At 70, he's still zoology's king of beasts

"Jurassic Park" author Michael Crichton has described George Schaller as "the most brilliant field zoologist of this century." Famed tiger expert K. Ullas Karanth has said that reading Schaller's words made him feel like "a man with poor eyesight being given a pair of glasses." BusinessWeek has called him "one of the world's preeminent field biologists, a naturalist's naturalist." Natural history filmmaker Cynthia Moses says that he "is one of my heroes because he not only is one of the greatest scientists of our generation but he also understands the poetry and spirituality found in nature."

While little known outside the conservation world, Schaller has spent 52 years collecting data and understanding creatures and their habitat. He has helped create at least five major nature reserves around the world, such as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska and the Chang Tang Reserve in Tibet. He's had a hand in discovering four unknown or thought-to-be-extinct species, including the Tibetan red deer. He's in town Thursday to speak at Harvard's Museum of Natural History about efforts to save the wild animals of Central Asia.

The list of creatures Schaller has rigorously studied in the wild is a who's who of animals often referred to in conservation circles as "charismatic megafauna" -- the big beauties of the natural world. He conducted research on mountain gorillas before Dian Fossey; his work with tigers in India in the '60s helped spawn a huge conservation movement there; he has observed lions on the Serengeti, wild sheep in Nepal, jaguars in Brazil, the giant pandas of China, and snow leopards in Tibet.

If people outside the conservation world know him at all, it is often because of the snow leopard. It was after tagging along with Schaller on an expedition into the Himalayas that Peter Matthiessen wrote the classic nature volume "The Snow Leopard." In it, Matthiessen paints a portrait of a stoic, formal, abrupt, hard-working scientist who is impervious to pain and punishing conditions (in fact thrives on them), a scientist who works through meals and who is willing to march uncomplainingly mile upon mile even with a shoe full of blood.

This soft-spoken, polite biologist, who at 70 is still slim and fit, lives in a small town in Connecticut. From his home -- on those rare occasions when he's in the country -- Schaller commutes to his office at the Bronx Zoo, where he is the director of science for the highly regarded Wildlife Conservation Society.

Schaller's modesty, which sometimes slides into outright shyness, comes through even in a telephone conversation. "But I'm not interesting," he protests in response to an interview request. He'd rather reporters write about his subjects -- cheetahs, say, or pandas, or global warming, than focus on him.

He attributes his career success to timing, to getting to many beautiful species before others had studied them. His "short attention span" contributed too, he said, by keeping him on the go, studying many different animals.

In the simplest terms, he says, "I like to present the biographies of species." It's only when people understand an animal, he says, that they will care about protecting it.

That mission has driven him to some of the harshest and most remote places on earth, to some of which he brought his wife, Kay Schaller, and two sons, when they were younger.

In an interview two years ago, Kay told a story about George studying tigers in India in the 1960s. One day, she accompanied her husband to an observation blind in the forest to watch the big cats, leaving their two sons back at camp with a hired helper. After a few hours, Kay asked him to walk her back to check on the children. George, busy with his work, told her to go back alone. Afraid, but determined not to reveal it, she squared her shoulders and marched out. Showing some concern after all, George leaned out the window, "Bend down!" he called after her. "You'll scare the tigers!"

Fearlessness seems to come naturally to Schaller. But not only has he trekked into zones of physical danger, he also seems willing to enter political ones.

He very publicly accused the zoo community of greed in dealing with giant panda loans back in 1980s and '90s, even though it could have cost him to do so -- considering that his employer, WCS, runs the Bronx Zoo. He was angered by the Clinton administration's policies on grazing on federal lands, and said so. Today, he lambastes the Bush administration, saying, "by far, this is the worst environment administration we have ever had."

He worries that the public isn't paying attention, isn't demanding any accountability, and to a certain extent, he points the finger of blame at his own brethren. Beginning 10 or 15 years ago, Schaller says, the conservation community began to frame the justification for conservation and saving species in monetary terms -- that nature had to pay its way. The argument was that healthy wild places made economic sense, a notion he rejects.

"Placing a dollar value on everything is a drastic change which I hold against big conservation organizations," he said. "Before, conservation was a moral issue, but words like `spiritual' or `moral' or `ethical' are gone from the vocabulary now."

They are not missing from Schaller's. Two years ago it was tracking the world's last Asiatic cheetahs in Iran, where there may be only 50 left in the wild. Last year, as he has on and off through many years, he hiked the pristine, if breathtakingly harsh and frigid Chang Tang plateau in Tibet, studying yak, antelope, and argali sheep. He has just returned from Bhutan. And this summer, he hopes to spend at least two months riding horseback through the most inaccessible reaches of Afghanistan, looking for Marco Polo sheep and snow leopards.

Schaller speaks glowingly of a project he's involved with in Mongolia where there is still 100,000 square miles of grassland -- "beautiful expanses" he says -- and you can ride for 100 miles without crossing a fence or seeing a home. He is currently pressing for an "international peace park," involving wild lands where five countries -- Pakistan, China, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, and India -- meet.

He has come a long way since he was a boy -- an immigrant from Germany, living with his brother and American mother in St. Louis -- collecting snakes and salamanders and abandoned birds' eggs.

But looking back over his career, he is proudest of the students he has taught in countries all over the world, and through many decades. "Long after I have been forgotten," George Schaller says, "the work will go on."

George Schaller is speaking at Harvard's Museum of Natural History, 24 Oxford St., Cambridge, on Thursday at 6 p.m. The lecture is free and open to the public. Free parking is available after 5 p.m. in the adjacent HMNH parking lot. For more information, call 617-495-3045, or log onto the website at www.hmnh.harvard.edu/events.