Alan Rabinowitz, talking with villagers in the jungle of Myanmar.
Credit: AFP
A few years ago, an exhausted Alan Rabinowitz was toying with retirement. He'd devoted most of his life to preserving the habitats of the world's endangered big cats, and spent more than a decade on an audacious quest to conserve tigers in Myanmar, one of the world's most secretive and isolated nations.
The bullish, well-built, U.S. wildlife biologist had to contend with the erratic military junta, stubborn armed rebel leaders, and the wrath of Myanmar democracy activists. The conservationist admits he neglected his young family back in New York, leaving them for long stretches of time as he trekked through the jungles of Asia and South America.
Then in 2002, Rabinowitz, now 53, was diagnosed with an incurable form of leukaemia and any thoughts of retirement disappeared. "Once I was diagnosed, there was no retirement in my life, no beautiful hidden-away house," he says. "I will work until I die. Now I have to do as much as possible in this life."
Exploring, not conquering
Battling leukaemia while fighting to conserve some of the Earth's last areas of wilderness will be a challenge, but Rabinowitz is determined not to squander the eight or so years of active life that doctors say he has left.
"My fear is once I start chemo[therapy], I probably won't be able to go in the jungle," he says. "What I do, my life defines me. It's what I am."
Rabinowitz is the executive director of the science and exploration programme of the New York City-based Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). In the course of his 30-year career he has set up the world's only jaguar reserve in Belize, a United Nations-protected wildlife sanctuary in Thailand, and Taiwan's largest nature reserve.
But Myanmar has been the site of some of his greatest achievements. He set up the country's first marine park, and then battled to establish the world's largest tiger reserve in the remote northeast of the military-ruled country.
"I'm an explorer. Part of what I love doing is exploring wild areas not to conquer it, but to explore it biologically," he said.
Pot of gold
Everything about Rabinowitz's life is an adventure of storybook proportions, including his first foray into Myanmar, when in 1993 he decided to try to get a foothold in the biological "pot of gold".
Myanmar runs from humid jungle in the south to snow-tipped mountains in the north, and first caught Rabinowitz's eye when he was working in neighbouring Thailand surveying clouded leopards.
"Every biologist for years has been trying to get into Burma, because Burma to a biologist was the pot of gold," he says, referring to the country by its former name.
Rabinowitz, in his determination to visit a country he had only read and dreamed about, chartered a small plane and entered in the guise of a tourist, the only way foreigners were allowed into Myanmar at that time.
As soon as the plane touched down, he paid off his tourist guides and demanded a taxi drop him off at the Ministry of Forestry, where in absence of any official papers, he flashed his New York driving licence to an armed guard.
"They thought I was CIA"
The ploy worked and soon Rabinowitz, who has a PhD in wildlife biology, was wandering the echoing halls of the ministry, risking arrest for trespassing on government property.
Eventually, an official stopped him, and Rabinowitz confessed that he wanted to meet with forestry officials and discuss conservation. Surprisingly, the stunned bureaucrat complied, and set up a meeting with two officials at Rabinowitz's hotel. They told him to go back to Bangkok and promised to fax him an official visa that would allow him to return to Myanmar.
The officials were true to their word and so began the biologist's 13-year quest to preserve Myanmar's biological El Dorado – a slow uphill struggle with one of the world's most secretive regimes.
Myanmar has been ruled by the military since 1962. The junta has come under fire for human rights abuses and the detention of democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
The U.S. and Europe have economic sanctions against the regime, while aid groups say they struggle to operate free of junta interference, and many have withdrawn.
Rabinowitz says it was his straight-talking manner which eventually gained the junta's trust, and in 1997 they allowed him to embark on a gruelling trek into the remote northeast to survey wildlife.
"It took a lot for them to trust me eventually," he says. "They thought I was CIA or something."
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A tigress plays with its newly born cub in Myanmar's Yangon Zoological Gardens (AFP).
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Massive reserve
In 1998, the punishing treks and frustrating red tape paid off when the junta declared Hkakabo Razi – a 3,900-square-kilometre area at the tip of northeast Myanmar bordering India and China – a national park. And as the unlikely alliance between the American and the junta grew, more results followed.
In 2004, Myanmar's Ministry of Forestry declared that they had granted 22,000 square kilometres in the remote, mountainous northeast bordering India for the Hukaung Valley Tiger Reserve.
This reserve is the biggest tiger reserve in the world. But throughout his work in Myanmar, Rabinowitz has become a punching bag for exiled Myanmar activists.
Many groups say that no foreign organisations should be putting money into Myanmar while it is under a military dictatorship. Others accuse the junta of using the national park as a ploy to steal land from ethnic groups.
The headstrong conservationist makes no apologies for his work conserving tigers and working with the vilified regime. He says the dictators view themselves as guardians of a country they will rule forever, and thus invest in protecting the environment.
"We can get some of the biggest conservation achievements done in communist countries and in military dictatorships," he says.
Returning a natural population
Rabinowitz estimates there are about 100 tigers in the Hukaung reserve.
He hope that will increase within 10 years to 200 to 250, with the ultimate goal to see 300 to 500 tigers in the reserve – a population the biologist says would be natural for the space.
Such initiatives aim not just to protect tigers, but an array of species including gibbons, hornbills and endangered mammals such as Asian elephants and clouded leopards.
But Hukaung Valley is not the easiest terrain to protect. Much of it is under the control of the Kachin Independence Army (KIA), one of Myanmar's many ethnic groups that have a degree of autonomy over their lands. For as long as they can remember they have hunted deer and wild pigs – the main diet of tigers – to survive, and convincing them to do otherwise was no easy task.
Myanmar's Ministry of Forestry vowed to protect the park, but the government recently gave concessions for tapioca and sugar cane plantations in the heart of the reserve. Another threat worrying the conservationist is gold mining, a hugely destructive practice undertaken by both the government and the KIA in Hukaung Valley.
The reserve is clearly a commitment that Rabinowitz is not planning on giving up, but with each trip into the jungle, he risks making his condition worse by contracting malaria or typhoid.
Bundle of energy
Rabinowitz says that he feels good. Chronic lymphatic leukaemia progresses slowly, and doctors will not treat him with chemotherapy until he has symptoms, likely in about eight years. In the meantime, the environmentalist is a bundle of energy and a voracious talker.
Rabinowitz laughs off the tag "the Indiana Jones of wildlife science," given to him by the New York Times, but his current plans show that the adventurer in him has not been quelled by his disease.
Soon after a recent trip into Myanmar, Rabinowitz ventured into the jungles of Brazil to track jaguars, part of his campaign to establish a "jaguar corridor" stretching from Mexico to Argentina.
But all these adventures are taking Rabinowitz far away from his wife, his seven-year-old son and his four-year-old daughter. The tireless conservationist does not fear dying, he says, so much as leaving his children when they still need him.
"I'm really torn. I do have two passions. I want so badly to be with my children, but when I'm with them, frankly, all I think about is being in the jungle because I feel like there is so much I could be doing," he says.
So he plans to keep returning to Myanmar, a country whose people, culture and wildlife Rabinowitz has come to love.
"Myanmar is too important to walk away from. Until every last animal is killed by the human race, there is a chance I will keep on pushing to save the animals," he says.
Charlotte McDonald-Gibson is the Bangkok correspondent for Agençe France-Presse.
Rabinowitz
This guy rocks!