observes, advanced the conservation of threatened species by emphasizing the charisma of the individual animals. “And emphasizing that charisma ultimately delivers real benefits in terms of habitat conservation,” he continues. “I use George’s work as a perfect example. The Kora Reserve [in central Kenya] was changed to a national park because of the attention George generated for Elsa and lions in general. So now you have Kora at five hundred square kilometers situated adjacent to Meru National Park at eight hundred square kilometers; basically, you’ve encompassed an entire ecosystem, preserved a major chunk of critical habitat, not just for lions, but for a wide array of African wildlife.”
But other conservationists and most scientists view Adamson’s contribution differently. Tom McShane, a former director of the World Wildlife Fund’s Central Africa program and the principal investigator for Advancing Conservation in a Social Context, a program headquartered at the Global Institute of Sustainability at Arizona State University, thinks that Adamson represents a major shift in the culture and politics of conservation: the practice of naming individual animals. “It changed the debate in many ways,” says McShane. “It first gained currency with Adamson and was later amplified by Goodall, Fossey, and Douglas-Hamilton. A kind of ‘animalism’ came out of that impulse: it moved conservation from broad-based ecological approaches to an obsession with individual animals.”
Such animalism hasn’t served wildlife well in terms of achieving real progress on the ground, McShane says; indeed, it has subverted the real mission, drawing attention away from the essential issues of integrating local people into conservation initiatives and preserving critical habitat to apotheosizing cute critters. On the other hand, McShane admits, the kind of conservation promulgated by Born Free, the International Fund for Animal Welfare, and like-minded groups has demonstrated that their approach is extremely efficient at getting people to open up their wallets: “If you want to raise lots of money, you need species that possess perceived humanlike qualities, such as chimps and elephants, have big soulful eyes, like seals, or are fuzzy and noble-looking, such as the large cats, wolves, and bears. You see it in all the wildlife documentaries; they draw you in with these predictable cues. But that kind of approach doesn’t work for spiders, lizards, or crocodiles, though they may be just as important from the perspectives of ecological integrity and conservation. It’s worrisome.”
I mentioned to McShane a conversation I had overheard during a reception at Mpala Research Centre in Laikipia. Mpala, a forty-eight-thousand-acre tract of scrub and grassland maintained in part by the Smithsonian Institution and Princeton University, supports a variety of conservation initiatives. During the fete, a man I later identified through photographs as Fritz Vollrath, a director of Save the Elephants, was talking pachyderms with a local rancher. Dressed in a polo shirt that bore the Save the Elephants logo, Vollrath, white-haired and sharp-featured, was highly animated. “Bees,” he said. “They have a word for bees!” He explained that elephants can communicate the presence of disturbed bees to one another through—for lack of a better word—language. The rancher, though amiable, seemed dubious. Later research revealed that Vollrath has published a paper opining that the sound of disturbed bees might be deployed to keep elephants at bay; one of the coauthors is Iain Douglas-Hamilton.
McShane seemed less than charmed by the story. “That kind of thinking can be very dangerous in a place like Laikipia,” he said.“On the one hand, you have very large mammals running around causing a good deal of trouble for local residents, and on the other you have a great many people studying the animals and naming them, claiming they have language, arguing that every single one must be preserved. Then the guys who were studying the elephants get back on planes for Europe or the United States, well-pleased with their efforts, while the people who have to deal with elephants eating their maize or stomping their cows are stuck in Laikipia. It impacts the hard management decisions that have to be made to ensure that both elephants and people thrive in Laikipia. It skews public opinion, it influences the Kenyan government, and ultimately it affects national [Kenyan] policy.”
Some wildlife researchers hold a more indulgent view of Adamson and the role he played in combining wildlife conservation and animal rights. John Robinson, the director of the Wildlife Conservation Society—the oldest conservation group in the United States and the owner of the Bronx Zoo and the New York Aquarium—feels Adamson was first and foremost a devotee of wild Africa; his work with Elsa and his other lions was therefore a manifestation of a larger passion. “Adamson clearly identified with nature, and the way he expressed that was through engagement with individual animals,” Robinson said. And that, he added, was not necessarily a bad thing. “I grew up with Joy Adamson’s books, and I aspired to the life and the ethic they portrayed. Many conservationists and scientists will say the same thing.”
Robinson feels animal rights and wildlife conservation grow out of the same impulse, though they are not the same things. “There are superficial similarities,” he says, “and there are points where they converge. There are other points, of course, where they diverge. That can cause problems, deep disagreements. But for Adamson, concern for his lions and conservation were the same thing.”
It isn’t difficult to understand Adamson’s motivations, Robinson says; identifying with wildlife—particularly species that are large, attractive, or intelligent—is a natural impulse for human beings. “It’s easier to do it with, say, a lion or an elephant than a nematode,” he says. “From the animal advocacy perspective, lions and elephants seem particularly valuable, deeply worthy of effort and love. [WCS] manages thousands of animals in our zoos, and I see this expressed every day. Our curators who work with the animals, particularly certain charismatic mammals, develop deep bonds of affection for them. From the standpoint of true conservation, however, lions and elephants may not be more significant than a nematode, particularly if we consider the nematode in the context of the ecosystem it inhabits. That raises the sticky issue of evaluating the value of different species. How do you do it objectively? Clearly, it’s complicated by animal rights issues.”
Although Adamson can be credited with popularizing a philosophy that is changing the course of conservation in Africa, it is unlikely he saw himself as a revolutionary. Adamson, says Parker, was first and foremost a romantic, someone who was so caught up in his solipsistic dream that—from the view of Game Department professionals, at least—he went utterly rogue. “He had a magnificent delusion,” Parker says. In his Langata home, he rummages in his files and extracts a yellowed memo dated November 22, 1958, written by Adamson and sent to the secretary of the East African Professional Hunters’ Association in Nairobi:
Dear Sir,
This is to inform you that I have recently released my tame lioness
“Elsa” on the Ura River in Isiolo area No. 6, at a large rock outcrop called
Dungie Akaite, about 34 miles from the Kinna Duka, along the Kinna-
Tharaka track.
Would you therefore please warn any of your members who may have
booked the area during the coming hunting season, to avoid, if possible,
making camp on the Ura.
Elsa being a particularly friendly animal, might walk into a tent and
with the best of intentions, cause alarm to the nervous.
Few safaris visit the Ura, as there is little to attract them there.
Yours faithfully,
G.A.G. Adamson
Senior Game Warden
Northern Province
As a matter of fact, Elsa wasn’t so friendly, says
