Elephants Self-Taught: A Researcher's 21 Years In Africa

Moss never did return to school to earn a science degree. Instead, she has devoted the past 21 years to a course of self-designed study. Today, her long-term observations of African elephants have been hailed as a landmark by ethologists world-wide. Also to her credit are two highly-acclaimed popular wildlife books, "Portraits in the Wild" (University of Chicago Press, 1982) and "Elephant Memories" (William Morrow &Co., lnc., 1988). Although Moss has turned over the daily monitoring of the elephants to assistants, she continues to serve as the director of the Amboseli Research Project. When not at her Amboseli camp, she makes her home in Nairobi, where this interview was conducted in August by science writer Virginia Morell.] Q You made your first trip to Africa in 1967, when you were 26 and working as a reporter in New York. What drew you to this continent? Did you have any idea then that you might wish to switch careers and study animals? A I came originally as a tourist. At the time I was working for Newsweek, covering theater. I wasn’t then much of a wildlife person, although I liked animals very much. What I was, was a wilderness person. I was very concerned about the preservation of wilderness... . I had spent a lot of my childhood in Westchester, N.Y., riding [horses] in beautiful places. Places I used to ride would get taken over by housing estates. I always loved being out in semi-wild places—as wild as you get in New York state, anyway—and was concerned about the diminishing areas of wilderness. I wanted to see one of the last time wilderness areas before it disappeared, so I really wanted to come to Africa before it was too late. Q What triggered your interest in elephant research? A During my visit to East Africa, I looked up Iain Douglas-Hamilton [one of the first elephant behaviorists in East Africa]. I ended up spending three weeks in Manyara National Park (in Tanzania], helping him on his project. I got completely hooked on elephants right away. And within a week of arriving, I fell in love with Africa, which is really a terrible disease which happens to people. You never get over it. If you really fall for Africa—it’s almost like a physical relationship with a continent. Within a week of being here, I felt a very strong sense that I had come home. Anyway, I loved Africa, loved being out in the bush, had a fantastic time with the elephants. lain invited me to come back and work for him as a research assistant. So I went back to the States, and I thought about it. I decided it was an opportunity I couldn’t pass by. Q What had you studied at college? A Philosophy. I had a B.A. from Smith College. I graduated in 1962, and had only the required science courses. But being a reporter does make you a fairly good and accurate observer. So you could say there was some training for watching animals. Q Yet even with this lack of scientific training you decided to return to East Africa? A Yes. I came back in January 1968 and worked for lain Douglas-Hamilton for about eight or nine months. Then I moved to Nairobi, and I wanted desperately then to start my own elephant project. But that took me many years to get to the point where I could do it. In the meantime I worked as a research assistant on quite a lot of projects— other animals and elephants. I worked on an environmental physiology project, which was on eland, hartebeest, zebras. In fact, part of my work was to tame and train two zebras, which was quite fun for a horse-person. Q Did you succeed? A Yes. Not to ride, but to do all the experiments. ThenI worked in Tsavo National Park (in Kenya] on another elephant project for a couple of months. I went back to Tanzania and worked with lain for shorter periods for the next couple of years. Then a filmmaker, Simon Trevor, started a film about elephants, and I was hired by the film company to do all the background research on elephants for that. It was from doing that, which was about a six month project, that I got the idea of writing my first book, Portraits in the Wild. Q How did you go about writing the book? A I went back tot he States in 1971, approached an agent, and got a contract for Portraits in the Wild. In a sense, my education was three-and-a-half years of research, reading every scientific article, interviewing all the scientists, and, at the same time, auditing courses at the University of Nairobi. But it was really doing that book, in which I described the latest research on 15 (African] animals, that was my own self-education in zoology and behavioral ecology. That was essential. Q Did you spend time with various scientists for that book? A Yes. I went to see what they were doing. It wasn’t simply reading, but seeing how they went about their research. Also when I came back with the book contract in 1971, I was employed here [in Nairobi] by the African Wildlife Foundation (AWF) to edit their wildlife newsletter and magazine. I got various scientists who were doing wildlife projects to write articles for it. That continued to keep me very up-to-date and in close contact with what was going on. Q How did your Amboseli elephant project come about? A In 1972 I heard that David Western, who was doing a study of the general ecology in Amboseli, wanted somebody to work on the elephants. A man that I knew from my days with lain Douglas-Hamilton in Tanzania-Harvey Croze—. had done a three-and-a-half-year study in the Serengeti National Park on the elephants there. He had just moved to Nairobi to teach at the University, and wanted to do another research project on elephants. So we got together with David Western and started the Amboseli Elephant Project in September 1972. So for the first three years, I really had a mentor—Harvey. Q So Harvey Croze and David Western, both Ph.D.