 and welcome to World of Books, a talk show on books that we think you should read. I'm your host, Mihaila Stoops, and today we are discussing wildlife conservation based on the book The Last Rhinos by Lawrence Anthony and Graham Spence. My guest today is Marybeth Tyson. Marybeth is a psychotherapist here in Maui but her childhood passion for wildlife has brought her into the arena of conservation. Marybeth has worked with several projects and non-profits. She's helped with rescues for wolves, birds of prey, and parrots. Most recently, Marybeth traveled to Uganda where she had an opportunity to see the last mountain gorilla. Marybeth also traveled to Tanzania and to South Africa where she worked on a project that documented the rescue of cheetahs. And she's also been to Kenya at the Old Pajeta Conservatory where she was able to learn more about conservation and the challenges of conservation, particularly for rhinos. Marybeth, thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you for having me. Well, I want to dive into it. You're like the expert that I know on wildlife conservation now. I wonder if this book by Lawrence Anthony and any of his other books, because he's written several other books on this issue, have shaped your dedication to this project of conservation of wildlife? Absolutely. Absolutely. I've always loved animals and always go to animal refuges and bird refuges when I'm traveling and when I was in Africa. Now it's been about two and a half months over the last two years. I've seen that it's just a very dire situation. And Lawrence is incredible at pointing out how dire it is. But I actually got to participate in the cheetah project I mentioned and I saw for myself and learned a lot at that point. I know that Lawrence passed away in 2012. Did you travel to Africa before then? Did you have an opportunity to meet him maybe? I didn't. I would love to have. There's someone who's taken up the mantle, so to speak, who's also writing the same books, same types of books with the same co-author and doing rhino rescue in South Africa. So others are carrying the torch, so to speak. Yes. I was very happy to see that Graham Spence is continuing his legacy. So is Lawrence's wife, Francoise. She just published a book. But let's go back to your trips to Africa. And you were so kind to share some photos with us. So I'm going to ask our technician to show them. So here you are. Tell us about this picture. Well, this is Najin. Najin is the mother of Fatu. And Najin and Fatu are the last two northern rhinos, northern white rhinos in the world. And so that's how dire that situation is. We have a few southern whites left, a few blacks left, but the northern white there is still hoped for, believe it or not, because they're actually looking into doing IVF. And there she is again in that photo. So these were the rhinos were all gone except for four or five of them in the Czech Republic in a zoo. So these animals are being rewilded. The males have died, but their sperm has been capped as well as the ladies eggs. And there's a big project going on. Hopefully this year coming up will be the year we have new babies. Well, that would be exciting. And we'll definitely make good news, positive news. Yes, yes, for sure. Eric, can we see some more of the pictures? Oh, rhino poop. I am shoveling rhino poop there. And what's interesting about rhino poop is that black and white rhinos and male and female rhinos all all have different ones. And what white rhinos do and why they're important is because they actually do what's called a midden where they make a pile. And that pile nourishes the soil and makes for sweet grass, which is what the gazelles like to eat. And so other other animals that are there in the savannahs don't don't do that. You know, I have not seen a rhino in person in my life. And reading this book was so amazing to me because it described this, the author's relationship with these animals and how attached and how he communicated with them and how they particularly the rhinos gave him a sense of stability and peace and almost meditative state. Did you feel any of that when you encountered these rhinos? Most of his experience that you're talking about, those experiences are more with the elephants. And he had, and others who work with elephants say they have an almost psychic ability to know where you're going to be. And they remember anniversaries. They go to his house every year at the anniversary of his death. And they make a long pilgrimage, sometimes dozens, sometimes hundreds of miles to get there. So they're very sentient beings. The rhinos, I think there's still a lot to understand about them. And he was passionate to save them. But I don't know that he had the same communication with them, nor have I heard that type of story before with rhinos. I was reading an article in the New York Times about the last northern white rhino. I think his name was Sudan, who passed away in 2019. And the author of that article, that was his, a description of his feelings about encountering rhinos. Okay, it is, it's a powerful experience and they're massive creatures and could kill you in an instant if they wanted to. And I've noticed that depending on what kind of reserve you're going to animals of every kind are either going to be calmer and gentler or more aggressive and more shy. And where I was, they were very calm and okay to be near humans, but you still wouldn't want to go walk up to one. Najin was Sudan's, Sudan was Najin's maid and his sperm is one of the two males they have the sperm for. You know, I was so impressed in the book with how many people put so much effort into saving these species and other species, not just the rhinos, but the cheetahs as well. And the gorillas, like, you know, in Uganda, the effort for the trip that you took and saw the last gorilla. Yeah. So what motivates people? What motivates you to do this? Why would you want to save rhinos or any other species? Well, I believe that they are important to the whole world and that they are going to make a difference in the environment and that it's going to be a big difference in the environment when they're gone. And that we owe it to our children and our grandchildren to have them not only there for the