Wired Wilderness: Technologies of Tracking and the Making of Modern Wildlife

3 Diplomatic and Political Subtleties

chapter three Diplomatic and Political Subtleties In the 1960s, Indian biologists such as E. P. Gee and Sálim Ali began to warn that the country’s population of tigers would soon be extinct if habitat loss and hunting continued at their present rates. By the end of the decade they were joined by a number of European and American conservationists, including S. Dillon Ripley, the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, who had previously collaborated closely with Ali on studies of South Asian birds. In a speech at the Bombay Natural History Society in 1967, Ripley stated that he believed tigers would be extinct in the wild within twenty-five years unless immediate action was taken to protect them. As historian Michael Lewis has argued, Indian biologists hoped that such statements from prominent foreigners would help strengthen their position with the Indian government. In 1969, Ripley repeated his warning at a meeting of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature in New Delhi, where he also promised the assistance of the Smithsonian to India and any other nation that sought to protect its remaining tigers. A census of India’s tigers completed in the following year by the Indian conservationist Kailash Sankhala suggested that only 2,500 tigers remained in the country, a dramatic decline from an estimated 40,000 tigers at the beginning of the century.1 94 Wired Wilderness After the New Delhi meeting, the Smithsonian struggled to make good on Ripley’s promise of technical assistance. While some Indian scientists welcomed the Smithsonian’s potential contributions, others, particularly those affiliated with the Indian Forest Service such as Sankhala, resented what they saw as foreign efforts to gain influence over conservation in India. The Indian Forest Service’s suspicions were heightened in the case of the Smithsonian by the latter ’s recently revealed entanglement with covert American military and intelligence operations. In 1969 the Smithsonian had become embroiled in a controversy over its participation in the Pacific Ocean Biological Survey Program, which critics alleged was a component of the U.S. Army’s biological weapons program. After the scandal broke, Senator J. William Fulbright warned Ripley that it would be “very wise” for the Smithsonian to avoid accepting any further funding from the Department of Defense. As Lewis notes, it did not help the Smithsonian’s reputation that Ripley had headed the operations of the Office of Strategic Services, the predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency, in Ceylon during the Second World War. Dealing with the increasing sensitivity of military-sponsored research was one of Sidney Galler’s main responsibilities as the Smithsonian’s assistant secretary for science from 1965 to 1970. In 1968, Galler urged Ripley to increase the amount of training that Smithsonian-funded researchers received before going abroad, reminding him that “during these troublesome times when the activities of scientists no matter how pure in intent are not above suspicion, and when indeed the non-friends of the U.S. overseas appear to be multiplying, it is doubly important that scientists representing the Smithsonian Institution abroad have a full appreciation of the diplomatic and political subtleties that may affect their projects.”2 The Smithsonian’s ability to contribute to tiger conservation was also hampered by the lack of a specialist in large carnivore ecology on its staff. To compensate for this limitation, it recruited Maurice Hornocker, the former graduate student of John Craighead, who had completed his doctorate on Idaho’s mountain lions under Ian McTaggart Cowan. Hornocker had since become the head of the Idaho Cooperative Wildlife Research Unit and was eager to expand his research beyond cougars to other species of large cats. In July 1971 the Smithsonian sent Hornocker to India to assess the possibilities for tiger research ; on the way there Hornocker made a brief visit to the headquarters of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature in Switzerland, which was trying to coordinate international tiger conservation efforts. Hornocker met with a number of Indian officials and scientists during his trip, though heavy Diplomatic and Political Subtleties 95 monsoon rains prevented him from reaching Bombay, where he had planned to meet with members of the Bombay Natural History Society, the Smithsonian’s strongest scientific supporters in India. After returning to the United States, he told the Smithsonian that he was “not enthusiastic about participating in a country-wide census” of India’s tigers, which he thought could...