-trained scientists, accepted you as something of an apprentice? A Yes. And by then I was getting credibility. Portraits in the Wild did give me some credibility, as did just being around and having worked on these other projects. So we worked together, Harvey and I, from 1973 to 1974. Q Were there any particular methods he taught you? A Yes, some good techniques. But a lot of what I did was what I learned from Iain. I learned most of the techniques from him: individual recognition, methods of taking notes, keeping files. But Harvey had some good refinements on the whole thing. The basics came from lain, and then Harvey and I worked out other things. I certainly learned how to work around elephants from lain: bow to approach the herd, and how not to approach the herd [when an aggressive bull is present]. So I had actually done quite a lot of elephant work by the time I started the Amboseli Project. Q How did you finance this research? A Harvey had a little bit of money from the university for research. Then he got a small grant from the East African Wildlife Society. And we just used our own personal money. Money I’d saved. You know things were much cheaper then, and it was very much a part-time study. Then in 1975,1 convinced the AWF to give me a grant to start an intensive study on my own. They gave me $5,000, and I set up my camp in September 1975.1 was then 35. Q Did established scientists question your ability ta take this on? A Yes, probably. But people were kind. I think [it it was] my perseverance or something—stubbornness and perseverance. Also, Iain, David Western, and Harvey all gave me good letters of recommendation. tific papers out, then write a popular book. But then it was becoming more and more obvious that elephants were in trouble in Africa, and I had to kind of shift gears because I felt it was more important to do the popular book first. Q To bring the plight of the elephant to people’s attention? A Well, to bring elephants to people’s attention. Elephant Memories is not really about the plight of the elephant. It just tells people how wonderful elephants are. So I dropped the scientific papers, and started a proposal for the book. I got a contract for the book, started it in 1984 and worked on it for two years. Since it has come out last year, I’ve really been working full-time on public awareness. Q Do you feel odd about drawing back from the daily monitoring of the elephants? A Oh, I did. Yes, very much. Back in 1983, I really missed it. But I always felt I could go back. And in fact, I plan to get a research clearance in the next few months. Somebody has to have a research clearance in order for us to continue the monitoring. So I want the clearance for that, although the actual work will mostly be done by my two assistants. Q Do you have trouble now obtaining funds for the project? A No, there’s no problem now. I mostly raise my own money. But I just got a nice grant from the Zoo-Atlanta, which wants to do some field work besides their own zoo work. So they’re going. to be sponsoring the long-term monitoring indefinitely. They’ve promised me about $12,000-for each year. Q What are your long-range hopes for the project and your own work? A Well, the main thing is to keep the long-term data collection going. These data become more and more important as each year goes by, particularly now with so many elephant populations disrupted by poaching and displacement. It’s the only place we can get this kind of information—the baseline data on what a fairly natural, undisturbed elephant population does. Since we know so much about the population—who’s related to who, and exactly how old they are (we have known-age animals now that are exactly 17 years old)—that’s such important information. For instance, in Zimbabwe, they’re saying that females are having calves when they are 7 years old. But they don,t actually know their animals, so that’s unlikely. It’s the kind of information that Amboseli can give. So that is the number one most important thing: to keep that long-term monitoring going. Then there are all sorts of other questions. We have a Kenyan student who’s going to look at the elephants’ distribution movements in relation to the Masai [a pastoral people who live next to Amboseli]. We’re having this problem with the elephants—they don’t migrate out of the park any more, perhaps because of poaching. Another student wants to look at the process of independence for the young males—how it occurs and what happens to them after they become independent. We know very little about that. There could be a study on leadership, which is one I still would like to do myself. And the study of cooperation and competition between females, between families. All of that is still not done. Q Do you think you’ll take on that leadership study in the future? A I might. But, for the next two years, I do have a film project. The Amboseli elephants are the last relatively natural population that we know of in East Africa. So I’ve wanted to do a definitive film on elephant behaviorbefore it’s too late. I’m doing this with the BBC. We’ll follow one elephant family through two years of its life. So that’s what I’ll be doing starting in January. I’m 49 now, and most of my life has been spent following these elephants. I don’t know where the time went. Virginia Morrell is a science writer, based in ashland Oregon. She is working on a biography of the Leakey family that will be published by Simon & Schuster.

Elephants Self-Taught: A Researcher's 21 Years In Africa

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