Beyond the Last Village: A Journey Of Discovery In Asia's Forbidden Wilderness

In 1993, Alan Rabinowitz, called "the Indiana Jones" of wildlife science by The New York Times, arrived for the first time in the country of Myanmar, known until 1989 as Burma, uncertain of what to expect. Working under the auspices of the Wildlife Conservation Society, his goal was to establish a wildlife research and conservation program and to survey the country's wildlife. He succeeded beyond all expectations, not only discovering a species of primitive deer completely new to science but also playing a vital role in the creation of Hkakabo Razi National Park, now one of Southeast Asia's largest protected areas.

Beyond the Last Village takes the reader on a journey of exploration, danger, and discovery in this remote corner of the planet at the southeast edge of the Himalayas where tropical rain forest and snow-covered mountains meet. As we travel through this "lost world" -- a mysterious and forbidding region isolated by ancient geologic forces -- we meet the Rawang, a former slave group, the Taron, a solitary enclave of the world's only pygmies of Asian ancestry, and Myanmar Tibetans living in the furthest reaches of the mountains. We enter the territories of strange, majestic-looking beasts that few people have ever heard of and fewer have ever seen -- golden takin, red goral, blue sheep, black barking deer. The survival of these ancient species is now threatened, not by natural forces but by hunters with snares and crossbows, trading body parts for basic household necessities.

The powerful landscape and unique people the author befriends help him come to grips with the traumas and difficulties of his past and emerge a man ready to embrace the world anew. Interwoven with his scientific expedition in Myanmar, and helping to inform his understanding of the people he met and the situations he encountered, is this more personal journey of discovery.

Rabinowitz has been an explorer and an expert in setting up nature reserves in other places, but he was amazed to find the hunters dealing in body parts of rare animals, mostly in trade with China for salt. In expeditions by foot that sound as tough as the ones Victorian explorers had to face, he was able to come to terms with hunters, planning a park system that would encourage hunters to benefit from the study and the conservation of wildlife, rather than the commercial disposal of it; such a system ran, at least partially, on salt as a reward to the former hunters, making wildlife more valuable alive than dead. He also had to try to deal with the bureaucracy of the Myanmar government, which seems stranger than most such institutions. Strangely, Christian proselytizing in the area, teaching that all animals were placed here for our use, was a serious obstacle to be overcome.

It is often his attempts to connect with those of other cultures that are the most moving parts of this book. For Rabinowitz, connecting has not been easy. He still has the stutter that crippled him as a child, and his book has flashbacks of his upbringing and the difficulty of dealing with parents whom he blamed for it and who blamed themselves. He has openly described the difficulties being an explorer has posed within his marriage, and the strain between him and his wife caused by his absences and of the miscarriages they had to go through. The journey through Myanmar was for him also a personal journey dealing with his childhood, being a husband, and becoming a father. He succeeded in sparking a wildlife reserve that is something we can all profit from, but his success in fighting his own personal demons is laid out here as well. With good humor, astute observation, passion, and candor, Rabinowitz has provided a book of exotic travel, and something far more.


The Story vs. the Storyteller   December 5, 2001
17 out of 28 found this review helpful

I enjoyed the book on the level of learning about Myanmar, some of its people and issues relative to protection of its unique wildlife. I would have enjoyed a pictured appendix, showing the red goral or red panda, etc. I believe Rabinowitz is a dedicated biologist, however, I found his writing quite simple and not very effective in creating a mood or a presence in an unseen place. I also felt an ego that was at times difficult to deal with. It seemed he was quite involved with himself and his perceived abilities. Although I felt he was making efforts to grow as a person from his obviously difficult past, I also wished he would seek professional help in relationiships such as with his wife. I found this aspect of the book difficult. However, in the context of how I viewed his ego and stories he related, I am sure he would find the counselor lacking in some way and he would know how to do it better. It was a paradox, on one hand he could feel for the uniqueness of the culture and personality of remote villagers, yet be unable to have a meaningful and progressive dialogue with his wife, or shed his ego enough to be truly open and able to change. I am curious how fatherhood will change him, if at all. I think it was telling, in all the pictures, including the jacket, there was no picture of his wife. (I, the reviewer, am a male, by the way)


