest. During this adventure, David noticed a tall tree with unusual-looking leaves and bark. He picked some of the leaves and put them in his backpack, then forgot about them until he got home and retrieved a slightly crushed specimen. He first tried to identify it himself but could not find anything to match. He had absolutely no idea that he had just made a discovery that would astound botanists and enthrall people all over the world.

Unraveling a Mystery When he showed the battered leaves to botanist Wyn Jones, Wyn asked if they had been taken from a fern or a shrub. "Neither," David replied. "They came from a huge, very tall tree." The botanist was puzzled. David helped in the search that followed, looking through books and on the Internet. And gradually the excitement grew. As the weeks went by, and the leaves could not be identified by any of the experts, enthusiasm grew even more.

Eventually, after many botanists had pored over David's leaves, it became clear that the tree was a survivor from millions of years ago-the leaves matched spectacular rock imprints of prehistoric leaves that belonged to the two-hundred-million-year-old Araucariaceae family.

Clearly it was necessary to find out a good deal more about this extraordinary tree, and David led a small team of experts back to the place where the momentous discovery had been made. As a result of that expedition, and exhaustive research into the literature and examination of museum samples, the tree, a new genus, was named, in honor of the finder, Wollemia n.o.bilis Wollemia n.o.bilis, the Wollemi pine. It struck me, as I was talking to David, that for the sake of the majestic tree it was lucky that David had an appropriately majestic name. After all, it could have been found by a Mr. Bottomley!

It is indeed a n.o.ble tree, a majestic conifer that grows to a height of up to 130 feet in the wild, with a trunk diameter of more than 3 feet. It has unusual pendulous foliage, with apple-green new tips in spring and early summer, in vivid contrast with the older dark green foliage.

Continuing research showed that the pollen of this new tree matched that found in deposits, across the planet, dating from the Cretaceous period somewhere between 65 and 150 million years ago when Australia was still attached to the southern super-continent of Gondwana. One professor of botany, Carrick Chambers, the director of the Botanic Gardens TrustSydney, exclaimed in wonder: "This is the equivalent of finding a small dinosaur alive on earth."

All this for a pine tree. Horticulturalist dangles from a helicopter to collect the seeds of the prehistoric Wollemi pine. ( J. Plaza RBG Sydney) ( J. Plaza RBG Sydney) Their Secret Home It is now known that there are a few small stands of these rain forest giants in that canyon, all part of the same population of less than a hundred individuals. Very few people-a handful of scientists only-have actually been to see the trees growing in the wild. The exact location has been kept a strict secret to try to protect these ancient trees from new diseases. This is very important, as there is an unprecedented total lack of genetic diversity among Wollemi pine individuals. On one of botanists' more recent visits, it was found that a ground fungus that attacks the roots of trees had invaded the canyon, perhaps taken there by a bird or by the wind. Immediately measures were taken to treat the ground in the vicinity of the precious Wollemi pines to eliminate the danger.

David n.o.ble shown here with a Wollemi pine at Mount Annan Botanical Gardens in Sydney, Australia. To this day David keeps the exact location of his original discovery a secret-telling only a few scientists and horticulturists. ( Botanic Gardens Trust, Simone Cottrell) ( Botanic Gardens Trust, Simone Cottrell) Investigations of the rings of the trunk show that the Wollemi pine has withstood a range of potentially lethal environmental conditions, including forest fires and windstorms, and lived through extremes of temperature-from 104 degrees Fahrenheit on the one hand to 10 degrees Fahrenheit on the other. In freezing weather, the growing tips are sealed with caps of resin, which is probably what enabled the Wollemi to survive no fewer than seventeen seventeen ice ages! The trunks have unusual bubbly bark-"a bit like Coco Pops," said Dave. ice ages! The trunks have unusual bubbly bark-"a bit like Coco Pops," said Dave.

"Every Leaf Precious-A Seedling Priceless"

It was obviously important to try to propagate the Wollemi pine to ensure its survival into the future lest anything should happen to the wild individuals. In an Australian Geographic Australian Geographic that appeared in 2005, John Benson, senior ecologist at the Botanic Gardens TrustSydney, is quoted as saying: "We caught a species at the point of evolutionary death. But the species isn't going to go extinct, no. We have come in and played G.o.d." that appeared in 2005, John Benson, senior ecologist at the Botanic Gardens TrustSydney, is quoted as saying: "We caught a species at the point of evolutionary death. But the species isn't going to go extinct, no. We have come in and played G.o.d."

A huge effort is under way to propagate and commercialize these pines, not simply as a safeguard for the species itself but also to raise money for conservation of these and other endangered plants. The work began in 2000 and goes on, behind closed doors, in the Wollemi nursery compound at Gympie. This is where Lyn Bradley has been working since the start of the program.

"Initially," she said, "every leaf was precious, a seedling was priceless. Now there are hundreds." She is absolutely committed to this work, and pa.s.sionate about the pines-to some of which she has a.s.signed pet names. She and her boss, Malcolm Baxter, are the only two who know the secrets of the pine's commercial propagation, and both feel privileged to be involved with this extraordinary species. They hope, among other things, that by propagating the pines and selling them to botanists, gardeners, and collectors around the country, people will be less desperate to visit the canyon to see the trees in the wild-but I doubt it. I saw one of the two that was donated to Kew Botanical Gardens during my recent visit there. It was planted by Sir David Attenborough and is growing splendidly within its protective iron cage. And in Australia, I had the privilege of planting one of the little saplings on the grounds of Adelaide Zoo.

I am, of course, delighted to have seen and even handled living tissue descended from the ancient giants. But it does not stop me longing to visit that dark and mysterious canyon that has, for millions of years, hidden its secret, and stand in the presence of the original trees themselves. Indeed, several of those privileged few who visited the canyon in the early days said that the experience was close to spiritual. Long may they stand there, undisturbed by the frenzy of a modern world, so different from anything they have known and endured for so many millions of years.

PART 6

The Nature of Hope