Winter 1999

[TEXT ARCHIVE WEB-PUBLISHED MARCH 2002.
ORIGINAL PRINT PUBLICATION DATE: WINTER 1999.]

Dr. George Rabb:
Statesman of Nature

By Debra Shore

Here's what most people don't know about Dr. George Rabb, director of the Brookfield Zoo: he has one of the longest tenures (22 years) of any zoo director in the country; he has a hot collection of classical CD's; he is a gourmet cook (taught by his mother) and wine connoisseur; his career of international conservation prominence began with ants.

Here's what many people do know: he's a bit shy; he is a host of surpassing graciousness (an expression of his southern roots, no doubt); he loves amphibians.

First, to the ants. "Very early on, when I was four or five," Rabb says, "I got into watching the carpenter ants on their trails to this enormous live oak that extended into the street in front of my grandparents' house in Lumberton, North Carolina. I used to stick my ear down and imagine I could hear them. Their conversation was about where to get the best food and all that jazz."Rabb conducted experiments of his own making, transporting some of the ants and bringing them back. He reveled in the nature abundant in his hometown of Charleston, South Carolina. Wood storks, bald eagles, all manner of snakes — these were his sought-after companions.

Rabb became a "museum kid," steered into a professional student track at the Charleston Museum, and trained to collect and prepare ornithological specimens. More than anything, he loved herps (professional shorthand for herptiles, known to us as reptiles and amphibians).

Fortunate in finding mentors and helpful friends, Rabb as a high school student spent time at an Emory University Field Station in southwestern Georgia chatting up the graduate students in ecology (cheekiness and confidence are also Rabb traits), collecting mosquitoes — for science! — and sampling birds, reptiles, and mammals to determine if they were carriers of malaria. At College of Charleston he majored in biology, then earned a PhD in zoology from the University of Michigan. In 1956, he came to the Brookfield Zoo as research zoologist, with an office in the Zoo's animal hospital. In 1976, Rabb was chosen to become Director of Brookfield Zoo and President of the Chicago Zoological Society.

Gradually he rose through the ranks of world conservation to serve as chair of the World Conservation Union's Species Survival Commission, a network of 7,000 scientists, field researchers, government officials and conservation leaders in 180 countries. He has received the Silver Medal of the Royal Zoological Society in London, the Marlin Perkins Award from the American Zoo and Aquarium Association, and the Society for Conservation Biology Service Award, among others.

As a newly-elected vice chair of the Chicago Region Biodiversity Council, Rabb in his far-flung travels is a compelling ambassador of Chicago Wilderness. "I see this consortium of conservation organizations, and their attention to preserving the biological resources of the region, as a way to show the rest of the world how to do it," he says. "It's a potential model for preserving nature in metropolitan areas around the world."

Rabb is fascinated by the idea that the greater Chicago metropolitan area might become the world's first urban biosphere reserve. "Unlike traditional national parks and other protected areas, the intent of biospheres is to secure the biological riches of such areas in the context of the local human interests," he explains. "Basically, the concept envisions establishing a core area where the biological riches will be left intact — an entire national park, for instance — and allowing degrees of intrusion and use of surrounding areas." Thus the core, in a standard biosphere reserve, is pristine nature.

Chicago Wilderness turns this concept inside out: the core is the highly developed part and the rich biological resources surround the developed core. "An urban biosphere reserve would ally conservationists with people concerned about our cities," Rabb adds. "The idea of a metropolitan biosphere would be to bring diverse interests together to determine the best outcome for the community in all its ecological and social dimensions — from water and air quality, to equality in provision of basic education and social services, to appropriate restraints on land and water usage and, perhaps, population growth."

These days, as an ambassador for Chicago Wilderness, he tells the people of Prague and Paris of ants and frogs and air quality, and social services, and how the future of nature is intertwined with the future of the world's people, in metropolis.