Cindy Adams
Question: So what brings you to support the Wildlife Conservation Society?
Adams: Well, anything that has to do with animals, I would automatically come out because I wrote a book about my dog Jazzy, and on the back page, Bill Maher, the comedian, said “Cindy Adams certainly does love animals. It’s nice to know, because she sure doesn’t like human beings.” So that was like, his joke. But I’m on the board of the ASPCA, and anything that helps animals, from worms to tigers, I would be there for it.
Q: What do you specifically do on the board for the ASPCA?
Adams: I do a lot of things. For instance I brought (New York City Council Speaker) Christine Quinn up to a meeting that they couldn’t seem to get arranged to see about how we’re going to find some harmony with the carriage horses. I have made the connection to (Mayor) Michael Bloomberg (through) Patty Harris, who runs his foundation, to get some money for the ASPCA from the foundation. I’m putting the ASPCA people on my spot on NBC, in the morning on Sundays. I’m doing that to try to raise the awareness of people who are giving up their dogs because they can’t afford food for themselves and they’re homeless, and these dogs are being put out!
Q: And why is it important to support animals and to help them?
Adams: Because they have no voice. We’re the only ones who can advocate for them. We can say you have to take care of them … you shouldn’t beat them … you have to feed them … they have no one but us. And at this stage of my life, I have no one but my dogs. So I worry about them, and every animal alive.
Q: What are your dogs' names?
Adams: Jazzy, who's 4 1/2 pounds — it was his fifth birthday recently — and his sister Juicy, who is 3 1/2 pounds. They’re two Yorkies. And if they could pay the maintenance, I’d leave them my apartment in the will.
Q: If there’s one moving moment that you could pick that’s really meant a lot to you in your work with animals, what would it be?
Adams: My dogs mean everything in the world to me. They’re my whole family. They’re my whole life. I only had two people ever in my whole life — my mother and my husband. They were the same age, I’d lost them both within three months of each other.
So, the only family I have are my dogs. I have two of them now — Jazzy and Juicy. But it’s Jazzy II. Jazzy I I lost in a kennel. I had never ever, ever, ever, never left my dog in a kennel. This was the only one time. My housekeeper was going to a wedding in Canada, I was going to be in Europe … So, I put them in a kennel (on) a farm up north (in upstate New York). I’d never been there.
The baby went up, came back dead. And, I went into a fetal position. I couldn’t bear it, and I brought to bear Jazzy’s Law, which is now in place in New York City. Jazzy’s Law means all kennels are monitored. The owner will have to come in with proof that they’ve had shots and vaccinations and all the rest of it. [Editor's note: According to reports, an autopsy showed E. coli bacteria in Jazzy's system.]
Ullas Karanth
Q: Could you talk a little bit about this organization and your role and how everything got started?
Karanth: Wildlife Conservation Society got started as the New York Zoological Society in 1895. Some of the New Yorkers who started this organization felt the city should be the front end of the globe. So they had the Bronx Zoo, then the aquarium … all the institutions, the museums, various things. Later, some of those pioneers also said we have to save wildlife where it lives, which is in the rest of the world. So right now, 50 percent of the Wildlife Conservation Society, which New Yorkers know as the Bronx Zoo, is out in the rest of the world.
In 64 countries, we are working to save anything from gorillas, tigers, elephants, seals. So we’re working across the world, and that’s not normally done. It’s seen as a New York-based institution. It’s worldwide and it’s making a real impact because it’s philosophy is very different. It works based on science. Just as in medicine and agriculture, and other fields, we have been able to fix their problems, because we have gone through science.
We believe in saving wildlife using the science route. And it's paying dividends, in the sense that without spending a lot of PR money and beating ourselves on the chest and saying we care for wildlife, we do it effectively, efficiently and economically. The Bronx Zoo and these New York institutions are our front end, and we have this global presence in 64 countries. Probably about 200 Ph.D. scientists like me out there, saving wildlife.
Q: What’s your specific role with the organization?
Karanth: I was inspired by a doctor, a scientist who started studying tigers in the 1960s. He belonged to WCS, he still is there. He’s an emeritus scientist now. I was a teenager. I got inspired and I said this is what I want to do in life, so I got a Ph.D. in wildlife biology. I’ve been working for WCS for 20 years. I’ve been working in India, basically trying to research and understand tigers and then take that knowledge and apply it to serving tigers.
Q: Have you had one particularly moving moment or a story that sticks out in your mind working with the wildlife conservation?
Karanth: There are many moving moments. One of the most moving moments was one early morning I was tracking tigers, I drove down this dirt track and I had a couple of TV crews kind of sitting in the back. It’s really misty, it's like going into a tunnel of mist in the South Indian Forest called Nagar Hole, which is not very far from Bangalore, which is my long-term site. I saw this real dream-like image of a tigress with two cubs playing and when we got too close the tigress charged at the car, then she withdrew. It was like a dream, you know.
Q: Any last words you would like to say to people out there, why they should support the Wildlife Conservation Society?
Karanth: We all have to support conservation for our own good, not because it's some cute thing you have to do or it’s an obligation, because now, serious science tells us that we have heated up the Earth by ripping off its natural cover and unless we seriously work at putting back that natural cover which interacts with the atmosphere and chemicals to keep earth habitable, we will be the big losers in the end - that’s the whole thing, the connection between conserving nature and global warming. So, it was intuitive or guesswork at some sense, but more and more there is scientific evidence that by saving nature and tigers and elephants we are saving ourselves.
Interviewed by Giacinta Pace, NBC News
