It is easily 90 degrees with near 100 percent humidity in the late afternoon heat of tropical peat swamps in Borneo. In the company of Dr. Biruté Galdikas, we move between research camps across the 960,000 acres of protected orangutan habitat within Tanjung Puting National Park, a sanctuary established by the Indonesian authorities in 1988 and co-managed by Dr. Galdikas, the park’s preeminent advocate and designer. President of Orangutan Foundation International and a scientist/animal rights activist steeped in Gandhian non-violence, Dr. Galdikas has spent more than 35 years in the field committed to helping the remarkable orangutans – whose individual lives and populations are at great risk. There are simply not enough people in Indonesia who care about these astonishing beings. Fortunately, for the remaining 6,000 orangutans here in Tanjung Puting, Dr. Galdikas and her staff of over 200 people are devoting their lives to provide a lifeline that has saved the orangutan from near extinction.

Dr. Galdikas herself has been surrogate mother to hundreds of orphaned orangutans. Many of these innocents have seen their parents chased down and shot out of trees for food or captured for the zoo trade.

Like so many of those in the sanctuary movement worldwide, Dr. Galdikas is a profoundly spiritual and generous ambassador for individuals of other species. This renaissance of compassion demonstrated by her example is what which we endeavor to portray in the new Dancing Star Foundation book, Sanctuary: Global Oases of Innocence.

In twenty countries we strived to document and shed light on those ecological and animal rights luminaries who are working assiduously to save fellow creatures and their habitat: from cheetahs in South Africa; wild dogs in Namibia; a vegetarian tribe in Southern Indian and all the wondrous creatures with whom they cohabit the Niligiri Blue Mountains (tigers, Asian elephants, Nilgiri Black Langurs, rare orchids and impatience flowers); to remarkable seabirds from Alaska to the Farallon Islands off the coast of California; Iberian wolves and donkeys in Portugal; French geese whose salvation has long been championed by Brigitte Bardot; jaguars in Suriname; brown bears in Holland; farm animals and wild forest creatures in Austria; Arabian oryx in the Emirates; Egyptian vultures breeding on the “Galapagos of the Indian Ocean”; endangered moss species in the temple courtyards of Kyoto; butterflies in Malaysia and domesticated cows, pigs, horses, sheep, goats and chickens at Farm Sanctuary in the U.S. under the enlightened stewardship of Gene Baur and team.

Some of the sanctuaries featured in our book are national parks and internationally contiguous preserves, such as Wrangell-St.Elias/Kluane National Park, the largest such park in North America, encompassing both the U.S. and Canada. Elsewhere, as with Central Park in Manhattan, a sanctuary that sees at least 25 million visitors each year, the 270-odd bird species and 172 known insect species that call the park home are supported by no more than 843 acres. In the case of the Island of Socotra, in southern Yemen, all her 3,625 square miles are currently under consideration as a Natural World Heritage Site. For thousands of years, the Socotri mountain people have embraced ecological sustainability which has proven key to their survival.

In Austria, the remarkable Michael Aufhauser created Gut Aiderbichl, a true oasis of compassion for cows, foxes, dogs, cats, chickens, horses, pigs, cows, donkeys…and people. Gut Aiderbichl has since expanded throughout Austria and Germany. Michael’s original sanctuary – near the heart of Salzburg – is home to over a thousand rescued animals. When Michael negotiated the purchase of all the beagles from a chemical company after their use for product testing, there was concern among some European animal rights groups that negotiation was not appropriate. But Michael Aufhauser is a pragmatist who feels differently, as does Snoopy, one of his rescued beagles, who now runs and plays excitedly in confirmation of the fact that he has been given a second chance. Michael Aufhauser, looking at Snoopy as living proof of the positive outcome of his methodology, says “I am not concerned about my image. We cannot afford egos.”

In Suriname, Dr. Russell Mittermeier, President of Conservation International and a man who has probably saved more precious biodiversity worldwide than any single individual, led us into the heart of the greatest intact tropical rainforest left on earth: the Central Suriname Nature Reserve where he did his field research on primates for his Ph.D. while at Harvard. Mittermeier’s long-term commitment to this remarkable country has resulted in one of the most outstanding examples of global conservation anywhere. Chief Ashonko Alalparoe, head of the 800 member Trio tribe living just south of the Nature Reserve, told us “Russell is a man who helps others.”

Such biophilia-in-action, the compassion born of deep empathy we believe is hardwired into humanity, has been active in our species for thousands of years.

