JALKOTZY o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-07-28 published
He had a passion for big cats
Canadian wildlife biologist pioneered long-running cougar project,
radio-tracked lions in East Africa
By Allison
LAWLOR
Monday,
July 28, 2003 - Page R7
Ian ROSS, a Canadian wildlife biologist whose love of big cats
took him deep into the bush in East Africa, has died after his
small plane crashed in central Kenya. He was 44.
Mr. ROSS was radio-tracking lions in Kenya's Laikipia district
as part of a research study aimed at improving the conservation
of large carnivores in Africa, when the two-seater Husky aircraft
he was a passenger in crashed and burned.
The plane, which was flying at a low altitude in order to allow
him to track the animals, crashed in the early evening of June
29. Mr. ROSS and the American pilot who was flying the plane
were killed instantly, said Laurence
FRANK, director of the Laikipia
Predator Project and a research associate at the University of
California at Berkeley.
Mr. ROSS, who arrived in Kenya from Calgary in January, had intended
to stay there working on the project for at least a year.
"He had this real passion for big cats. He wanted to study them
around the world," said Vivian
PHARIS, who sits on the board
of directors at the Alberta Wilderness Association, of which
Mr. ROSS was a member for close to 20 years.
"Large carnivores are interesting because their populations tend
to be the first to suffer from human activities," Mr.
ROSS said
a few years ago in a short article written on the occasion of
a high-school reunion. "They require huge land areas and some
of their characteristics are very similar to and conflict with
our own."
Although Mr.
ROSS had spent considerable time in the field researching
several wild animals, including lions, grizzly bears and moose,
Mr. ROSS was best known for his expertise on cougars.
In the mid-1990s, he and colleague Martin
JALKOTZY, with whom
he ran a small Calgary-based consulting firm called Arc Wildlife
Services, completed a 14-year study on cougars.
The study, considered the longest-running cougar project and
the most intensive of its kind, looked at everything from cougar
population dynamics, to the effects of hunting, to food and habitat
use.
The intensive fieldwork took place in the winter in the foothills
of Alberta. Winter allowed the researchers to follow a cougar's
tracks in the snow. Once a cat was tracked, with the help of
dogs, the animal would be tranquillized before it was radio-collared
and its measurements were taken.
"We worked really well as a team," Mr.
JALKOTZY said. "It was
something Ian did quite well."
The cougar project received wide public attention when Mr.
ROSS
appeared on Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Radio's Morningside
with Peter
GZOWSKI and Arthur
BLACK, the former Canadian Broadcasting
Corporation
Radio host, followed along with Mr.
ROSS and Mr.
JALKOTZY while they radio-collared a cougar. Mr.
BLACK recorded
the event for his program Basic Black.
In the mid-1980s, not long after Mr.
ROSS became involved in
the study, he lost his friend and mentor Orvall
PALL.
Mr.
PALL
was killed in a plane crash while tracking bighorn sheep in Alberta.
At the time of his death he was working with Mr.
ROSS and Mr.
JALKOTZY on the cougar project.
Over the years, Mr.
ROSS, who was described as quiet and unassuming,
made a number of public presentations on the cougar study. He
was especially in demand in 2001 after a woman was killed by
a cougar while cross-country skiing near Banff, Alberta.
"Ian really believed in public education," believing it was the
first step toward conservation, Mr.
JALKOTZY said. Speaking publicly
also helped to raise money, from individual donors, corporations
and other sources, for the independent study.
Mr. ROSS also did a lot of work with Alberta Fish and Wildlife
and was instrumental, along with Mr.
JALKOTZY, in getting the
province to adopt a new cougar wildlife management plan to control
hunting.
Ian ROSS was born on December 16, 1958, in Goderich, Ontario
He was the third of four children born to Burns and Ruth
ROSS.
Childhood was spent in the fields of Huron County near his home,
climbing through muskrat swamps and collecting pelts and animal
skulls.
After high school, Mr.
ROSS left Goderich for Guelph, Ontario,
where he studied wildlife biology. In 1982, he graduated from
the University of Guelph with an honours degree. Soon after,
he packed up his pickup truck with all his possessions and drove
west to Alberta. After a short stint working as a beekeeper in
the Peace River area, he was hired by a small private consulting
firm in Calgary as a wildlife biologist and started studying
grizzly bears and moose.
In 1984, he married Sheri
MacLAREN, also from Goderich. The couple
separated in January, 2002.
Over the course of his career, Mr.
ROSS figured he had captured
and released more than 1,000 large mammals including bighorn
sheep, cougars and grizzlies, for research. Not afraid of large
animals, he captured and collared his first leopard two days
before he died.
Andrew ROSS recalls one time his older brother was injured by
a moose when it kicked him in the face after being sedated. He
was left bruised and with a cracked cheekbone.
"He was extremely meticulous and careful," Dr.
FRANK said, referring
to Mr. ROSS's work.
Through his consulting firm, Mr.
ROSS conducted numerous environmental
impact studies in western and northern Canada for the oil industry
and government. The work required Mr.
ROSS to spend a lot more
time at his office desk instead of in the field where he felt
his true talent was.
"Working with these large animals is very exciting and also very
dangerous," Dr.
FRANK said.
Mr. ROSS loved being in the field but hated what he had to do
to the animals. He knew that by capturing the large predators
he was causing them trauma, but he strongly believed that what
he was doing was for the benefit of research and in the end the
benefit of the animals, Dr.
FRANK said.
"He was just so aware of the animal's experience, the animal's
dignity, if you can put it that way," Dr.
FRANK said.
Mr. ROSS spent the spring of 2002 working in northern British
Columbia capturing grizzly bears for research. The job meant
Mr. ROSS, a man small in stature but strong and wiry, and a pilot
would fly low over an area in a helicopter trying to spot bears.
Once they had, Mr.
ROSS's job was to lean out of the plane, secure
in his harness and dart the animal with a tranquillizer. After
the animal was sedated, they would circle back, land the plane
and eventually radio collar the animal.
"He had great capture skills," Mr.
JALKOTZY said.
Aside from being a committed conservationist, Mr.
ROSS was also
an avid hunter and enjoyed hunting elk, moose and deer. But he
vigorously opposed the trophy killing of wolves, bears and cougars.
Andrew ROSS recalls that when his brother went moose hunting,
deep in the woods, he would only bring three bullets with him.
He figured that if he couldn't kill an animal with those, he
didn't deserve to get one.
"He would often get the moose with one bullet," Andrew
ROSS said.
While he loved to hunt, he never went out in an area he was studying,
considering that to be a conflict of interest, his brother said.
"Ian cared passionately about wildlife and wild country," and
tried to do what he could to conserve it, Mr.
JALKOTZY said.
Next month, Mr.
ROSS's ashes will be dispersed in Alberta's Kananaskis
country, where he had spent so much time with the cougars.
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