For auld lang syne: last ANIMALS 24-7 obituaries of 2022

John Neville Hare,  Mark Stanley-Price,  Faith Maloney, & Vivienne Westwood

The camel man

John Neville Hare,  88,   died on January 28,  2022,  but ANIMALS 24-7 did not learn of his death until almost a year later.

Born in Bexhill, Kent,  Hare became acquainted with working camels as a British army officer assigned to the Royal West African Frontier Force.  His admiration of camels grew when in 1957 he was deployed by the Colonial Administrative Service to Mambilla,  a roadless remote mountain region,  to oversee the transition to Nigerian independence.

Hare used camels for the first time then,  on an expedition south of Lake Chad.

Wrote as Dan Fulani

Adopting the pseudonym Dan Fulani to pass as a Nigerian fiction writer,  Hare between 1981 and 2006 published 17 books spotlighting development issues,  especially to expose post-colonial economic and ecological exploitation of Africa.

His first several books were written for teen readers.  Later books,  published under Hare’s own name,  targeted adults.

Hare’s work as an author,  however,  was often set aside after he was invited in 1993 to join a Russian team investigating the status of wild Bactrian camels in Mongolia.  A critically endangered species,  Bactrian camels survive outside of captivity only in the Gobi Desert.

Lop Nur

Hare’s findings,  presented at an international conference in Ulan-Bator the following year,  opened the way for Hare to research Bactrian camels in Lop Nur,  a dry lake that is a former nuclear testing site and is also the central portion of wild Bactrian camel habitat.

Leading expeditions to Lop Nur in 1995,  1996,  1997 and 1999,   Hare in 1995 became the first foreigner in recorded history to cross the Gashun Gobi Desert from north to south,  and in 1997 joined Kathryn Rae in founding the British-based Wild Camel Protection Foundation.

The Wild Camel Protection Foundation helped the Chinese government to establish the Lop Nur Wild Camel National Nature Reserve in Xinjiang Province,  within the former nuclear test site,  and in 2004 developed the Hunter Hall Captive Wild Camel Breeding Centre at Zakhyn Us in Mongolia.

Rarer,  even,  than Bactrian camels

A surprise,  however,  came in 2010 when the Veterinary University of Vienna determined after five years of genetic research that the wild “Bactrian camels” being conserved and helped were not Bactrian camels at all,  but instead were a previously unknown camel species of camel that diverged from any other known camelid more than 700,000 years ago.  The International Union for the Conservation of Nature has now listed this camel,  Camelus ferus,  as also critically endangered.

Hare meanwhile crossed the Sahara Desert on camels in 2001-2002,  from Lake Chad to Tripoli,  a distance of 1,500 miles,  to raise funds and awareness on behalf of wild camels;  returned to the Chinese and Mongolian deserts on domesticated Bactrian camels in 2005 and 2006;  and also in 2006 made the first recorded complete circling by camel of Lake Turkana,  Kenya.

Hare also authored seven books about camels and his international adventures.

Faith Maloney cofounded Best Friends Animal Society

Faith Maloney,  78,  a cofounder of the Best Friends Animal Society,  died on August 4,  2022 from ovarian cancer.

Born in Guildford,  England  of Irish parents,  Maloney after a convent education earned a degree in fine arts with a minor in lithography from the Guildford School of Art in Surrey,  England.

Her roles with the Best Friends Animal Society included serving as first president of the organization,  greeting visitors,  managing the animal housing with cofounders Paul Eckhoff and John Fripp,  and managing the on-site animal hospital.

Maloney was also for some years the de facto animal control officer for the region surrounding the Best Friends sanctuary in southern Utah,  answering calls from the Kanab police,  the Kane County sheriff,   the Fredonia town marshal,  and the Paiute tribal police.

Maloney is survived by her daughters, Caragh and Eve,  her son David,  and grandchildren Zoe and Jacob.

Mark Stanley-Price reintroduced oryx to Oman

Mark Stanley-Price,  75,   died on December 13,  2022,   at his home in Oxfordshire,  England.  Stanley-Price had since 2008 been affiliated the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit,  a part of the Department of Zoology at the University of Oxford.

Stanley-Price from 1979 to 1987 designed and led an attempt to reintroduce Arabian oryx to Oman,  where the species had been hunted into extinction in the wild.  The reintroduction is considered successful,  but poaching has held the wild population down to fewer than 1,000.

Invited to become founding chair of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature Reintroduction Specialist Group in 1988,  Stanley-Price retained that position until 2000.

Authoring Animal Re-introductions:  The Arabian Oryx in Oman,   published by Cambridge University Press in 1989,  Stanley-Price went on to produce the IUCN Guidelines for Re-introductions in 1995.

From 2010-2012 Stanley-Price led a joint task force of the Reintroduction & Invasive Species Specialist Groups that expanded the 1995 guidelines into the current IUCN Guidelines for Reintroductions and other Conservation Translocations in 2013.

From 2010-2016 Stanley-Price also chaired the Sub-Committee for Species Conservation Planning,  within the IUCN Species Survival Commission,  overlapping a dozen years as director of African operations for the African Wildlife Foundation,  based in Nairobi, Kenya,  and then several years as chief executive of the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust in Jersey.

Vivienne Westwood campaigned to save animals from bees to blue whales

Vivienne Westwood,  “who brought punk to high fashion,  dies at 81,”  headlined the New York Times, but Westwood was remembered quite differently by Paul Watson,  a cofounder of Greenpeace in 1971 who went on to found the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society in 1977 and then the Captain Paul Watson Foundation after splitting with Sea Shepherd in mid-2022.

“The end of 2022 has seen the tragic loss of a few friends and comrades,”  Watson posted to Facebook on December 29,  2022.  I was stung by the notice I received today of the passing of Dame Vivienne Westwood.

“When I first met Vivienne Westwood in Paris in 2015,”  during the United Nations Conference of the Parties on global warming,  “I was struck by her genuine passion to make this a better world,  and her willingness to jump right into controversy to get involved,”  Watson eulogized.

Westwood and Watson posed for a photo-op during the United Nations conference with a replica blue whale.

The Buckingham hat dance

Westwood established her animal advocacy credentials a decade before meeting Watson,  as one of the first renowned fashion designers to pledge never to use fur,  and to allow People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals to use her name to try to get other designers to follow her lead,  as many did.

Throughout 2008 Westwood tried and tried again to design a new fur-free hat for the Queen’s Royal Guard at Buckingham Palace,  whose hats have traditionally been made from bear pelts.  Ultimately,  though,  despite her efforts,  the Royal Guard opted to continue to use bear fur.

Westwood was comparably frustrated in April 2013,  when after she presented a petition with 300,000 signatures to British prime minister David Cameron at 10 Downing Street,  the Cameron government was among eight national delegations who voted against a two-year European Union suspension of the use of neonicotinoid insecticides to protect honey bees.

Though the U.K. is still among the eight European Union nations that allow use of neonicotinoid insecticides,  the rest of the European Union extended and expanded the ban in 2018.

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