Search for the Golden Moon Bear: Science and adventure in Southeast Asia by Sy Montgomery, Simon & Schuster, $26, ISBN 0743205847 Reviewed by Adrian Barnett
FOR a scientist working with mammals, one of the great prizes is to discover a new species. The odds are against it: nearly 80 per cent of the mammal species known today were discovered before 1900. In Search for the Golden Moon Bear, Sy Montgomery documents travels and travails as she and bear biologist Gary Galbreath criss-cross Cambodia, Laos and Thailand in search of the eponymous ursine.
In a liquidly descriptive style, Montgomery beautifully documents the landscapes, situations and emotions of the three expeditions made to discover the true nature of a strange golden bear Galbreath had heard of. Was it a myth or just a translator’s error? If real, was the moon bear a true species or merely a genetic oddity, like the part-white blackbirds that pop up in suburban gardens?
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To find out they braved bone-shattering roads, dodged armed factions and tramped through mine-infested forests. Back home, they carried out DNA analysis that established the exact nature of the strange blond bears. As well as evoking the excitement and dangers of the fieldwork, Montgomery describes the microdetails of lab practice, before sweeping away to the broader vistas of applied conservation.
Far more than a simple tale of scientific derring-do, the book embraces characters whose extraordinary devotion to conservation is humbling in its intensity and purity: from the women of a Thai brothel who pooled their earnings to save a bear’s life, to the head of Cambodia’s fledgling conservation department, who daily received death threats. The book has requiems for lost cultures: a tribe whose unique written language is known to only two old men and recorded in a single book, and other groups soon to see their land drowned by mega-dams. And there’s also lots of bear biology: from palaeoecology to the extraordinary lives of bears in the oases of the Gobi desert.
From a past replete with legends of man-bears, Montgomery brings us to the grim present: the shuddering horror of bears with paws cut off for soup– one at a time to keep the rest fresh. The animals’ vocal chords are then cut so that as they walk on their bloodied stumps their cries don’t disturb the tourists.
This is a fine book, providing insight into the scientific process, the motivations of wildlife biologists, and the root causes and possible solutions of the conservation problems they seek to overcome. Recently it was announced that the Cardamom mountains, the moon bear’s home, is to be officially protected (¿ìè¶ÌÊÓƵ, 10 August, p 8). The bear has done its ambassadorial part: this book is a fine envoy to a wider world.