great adventure   January 17, 2003
17 out of 17 found this review helpful

Massachusetts Sierran, March 2002
Diana Muir

Alan Rabinowitz has the best day job in America. The Bronx Zoo pays him to fly to parts of the world that have been off-limits to western scientists for generations. He assembles a team and walks into the forest where he treks beyond the point at which effective government ends, beyond the last road negotiable by Land Rover, beyond the last village. He comes back to report the existence of new species of large mammals previously unknown to science. Then he arranges to have vast tracks of wild land set off as protected nature reserves.
Rabinowitz works for the organization that runs the Bronx Zoo, the Wildlife Conservation Society, and he doesn't actually find an entirely new species of large mammal every time he steps into the bush. But the delicate Burmese leaf deer he discovered for science in 1997 is flourishing in forests that his Burmese scientific and administrative collaborators are working to conserve. Their efforts have resulted in the protection of 3.2% of the land area of Myanmar as national parkland or wildlife refuge. And the adventures in Myanmar recounted in Beyond the Last Village are merely the latest exploits in a career spent mapping the last refuges of the nearly extinct Sumatran rhino, tracking tigers in Thailand, and determining how large a jaguar preserve need be to succeed in preserving jaguar.
No one is perfect. Rabinowitz has a great story to tell, but he attempts to combine a sensitve exploration of his inner self with real-life adventures that play like an Indiana Jones movie. The outcome can be bad enough to make you wince. Here is Rabinowitz, the sensitive male, awaiting the birth of his child.
"The due date came and went, and I was surprised at how rattled I was. I had helped deliver a Mayan baby in the back of a pickup truck on a bumpy dirt road in southern Belize. I had sewn up my dog, Cleo, after his neck was ripped open by a jaguar. I had ridden for help on a motorcycle in Thailand with a broken leg and a bamboo stake through my foot. I had had to find my way out of the jungle with a subdural hematoma after a plane crash. But nothing compared to this. This was my child."
When Rabinowitz discovers a species unknown to science, he takes evidence to the Director of Genetics at the Bronx Zoo for expert confirmation. If he had taken the account of his trip to a professional writer for similarly expert help he would have a best seller on his hands. Make no mistake, Rabinowitz has a first-rate story to tell. The sort of story that might have reached millions of readers around the world and persuaded them of the importance of saving the world's last wild places. Instead we have a book that is almost wonderful.
This is a great read nevertheless because Rabinowitz is the real deal. He goes to places where we cannot go and sees things that we would never see. Had I somehow gotten permission to hike into upland forests of Myanmar off limits to outsiders, I would have seen some pretty little deer. Rabinowitz saw an undescribed species. And while the writing may be clunky, the adventure is real.
E. O. Wilson's new book, The Future of Life, is an elegant statement of the importance of preserving the biodiversity of this planet by protecting large, intact ecosystems from exploitation. Rabinowitz takes the problem down to cases.
His new species of leaf dear, along with bear, tiger, rhino and a bevy of southeast Asian species whose names I failed even to recognize, are endangered by poverty, and by a voracious Chinese appetite for bogus medicine and chimerical aphrodisiacs. Sometimes it can take surprisingly little to save them.
In the remote highlands of Myanmar Rabinowitz and his Burmese colleague, Dr. U Saw Tun Khaing, discovered villages with no access to salt. The only way that they could obtain this vital commodity was by hunting and selling wildlife parts to Chinese traders. Rhino, the species most prized by credulous Chinese men, were extirpated in the area decades ago.
Dr. Khaing has now set up a system in which payment in salt and other goods is made to villages that preserve the wildlife around them. Erstwhile hunters are employed as game monitors with the cost picked up by the Wildlife Conservation Society. Salt and self-interest will surely do more to induce local people to preserve game than any number of wardens could.
The pity is that poachers serving the Chinese market continue to hunt Asian rhino elsewhere. My son, the college student, suggests that the only way to protect the last wild Asian rhinos from poachers is to provide free Viagra to every middle-aged man in China. He just might be right. Meanwhile, I'm glad that Alan Rabinowitz is on the job.


A good book   December 25, 2003
Marceau Ratard (Metairie, LA USA)
2 out of 3 found this review helpful

This was a good book, I think Jaguar was his best book but I liked this one. It must have been amazing to have trekked across such unknown wilderness and interact with the local villagers and see a part of the world that virtually no western eyes have seen. It must have been extremely difficult to deal with the reality of overexploitation of wildlife to trade for something as mundane as salt. Rabinowitz doesn't paint the local people as uncaring monsters. They are just trying to make a life for themselves and their families.

I would have like a few photographs of the animals, but this isn't a field guide. Overall the book was very good. I liked the way the Dr. Rabinowitz made the point that if any conservation effort is going to have even the smallest chance of being successful the local government and more importantly the local people need to be involved from day one.