education and the shared delight of learning about animals, but they affect everything, the quality of the land and the environment and other ways. And everything is so interwoven. All the species are so interwoven with one another. The rhinos eat a certain type of grass that the other animals don't like, but then they deposit their dung, which makes for the grass that the gazelles like. And now they're introducing cattle to some of these reserves because cattle will eat tall grass, which the other animals won't eat. And they can actually make sustainable organic beef as part of their income because fighting, poaching is a funding battle like impossible to win in many ways. And your experience with the Old Pajita Conservancy, I don't know if I'm even saying the name right. Is that correct, Old Pajita? Old Pajita. So I spent my last week out of the five I was in East Africa this year doing volunteer work with them and learning a lot about conservation. So I learned about how cattle can be brought in. I learned how they created a corridor, for example, where they made seven conservancies open to the animals to all migrate except for the rhinos, which are the most endangered. And they actually figured out a way to make a fence that keeps them and the others out. It's spectacular. They've ended poaching at this particular, they haven't had, Old Pajita has not had a poaching incident six years because they have cameras, they have dogs. We have a picture of that. I was tracked for two miles by one of the bloodhounds. And I was dragging branches behind me and going around in circles and backtracking on myself and they still found me. They're amazing creatures. And the commitment of these humans to work around the clock with these animals, a lot of them never see their families. The cattle, the men with the cattle are living with them and put them in at night in a place where the lions can't get them. And a lot of them just don't even get vacations. It's incredible. And the gorillas were that way in Uganda. They have dedicated people who live with them, basically follow them around each family. So it's a big commitment. A big commitment from a lot of people. And I, if it's possible to show some more of your pictures, particularly the ones with the cheetah, I see if we could get to them. Oh, I love my cheetah. Go ask about it. Yes. Well, you see the collar on this cheetah. So when I was in, yes, that one was asleep. His eyes are open. You usually, you'll see them with their eyes covered off and keep them from drawing out. So what I found out working on this project was that there were only 200 free roaming cheetahs left in Africa, 200. Now we're talking the second largest continent on the planet, both by land mass and population. And there are only 200 wild ones, probably 500 total. And now I'm one wandered in to the Conservancy where I was in South Africa. And they had already just brought in two males to rewild. Again, from a zoo in the UK, they had successfully been rewilded, were successfully hunting and bringing down big game, because cheetahs usually go after a small game, but they didn't have their parents to teach them that they couldn't go after the large game. And they were doing really well. They thought them to beef up the gene pool with the two females they had. This male came in, impregnated the two females and caused a lot of trouble. And they darted him. And they've been passing him around the world for his DNA. He, last I heard, after traveling around South Africa a while, he was in India, helping with the genetics of the cheetah there. So, and I also got to go up and see the two brothers who were separated by hundreds of miles fencing. And I later learned that they were, the females successfully defended their babies from the two males and they're working as families again, now that the rogue male has gone on to his new career. So, for people like me that are new to this area of expertise and information, it seems that conservation has two dimensions. One is essentially protecting the existing animals that are alive from poachers, from disease, and so on. On one hand, and then there's a second element to it, which is making sure that they could reproduce. And there's more of them. And sometimes technology and comes into play. And, you know, as you mentioned before, the project to somehow, I guess, revive the white rhinos through IVF, right, to have a new one from IVF. Exactly, exactly. And so they're working on it around the world. A lot of the zoos, which I used to hate to go to, are now really actively breeding animals to return to the wild. And so zoos have changed their focus now to conservation as well. Do you think there is enough information in schools as well to educate the next generations about it? No, I think if people really realized that there are only two northern white rhinos left, a few hundred mountain gorillas left, there are four or five hundred rhinos are killed every year, just in South Africa. And those are, of course, the southern whites and some of the blacks. But they all impact other creatures around them. It's very, very important that they depend on each other. Other species depend on what the rhino is doing, even when they're just grazing, to keep them safe, because rhinos can actually hear and smell quite well to counteract the fact that they can't see. And other animals warn them with what they can see. And there's a whole interdependence occurring. It's amazing even what I learned from this book by Lawrence Anthony wasn't just the conservation part, but also a lot about Africa's geography, the beauty of nature, but also the politics and history. And he was an amazing man. He used conservation to bring people together even with the purpose of achieving peace in the area. He was the one that went and had meetings with leaders of Lord's Resistance Army, which was the number one terrorist group in the world at the time. Yeah. So conservation gave him a way where his efforts in conservation gave him an opportunity to solve other issues along the way. To create peace where there had been decades of war was a massive undertaking. And nobody trusted him except for the generals of the LRA. And the only reason he went up there to talk to them was so that