Alan Rabinowitz, Conservationist of Wild Cats, Dies at 64

Alan Rabinowitz, Conservationist of Wild Cats, Dies at 64

“It made me realize that adults thought I was broken, so I gave up trying to communicate with them,” he told Publishers Weekly in 2014. He added, “I have no memories of being able to speak without severe disfluency, and I remember a childhood filled with fear and pain.”

He found relief when he was 18, at a clinic in upstate New York, where he learned to speak fluently. He graduated from Western Maryland College (now McDaniel College) in Westminster, Md., with a bachelor’s degree in biology and chemistry.

At the University of Tennessee, where he studied black bears, raccoons and bats, he earned a master’s and a Ph.D. He wrote his dissertation about the ecology of the raccoon in Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Dr. Rabinowitz was a research fellow at the Wildlife Conservation Society when Dr. Schaller, who was a top executive there, suggested that he go to Belize to study jaguars.

“He had a vision for himself that he hadn’t realized,” Dr. Schaller said. “When you meet someone like that you have to give him a try.”

That set Dr. Rabinowitz on a path of exploration and adventure, one that dealt with not only jaguars, lions and tigers. In northern Myanmar, for example, he discovered a previously unknown species of deer, the leaf muntjac, and in the Himalayas he met the last known Mongoloid pygmies in the world, called the Taron.

Recalling his meeting with one pygmy, Dr. Rabinowitz said he had communicated nonverbally with him.

“He started making gestures about young children, which I didn’t quite understand at first,” he said in a 2013 interview with the On Being Project, which focuses on subjects involving moral imagination and social courage. When he realized that the man had asked him why he had no children, Dr. Rabinowitz answered through a translator, “Why do you assume I have no children?”

(Original source)