Author chronicles saving tigers

LIFE IN THE VALLEY OF DEATH: THE FIGHT TO SAVE TIGERS IN A LAND OF GUNS, GOLD AND GREED, by Alan Rabinowitz, Island Press, 244 pages, $25.95

Referred to by the New York Times as the Indiana Jones of conservation science, Alan Rabinowitz has regularly risked his life to protect some of the great endangered animals of the world. Over many years, he has traveled to the remote corners of the earth — including Belize, Borneo, Taiwan, Thailand and Laos — in search of wild things.

Professionally, Rabinowitz serves as executive director of the Science and Exploration Division of the Wildlife Conservation Society (founded in 1896 as the New York Zoological Society), headquartered at the superlative Bronx Zoo in New York City.

This, his third book, recounts perhaps his most dangerous adventure: the creation of the world's largest tiger preserve in Myanmar (formerly Burma), a nation plagued with political unrest and danger due to military regimes. (The average villager lives on less than $1 U.S. a day.)

Rabinowitz's book focuses on the lush Hukawng Valley, home to one of the largest tiger populations outside India, one that is constantly threatened by poachers and gold prospectors. He writes that there were as many as 100,000 tigers in the world at the beginning of the 20th century, but by the end, hardly anyone could recall encountering a tiger in the wild.

While visiting the valley, he decides to try to make it a tiger preserve. When he returns to New York, he agrees with his wife that they should have a second child. Within a short time, she is pregnant — but Rabinowitz starts suffering strange symptoms, which are soon diagnosed as cancer. He is only 45. He can't believe his personal life is superceding the tigers.

Then he finds that it is "the best kind of cancer," meaning it is CLL, chronic lymphatic leukemia. It develops very slowly and can't be treated until it gets worse. A specialist tells him that he should be cautious about visiting foreign countries, because a disease contracted there could speed up his leukemia.

Rabinowitz, who loves travel and is dedicated to his profession, reacts by returning to Myanmar. However, he finds a decrease in tigers, an increase in humans and a propensity for hunting animals and mining for gold. All of that is bad news for protecting the tiger.

Following protracted negotiations with the military regime, Rabinowitz succeeds in getting a forest complex of nearly 12,000 square miles — which is almost the size of Maryland, and larger than Belgium.

Rabinowitz ought to become a peace envoy.