Having got his last book on the Hukawng Valley in northwestern Myanmar, the temptation was just too strong to complete the journey with the two other volumes of his struggles in Southeast Asia. This one recounts his efforts in the western corner of Thailand, the Huai Kha Khaeng Wildlife Sanctuary and other adjacent tracts, one of the last large wildlife areas left in Thailand.
This is an account that only a westerner could write - there is so much personal stuff in it, including the author's amours. However, my main impression is of the intrusive nature of the research methodology adopted by the Wildlife Conservation Society. This entails trapping the subjects (mainly carnivores, with live bait tied inside a drop-cage), drugging them , fitting a radio collar, and tracking them thereafter through the beeps. The hazards involved are starkly demonstrated by the fate of the first animal the author succeeds in capturing: a large and vigorous leopard. Unfortunately, in his impatience to make his first catch, the author uses a wire snare, and the leopard, in pulling his foot free, fatally injures his paw to the bone, and subsequently struggles to a tragic and miserable death under a bush. However, these are scientific quests, and no one dares to say anything. The author goes on to chronicle his subsequent endeavours, succeeding finally in radio-collaring and tracking a handful of animals including leopards and leopard-cats, but not the tiger. Generalist foresters in India have always had a very ambiguous reaction to such approaches to wildlife science, resulting in a state of constant feuding between wildlife scientists and forest administrators.
The account brings out well the struggles going on between wildlife conservation and the competing interests of mining, poaching, clearing for agriculture, development of roads, dams, and townships, and so on. Another aspect starkly portrayed is the needlessly brutal level of cruelty involved even in dealing with animals captured for food or for the novelty pet trade, which raises the hackles of the author. Conservation is a dismal and hard undertaking, that wins few friends but can make enemies of a whole polity. ( )