they could stay out of the way of the rangers trying to save the rhinos. And he did that everywhere he went. He in the elephant whisper, you'll see where he was just such a wise man in the way he dealt with his employees, the way he dealt with farmers who wanted to kill the animals that would break out and eat their food and the way he would deal with poachers and all these others. But the politics is the biggest. There's so much corruption and they look the other way. And there's big business in poaching that's huge in Vietnam. And the story I'm reading now is about a man who goes to Vietnam and talks about a commitment and poses as somebody who wants to buy rhino horn and actually brings it back to prove that no, they are underwriting big money for this. Is this in a book or is it? This one is also called Saving the Last Rhinos. And it is not just the last rhinos, saving the last rhinos, but it's happened more recently. Yeah. Is it by Graham Spence, the co-author with Laurence Anthony? It is by Graham Spence with this other conservationist, it sure is. But this isn't just Africa, although Africa is so huge and it's had such a history of disrespect. There's the drought. So you can see when I didn't show you any pictures of this, but I saw so many dead animals, so many dead animals. And the predators were all very fat. They all looked pregnant. I mean, the lions looked pregnant, the cheetahs, they were getting very fat on all these dead animals. But the problem is, of course, they need saving. And one of the things that old Pejada is trying to do is to put in water catchment systems because they do get rain. It's just not very often. And that's one of the things I'd like to raise money for them. And I know you've got the website for that. But the history of all these warring factions, all these corrupt governments, which is still a problem in South Africa, I just read that the president of South Africa was just recently in trouble for corruption. And I'm so grateful because South Africa is the worst with the poaching. So it seems based on the stories in the in the book, Lawrence Anthony was very adaptive navigating all the challenges. And it was funny how I think he was when he was going to Uganda, and he was required a certain kind of visa. And, you know, he just pulled $200 and solved the problem kind of. So he was, I can imagine that somebody needs to have not only deep knowledge of the area, but also the culture and how things are done. And and I think the, as you pointed out, particularly with the last picture we showed now, we have another level of complication, which is the effects of climate change. Right. Right. And of course, human encroachment is a big problem too. So, and it's not just Africa, as I was saying, when I was in Australia, I found out that dozens of there are so many species of marsupials that have gone extinct. They don't just have koalas and kangaroos. They they had another at least 15 marsupial species that are gone. So what's going to happen? Well, tell us about the organization that you are dedicated to and that you're raising funds for. So Old Pajita is one of a number of conservancies in northeast Africa. And they're private. So most people, when they go on safaris in, let's say, South Africa, everything's a national park quite a bit. I have, I have been to some private ones as well. So they're privately funded. And that's the number one issue. But what what I love about Old Pajita is all of the creative solutions they're coming up with raising funds and helping the wildlife by keeping cattle around, making corridors for all the animals to migrate, but keeping the rhinos in, ending poaching with armed guards, poaching, you know, poaching dogs and cameras. And they want to do more. They want to put in these water catchment systems. I had a private one on one with the vet, which I requested. There have several vets, but the one who's there all the time wants to make a clinic, not a clinic, but a place where all the scientists, animal scientists from around the world can come and learn and teach each other. He wants to make a mobile veterinary unit so that he can actually go out in the bush and do surgeries out in the bush. He doesn't even have that. So there's a lot that can happen, a lot that can be done. They have dug wells for water, but the water catchment is great idea because there is a rainy season and it can replenish. Well, you know, I think that you are extraordinary. You live here in Maui, halfway, halfway around the globe from Eastern Africa. And yet you go there and you work on all these projects. And I can only hope that your enthusiasm is going to rub off our viewers and that they will become, you know, at least, let's say half as passionate as you. I would love that if that were to happen. That would be great. And then I also write about my travels and about wildlife on my blog. I think you have that one. That's MB's World. Because Mary Beth is my name, but MB is a nickname that people call me. So MBsWorld.Online. And the Cheetah story is up. I'll probably be writing more about the rhinos and other animals in the next couple of months. But that's wonderful. Thank you for joining me today. You know, for me, at least, you just opened up another area of interest. And I'm definitely going to keep an eye on what happens. And read more books. I want to read Francoise's book next. Yes, the elephant whisper reads like the same crazy pace like a suspense novel as this one. They're all good. And the elephant in my kitchen. That's another book. I think that sounds very interesting. She had to learn all of this when he died. I'm glad she's continuing that legacy. So thank you again. And to our viewers, I want to let you know that beginning in January, we are going to merge with books, books, books. We're going to the same thing as now, meaning we're going to talk about great books. And so stay with us. Just follow us on books, books, books starting in January. And also, if there is a book that you like or that you want to recommend, please use the comment section of this video to let us know. And if you want to be a guest on the show, also reach out to us. I'd love to have you discuss a good book. 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