Emblematic of this compassion and the sanctuary movement, is Farm Sanctuary in Upstate New York and Northern California. When we visited during the Summer of 2007 to profile Gene Baur’s and his colleagues’ superb work for our book Sanctuary, we were not adequately prepared for the intense outpouring of emotions we experienced in the presence of some of Farm Sanctuary’s most charismatic residents. Among others, we met Charlotte (the all time pleasure-seeking pig), Phyllis (a wise, softly-spoken chicken), Grace (a brilliantly inquisitive sheep), Snowflake (the movie star hen), Hannah, Gideon, Isaiah, and Chickey (the totality of turkeys), Linda (an understated, contemplative cow) and Dagwood (the genius among rabbits). Our memories are rich with Farm Sanctuary’s pastures of great spirits. They remind us of what’s biologically at stake in the 21st century and incite a kind of sacred riot in our hearts that bids us to do everything we can, every waking moment, to alleviate suffering in this world and join forces with others to help re-establish the preeminence and inviolability of life on earth. That is the core value inherent to the sanctuary movement.

Michael Tobias is Present and Jane Gray Morrison is Executive Vice President of Dancing Star Foundation. Both visited Farm Sanctuary in upstate New York in June of 2007.

The tragic death of a 39 year old bear trainer in Southern California on Earth Day underscores the broader fate of a magnificent mammal that once ranged across most of North America. First described in 1509, at a time when there might have been millions of grizzlies, based upon various estimates of their needed food range, American culture has subsequently done much to ensure the doom of this long-lived largely vegetarian, engagingly maternal, non-territorial creature. Today the grizzly bear has been reduced to fewer than 2 per cent of its original domain. By the early 1900s, it is estimated there were no more than 50,000 grizzly bears remaining in the United States (the current population of Brown Bears, a different sub-species, throughout all of Europe and Russia). By 1924, California lost its last grizzly. Elsewhere, attrition has continued with great rapidity: Mexico’s grizzly went extinct in 1960; the Canadian Prairie grizzly was deemed extinct as recently as 2002. Fewer than 1200 grizzly now remain in the lower 48 US states. If an equivalent attrition occurred amongst the 300 million U.S. citizens, today’s human population would all be confined to one small city.

Throughout this ongoing massacre, grizzlies are known to have killed approximately 50 humans in that last 100 years.

A large number of captive grizzly bears is certainly no substitute for bears in the wild. Wrote John Muir, “In my first interview with a Sierra bear we were frightened and embarrassed, both of us, but the bear’s behavior was better than mine.” And as behaviorists have learned, a captive bear is totally unpredictable, because of her (not surprisingly high) potential for boredom, frustration and — we must assume — misery and anger at her plight. Add to these the bear’s potent memory, and all the cumulative instincts which tell her that her situation is dire, and a seven hundred pound mammal with paws the size of a medium pizza, becomes the last creature on earth one would want to attempt to manipulate and “train”.

Listed as Threatened by the Federal Government and, under rubrics of the 1973 Endangered Species Act, “likely to become an endangered species” this protective web has seen some success in Yellowstone, where the resident grizzly population was allowed to rebound from a very few dozen to approximately 500-to-600, but nowhere else. One way to ascertain the extreme plight of the grizzly is to see the bear’s huge population fertility pulse — between 4-and-7 per cent annually — when given a chance to make a comeback.

But short of large ecosystem protection for one of North America’s most impressive and — by all accounts, eccentric and normally gentle and shy creatures — these great beings need, at the very least, quality sanctuary. The Bear Center at Washington State University is one such locale where orphaned cubs can be treated with the respect they deserve and demand. And where non-invasive research can humbly remind us that we do not own other species; they are not our’s to exploit; and that we must take every possible stride to reconcile our needs and their’s, ensuring blueprints for co-habitation, re-wilding, and re-enchantment. We are an interdependent family of beings.

© 2008 by Michael Tobias

By Michael Tobias and Jane Gray Morrison

Several of the 17 species of penguin worldwide are in trouble: they face the very real possibility of extinction in this century. Most people love penguins. Therefore, most people are in trouble, goes the logic.

It may seem a reach to suggest that what happens in the deep icy southern hemisphere should really matter at the moment to Americans worried about paying their mortgages, or having a job tomorrow morning. And even if it does matter, goes the thinking, there is not a whole lot an individual can do to rescue the very rare Yellow-Eyed Penguins found in a few parts of New Zealand from potential oblivion, especially given the long-term trends and fall-out from global warming, a critical factor imperiling the birds. However, this is not entirely so. The same factors influencing penguins, will also, according to Energy Secretary Steven Chu, mean the possible demise of all agriculture in the State of California by century’s end which, he added, could mean the collapse of California’s major cities.

There is no escaping the fact the economic story of all nations mirrors precisely the greater ecological tapestry and imperatives that govern all money-related matters, namely, the biosphere and all of its biological parts. With as much as 50% or more of all life hanging in the balance depending upon what people do, or fail to do in coming years, we must get it right. That means factoring conservation into everything we tackle and think about; conservation of fresh water, clean air, the soil, wetlands and forests, oceans and streams.

We know many, though by no means all, of the vital connections to our health that nature implicitly provides. Frogs, for example, consume insects that transmit malaria. Malaria appears to be again mutating and killing millions of our kind, while we serve up hundreds of millions of frog legs every year on dinner plates, while at the same time destroying the habitat for those frogs that don’t get eaten. A recent discovery of several new healthy frog species in Columbia’s mostly remote Darien region shows that a vast amount of biodiversity is still out there – possibly 100 million species. There may be enough time to make this all work, to do our part to ensure the continuity of life on the planet. But it won’t happen unless we are deliberate, swift and conscientious about it.

According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, roughly 62% of all drugs approved for cancer treatments come from a natural origin. What is keeping us alive is nature. But of the more than 400,000 known plant species, at least half are in danger of disappearing because of our actions. Well then, it should be obvious what we need to do: Save the plants, and much more. There are plenty of immediate financial incentives for doing so, if fundamental self-preservation of our species seems too vague an incentive.

A recent report entitled “Building Biodiversity Business” (*1) suggests profound opportunities for sustainable ecologically-based enterprises that are profitable: $120 billion for wildlife-related recreational activities in the U.S.; $30 million acres under sustainable organic agriculture in Australia; $620 billion accruing from global environmental goods and services worldwide in 2005; $3.6 trillion in annual tourism revenues, employing some 200 million people where the largest gains appear to be happening specifically in the eco-tourism sectors; $50 billion per year from the Kyoto Protocol carbon markets and growing; and, to top it all, probably the most profitable enterprise of all now fast emerging: alternative energy, formidably detailed in the new McKinsey Report (*2). Witness California’s rapid ascendancy in the realm of new hybrids. While the state’s budget is in dire trouble, don’t forget that some $45 billion in payroll in that state comes from policies mandating higher energy efficiency and environmentally clean technologies, the same amount of money needed each year as projected by scientists to stabilize global ecosystems and prevent a raft of unprecedented extinctions. Moreover, the same offsets that are being utilized to understand and pave the way for carbon markets, are now being embraced by several countries as well as banks – from the U.S. to South Africa to Switzerland – with respect to actual biodiversity offsets. A single acre of saved wetland can be worth as much as several hundred thousand dollars of mitigation value. Biodiversity business is just now in its infancy.

Recent discussion of a renewed Conservation Corps to help the National Parks, which first occurred under President Theodore Roosevelt with the mobilizing of a massive workforce of hundreds-of-thousands of recruits during the Great Depression to places like Yosemite, is one terrific idea. Billions of trees were planted across the U.S. as a result of that. Many other great notions are staring us in the face, from windows on every house and building that can be made to generate electricity, to opportunities in the classroom to convert every student into an ardent defender of wildlife, whether plants, mountain lions, or the very penguins who co-habit American bases in the Antarctic, like McMurdo and Palmer. The lives of those penguins depend upon the variation of a few degrees Celcius that affect the survival of the marine food sources that also support all creatures, great and small throughout the oceans.

Where serious gaps remain across America’s biological landscape, particularly wildlands earmarked for road access and resource extraction, monoculture, suburban sprawl and countless other forms of biological fragmentation, there is by now a clear consensus that Americans overwhelmingly care about these issues as witnessed in the wilderness bill S.22 just passed by the Senate. People want their children to have a deeper connection to nature than merely experiencing it as stuffed in museums, caged in zoos or digitized on television. The economic opportunities all point to a renaissance in nature appreciation, park visits, and new protected areas that can help Americans, and people everywhere, get through depressing times. As New York Times columnist and author Thomas Friedman writes, “Green is the new Red, White and Blue.”

(*1) Joshua Bishop, Sachin Kapila, Frank Hicks, Paul Mitchell and Francis Vorhies, Copyright 2008 by Shell Intl. Ltd., the IUCN, and the authors.
(*2) The McKinsey report, Pathways to a Low Carbon Economy, available online